- Conference
- 2018 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 6 December 2017
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that work-related stress is one of the biggest health hazards in the workplace.
Conference notes the latest estimates from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) which shows the total number of cases of work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2015/16 was 488,000 cases, a prevalence of 1510 per 100,000 workers. The data also notes that public service industries, including healthcare, show higher levels of stress compared to other jobs and that the main work factors responsible for causing work-related stress include workload pressures and a lack of managerial support.
Conference notes that UNISON’s 2017 survey report of mental health staff ‘Struggling to cope’ reported that almost three-quarters of respondents (74%) reported feeling stressed because of their work at least once a week while more than a third (36%) felt stressed every day. It was also noted that more than one in five (22%) took time off within the last year because of stress. Conference further notes that UNISON’s 2017 safe staffing report on staffing levels in health care settings ‘Ratios not rationing’ reported that almost one in ten respondents (9.9%) said that they did not want to carry on nursing and that increased workloads and stress at work were the main two factors for this. Whilst the data on those leaving nursing and healthcare due to work-related stress is not available, the recruitment and retention crisis within the NHS is well documented and the link between the two is self-evident.
‘Ratios not rationing’ also noted that three in five nurses said that there were not adequate staff numbers to deliver safe, dignified and compassionate care. This is a structural issue yet healthcare staff are encouraged to attend courses such as mindfulness and well-being, thus seeking to individualise the issue of stress. As Hugh Robertson in ‘Distressing Failure’ says’ “the problem is that tackling stress can mean changing working practices, increasing staffing levels or changing management systems and so it is clear that the majority of employers are just sticking their head in the sand … or trying to fix the workers.”
The drop in workforce supply means that there is more pressure on existing registered staff to train and support the next generation of nurses, an additional stress for nurses to contend with.
Conference notes that the government’s austerity cuts and cuts to NHS funding and services have played a role in (as the TUC points out) “increasing work related stress for those working in the public sector who have experienced increasing hours of work and workloads, excessive monitoring, accountability, performance management, target setting, badly managed change and bullying management.”
Conference therefore calls upon the Health Service Group Executive to:
1)call on NHS employers and independent providers within the NHS, to recognise stress as a workplace hazard;
2)campaign for NHS employers and independent providers within the NHS to adopt the Health & Safety Executive stress management standards, undertake suitable and sufficient risk assessments and negotiate a work-related stress prevention policy;
3)continue to campaign for improved workforce planning and recruitment processes as a strategy that employers should be focussing on;
4)continue to campaign for safe staffing levels;
5)encourage branches and members to challenge employers and get employers to talk about stress, carry out stress audits and take steps to manage and reduce stress at work;
6)encourage branches to promote the use of the new UNISON stress toolkit, launched in November 2017.