We have a partnership agreement with the HSE to analyse data from our joint efforts. The HSE have recently published their 2007 psychosocial working conditions report, with a summary appearing below.

HSE psychosocial working conditions 2007

Introduction

This report presents analysis of 2007 data from an annual series of surveys on psychosocial working conditions which began in 2004. These surveys were set up to monitor changes in the psychosocial working conditions of Demand, Control, Managerial Support, Peer Support, Role, Relationships and Change in British workplaces. These are the working conditions which HSE is aiming to improve amongst British workers by means of employers implementing its Management Standards approach to tackling work-related stress, launched in November 2004. Although HSE has been actively promoting the use of the Management Standards since this launch, a sustained period of encouragement towards uptake began in mid 2006 and focused on target industries with the highest rates of work stress-related ill-health and absence. These target groups, defined using the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system, are Financial Intermediation (SIC Section J); Public Administration & Defence (SIC Section L); Education (SIC Section M); and Health & Social work (SIC Section N).

Results

The survey results from 2004 to 2007 indicate no significant changes across the board in psychosocial working conditions. However, there is a suggestion that in the past 12 months, during which HSE has divested substantial resource into promoting the use of the Management Standards, working conditions are beginning to improve. The only statistically significant increase between 2006 and 2007 was in Role, but with the exception of Relationships each scale increased non-significantly. Survey results indicate a significant fall between 2004 and 2007 in the proportion of British employees reporting their jobs as very or extremely stressful, despite a non-significant increase over the last 12 months. Overall results indicated no significant change between 2004 and 2007 in the proportion of employees who reported initiatives on stress at work, or in the proportion who reported discussing stress with their line manager in the previous 12 months. In both cases around a third of employees reported these.

Conclusions

Psychosocial working conditions for British employees have not generally significantly changed between 2004 and 2007. However, there is some suggestion of an improvement beginning to happen. In particular there was a significant improvement in Role scores between 2006 and 2007. Further, as stated in the corresponding report last year, the main effects of the Management Standards for work-related stress should not be expected to emerge until 2007-2008. Results from this year’s survey are consistent with this view as we are beginning to see improvements but at this stage these remain non-significant. It is predicted that the continuing promotion of the Management Standards should result in significantly improved psychosocial working conditions by 2008. Both job stressfulness and stress-related ill health (which is measured elsewhere in HSE, 2007) are already showing signs of a decreasing trend and it is expected that improvements in working conditions will contribute to a sharper downturn in these measures. However it is unlikely that the fall in these measures seen to date is directly related to the Management Standards. Continued collection and analyses of data on these underlying trends among British employees will in combination with other evidence enable better understanding of the possible effects of HSE’s Management Standards in Britain.