Stress in DWP

Over recent months PCS members have been reporting that they are experiencing unprecedented levels of stress. Members put this down to the ever decreasing staff levels, loss of experienced staff and managers, constant change, unrealistic targets and a more oppressive organisational culture.

For example members of all grades working in Jobcentres have recently reported in a PCS survey that 92% of them feel more stressed as a result of the recent introduction of the Work Coach Delivery Model. PCS believes the stress members in this area feels is not unique and is widespread throughout the DWP workforce.

What is Stress?

Everyone is under some degree of pressure, both at home and at work. Such pressure is not necessarily harmful, provided it is kept to levels that enable individuals to cope with it. Stress is the term used to describe what occurs when pressures become unmanageable.

Excess pressure, or stress can cause a variety of problems: headaches, anxiety, muscle tensions, increased pulse rates, increased smoking and/or drinking, are just a few.

If stress persists over longer periods, more significant ill-health can result, for example:

• High blood pressure, leading to increased risks of stroke or heart attack
• Digestive disorders – ulcers, colitis etc
• Mental health difficulties – anxiety disorder, depression.

Stress is one of the main causes of sick absence in DWP, as it is for most employers. PCS is committed to reducing avoidable sick absence by helping DWP tackle member’s stress. Both employers and members of staff are not powerless to manage stress levels to acceptable levels.

Managing Stress

There are ways of managing stress at both an individual and collective level and the DWP provides extensive advice for both.

There is a lot of focus on building resilience so that individuals are more able to cope with stressful situations. This approach can be useful but as with any health and safety issue PCS believes that it is better to remove the cause of the problem than to find ways of dealing with the symptoms. In many cases the symptoms can only be removed at an organisational level.

Personal Stress

The stress felt by an individual member of staff can be controlled by identifying what it is that is causing stress and working with your line manager, or another manager if you feel that your line manager is the cause of your stress, and identifying measures which will help control the causes of stress. In DWP this is done by means of a Stress Reduction Plan. Your PCS Health and Safety Representative can support you through this process.

In its guidance DWP identifies a number of measures that can be implemented to help control and individual’s work related stress as follows:

• Internal changes to the job
• Addressing learning and development needs
• Practical and specific steps to improve the working environment, relationships, or communications
• Reduction/sharing of workload
• Airing issues at a communications meeting
• Process examination
• Reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act
• Reducing pressure by planning and prioritising
• Setting realistic goals, allowing adequate time for task completion

It may also be possible for measures to be put in place to manage stress related to issues outside of work, for example if you have difficulty managing caring responsibilities a change to start and finish times may help.

Collective Stress

Stress can be identified at a team, office, District, Region, Directorate or across the whole of DWP. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has designed a management standards tool in the form of a standard questionnaire to enable organisations to identify and tackle stress. It strongly recommends that in trade unionised workplaces that the union and employer work together on the results of the questionnaire to resolve issues that it identifies.

How to Report Stress

The best way to identify that there is an organisational stress problem is through hard data. This may come from the Staff Survey or from reports of stress.

Currently there is no agreed method for individuals to report stress. Until a method is agreed between DWP and PCS we recommend that the accident form AR1 is used to report work related stress. This has been discussed at DWP Health and Safety Committee and DWP are aware of our intentions to issue this advice and accept that the AR1 can be a legitimate method of reporting stress.

Stress AR1s will not be investigated by Engie, the DWP service provider for Health and Safety. Stress AR1s should be investigated by a suitable manager and the trade union health and safety rep.

PCS believe that it is important for the AR1 to be used because stress can be severe enough to cause serious health issues such as anxiety and depression and can be treated as an industrial injury. The AR1 gives an opportunity for a record of the stress related incident to be made so that it possible to seek compensation by means of a personal injury claim.