by Françoise Woolley
Most organisations I work with want the same things. People who are engaged in their work. Teams that collaborate well and take pride in what they do. Managers who are trusted and able to lead, rather than constantly firefighting. Work that feels purposeful, productive and sustainable, even when it is demanding.
In many workplaces, that aspiration is not far off. People care about their jobs and want to do them well. Pressure is often accepted as part of working life, particularly in fast-moving or resource constrained environments.
When employees talk about stress, it is rarely about a lack of commitment or resilience. What comes up time and again is how work is organised, managed and communicated. Unclear priorities. Growing workloads with no space to plan. Managers pulled in too many directions. Teams expanding without clarity about who does what.
This is where work related stress most often takes hold, because the conditions around people make it harder to work well.
Managing employee stress is a legal duty
Under UK health and safety legislation, employers have a duty to assess and manage risks to employees’ psychological health in the same way they do physical risks.
Despite this, only 41 per cent of employers are aware of this duty, and 29 per cent have not conducted a risk assessment in the past three years (Personnel Today, 2025). In our experience at
Affinity Health at Work, many organisations remain unsure of what effective compliance looks like in practice.
Assessing and managing stress doesn’t have to be about fault-finding or endless paperwork. It should be about understanding where stress is coming from in your organisation and taking proportionate steps to reduce the risk of harm before people become unwell.
This also makes good business sense. Deloitte’s UK research (2024) estimates an average return of £4.70 for every £1 invested in workplace mental health and wellbeing. Analysis of the same research suggests that organisation-wide approaches focused on prevention can deliver even higher returns, approaching £6.30 for every £1 invested.
Why wellbeing support alone is not enough
Many employers already invest in wellbeing initiatives such as Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) or Mental Health First Aiders. These supports can be valuable, particularly when someone is already struggling.
However, they do not in themselves prevent work-related stress. When pressure is driven by workload for example, individual-level support can only ever go so far. In some cases, it can unintentionally reinforce the idea that the stress is the employee’s responsibility, rather than something shaped by how work is designed and managed.
A preventative approach starts earlier, by looking upstream at the system of work itself.
What does getting upstream involve?
Work-related stress is created by psychosocial hazards, aspects of work that influence how people experience their job. These include workload demands, a lack of support, role clarity or control over work, how change is handled, and exposure to harmful behaviours.
A well-designed stress risk assessment helps employers understand:
- which psychosocial hazards are present
- where stress is most concentrated
- which factors are having the greatest impact on wellbeing and performance.
This enables employers to prioritise action and inform the development of a practical plan to address the most significant risks. Stress risk assessments should be proportionate to the size, sector and risk profile of the organisation.
Making stress risk assessment workable in practice
A common concern is what happens if more issues are uncovered than can realistically be addressed? In practice, this is rarely what happens. When people are given a safe way to share their experience of work, they tend to focus on practical issues and realistic improvements.
Stress risk assessment might involve a combination of:
- a short, well-designed survey
- facilitated discussions or focus groups
- reviewing existing data such as absence, turnover or exit feedback.
What matters most is listening to your workforce, feeding back honestly, and being clear about what will happen next.
Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
Stress risk assessment works best as an ongoing process, not a one-off exercise. Engagement improves when people understand why it is happening, trust confidentiality, and believe their input will lead to action. Insight must be followed by prioritised action with clear ownership and realistic timescales.
Managers play a critical role in shaping day-to-day experience of work. Developing manager capability alongside stress risk assessment helps organisations move from insight to lasting improvement.
A final thought for employers
Preventing work-related stress is not about eliminating stress altogether. It is about designing work that people can sustain and supporting managers to lead well in complex environments.
For employers, getting upstream is not just about meeting legal duties. It is about creating healthier, more productive workplaces where work is designed to be sustainable over time.
Françoise Woolley is senior consultant at Affinity Health at Work
www.affinityhealthatwork.com
