Work stress

[Succeedingatfailing]

I am worried about a lot of people in my work place (nhs). In the last three weeks I have had four people separately cry, saying they can't stand coming into work and several are off sick (not sure but possibly stress related in some cases) My immediate boss is very stressed, keeps forgetting things, missing meetings etc and his boss has been off for a while too.

I have heard about others who are also upset, second hand. Our system is a mess and we are all under extreme pressure to meet targets with not enough resources to do so.

Is there anything to be done in this situation? There are no jobs around so I can't just leave for pastures new and there are similar problems in other areas anyway.

Perhaps you could speak to your union rep?

Yes, I could Socy, not sure if they'd be able to do much either. Looks like we'll all just have to keep calm and carry on!

Good point, thanks. I'm not sure if going to counselling as an individual would help as it's so widespread and goes quite far up the line. I'm interested to hear of your own situation. In your case (I appreciate you'd have to be careful not to out yourself) how did the union rep help?

You have two, possibly three options. You can raise a grievance using your internal policy or you can make a protected disclosure. Your employer has a duty of care to protect employees' health and welfare. By failing to ensure the stress levels in the work place are reasonable they are arguably failing in their duty of care.

In the first instance I would raise a grievance, but I do know of an organisation where a senior employee went straight to the Health and Safety Executive to report intolerable levels of workplace stress which was an effective way of resolving it in that particular organisation.

In the first instance I would either raise a grievance or use the organisation's confidential internal whistle-blowing process if there is one. If that doesn't work then I would take stronger action and consider involving outside agencies - but only if I really thought my employer was doing nothing about the problem.

A good union rep will be invaluable during these processes.

Thank you both, food for thought there. I am thinking I might go down the grievance route Katie and yes, I do believe they are failing in their duty of care in this case. I shall also seek out our Union rep (who is not that visible/accessible unfortunately) and sound them out, too.

There have actually been a spate of grievances (re: bullying) being pursued recently in a related part of the organisation which I think reflects the general malaise but no-one in senior management seems to be joining the dots and addressing the bigger picture (apologies for mixed metaphors!)