Healthy Work - Managing Stress and Fatigue in the Workplace
On July 9, 2003, The Department of Labour released this guide about stress and fatigue. It is designed for those who advise employers.
Please refer to other publications on Stress and Fatigue.
The publication aims to help employers and employees to:
- implement healthy work (sections 1, 4 and 5);
- identify stressors that are potential workplace hazards (sections 1 and 7);
- identify simple processes for telling when 'stress' may be present, identify corresponding stressors and implement control measures;
- respond to a report of stress in the workplace (section 2);
- categorise work so that employer responsibilities for foreseeing hazards of stress and fatigue are clear (section 3);
- create a Healthy Work programme - to identify causes of stress in the workplace and develop control measures for them (Section 4 and 5);
- assess the ability of employees who may be impaired to continue working safely (Section 6).
Using the processes and tools in this guide, (or achieving the same standard by other means), can help ensure that an employer manages issues of stress and fatigue and develops a healthy and safe workplace.
Some of these tools are provided separately.
- Table 7.1 Confirming positive aspects of work - pdf [size: 183KB ] or word97 [size: 41KB ]
- Table 7.2 Identifying stressful aspects of work - pdf [size: 161KB ] or word97 [size: 39KB ]
- Table 7.3 Obtaining a composite score - pdf [size: 18KB ] or word97 [size: 34KB ]
- Tables 7.4 to 7.6 Control Measures - pdf [size: ] or word97 [size: ]
Employees have responsibilities as well and can use the guide to understand how they can reduce the causes and effects of stress and fatigue for themselves and their workmates.
A feature of the guideline is that it promotes communication between employers and employees. Two aids about the differences between debate and dialogue and fostering constructive dialogue are given to help understand how communication can be fostered. These are copyright to the Public Conversations Project of the Family Institute of Cambridge. 46 Kondazian Street, Watertown MA 02472-2832. http://www.publicconversations.org/
A separate advice on impairment titled Temporary Impairment Dealing with an Employee’s Temporary Impairment pdf [size: 138KB ]
This guide is based on a previous booklet published in 1998: Stress and Fatigue: Their implications for health and safety in the workplace. This publication remains current as a scientific summary of stress and fatigue.
