Managing work related stress in the railway industry

Our Health Programme for 2010-14 ( PDF 707 Kb) seeks to move the rail industry towards consistent achievement of best practice in occupational health, including effective management of work related stress. Stress is already well recognised by rail employers and trades unions as a key health concern within the industry, with significant costs to individuals and businesses.

• The direct costs of mental ill health to UK employers, including sickness absence and reduced productivity due to presenteeism, have been estimated at £26 billion a year (Centre for Mental Health report 'Mental Health at Work: Developing the Business Case 2007').
• The TUC biennial survey 2010 ranked stress first (59%) in most frequently identified hazards across the transport sector.
• Data from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) indicate that in 2010/11 an estimated 10.8 million days were lost to work related stress, anxiety or depression.

What do rail employers need to do?

Although many rail companies have effective arrangements for managing stress after traumatic events (such as fatalities, SPADs), the industry should also prevent work related stress at an organisational level by carefully designing the way the work is done. This will help to maximise business benefits from effective stress management and meet their legal duties. In summary, there should be:

• Less dependence on reactive management of stress at the individual level – although this will clearly still be needed for affected individuals; and
• More proactive management of stress before it becomes a problem, by looking at job design and the organisation as a whole (prevention is better than cure).

The HSE management standards approach provide a step by step approach to risk assessment for work related stress at an organisational level. We recognise the key role that employees can play in tackling work related stress at an organisational level and have produced an article ( PDF 220 Kb) aimed specifically at employees’ representatives for the rail trade unions, to raise awareness among their members

ORR is keen to see rail employers take these steps because:

• There are clear legal duties under health and safety law to assess and manage work related stress, as well as responsibilities under employment law - ill health caused by stress can attract costly compensation claims.
• Managing stress well can also save rail companies money and improve efficiency (good health is good business) – many examples of cost and productivity savings can be found on HSE’s website: business solution case studies.

Case study volunteers

If your company is managing stress using the stress management standards approach, and would be willing to be a case study to help others, please contact us.

Please also contact us if your company would like to “buddy up” with other willing organisations (many of which will be outside the rail sector) who are already managing stress using the HSE Management Standards approach, so that you can share experience.

Last updated: 19 March 2012

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