This year’s amendments to New Zealand’s health and safety legislation include number of changes designed to put an end to unnecessary injury, illness and death in the workplace, but one amendment in particular has grabbed employers’ attention.
The term “workplace stress” took on whole new significance, with new obligations for employers, and potentially serious financial consequences for those who ignore them. Workplace stress is no longer simply sad fact of life. It is now an officially recognised and legislated “workplace hazard”, with the amendments extending the definitions of “harm” and “hazard” to include physical and mental harm caused by work-related stress.
A cursory reading of the new legislation might be enough to instantly treble employers’ workplace stress, but deeper understanding goes some way to restoring mental equilibrium. The Occupational Safety and Health booklet, Healthy work, Managing Stress in the Workplace, tells employers that “there is only requirement to manage work stressors or the individual’s stressed situation where you can be reasonably expected to know about the stress. Even then the obligation is only to do what is reasonably practicable in the circumstances.”
How do you define “workplace stress”? Don’t bother scanning the small print of the amendments looking for an answer. The Act doesn’t specifically define hazards – stress included. Instead it places an obligation on employers to put systems in place to monitor the workplace environment and ensure that all hazards, including stress, do not cause employees physical or mental harm.
Without defining “stress”, or quantifying unacceptable levels, the Act attempts to legally oblige employers to implement people-oriented management policy. It appears that good people management coupled with efficient systems to monitor staff wellbeing, and method of recourse for those experiencing unacceptable work-related stress, goes long way towards compliance.
Mixed feelings
The amendments were met with mixed feelings by the rapidly burgeoning corporate wellness industry. Well-known New Zealand stress consultant John McEwan (commonly known as “Dr Stress”) supports the amendments to the Act. He accepts that the Government’s primary objective is desire to prevent “overload” in the workplace.
“The Act is really making good management practice mandatory, and not much more. It will encourage cooperation within an organisation, and shift the focus from profit as bottom line, to triple bottom line including profit, wellness and healthy relationships within the company,” says McEwan.
Stress management is simply good management so; “good organisations have nothing to fear, but the bad ones are about to be unmasked”.
Nonetheless, there’s fair amount of employer anger and frustration out there, according to Brendan Woodnutt, director of private health-and-safety firm, BWA Group. His company is helping range of organisations come up with policies that comply with the new legislation. With 220 clients nationally, he has first-hand knowledge of employer reaction to the legislation and says employers are particularly peeved by the shift of responsibility for health and safety away from solely employers, to cooperative responsibility involving unions.
Every company with more than 30 employees is now required to elect health and safety representative, and establish participatory system for employees. Representatives must attend two days safety training year. While the training is funded by the Government, employers still foot the bill for time off.
“Some employers are annoyed their ability to handle the safety of their employees is now being challenged,” says Woodnutt.
Generally New Zealand companies have been pretty good at identifying employee stress and wellbeing hazards but slow to respond by creating and implementing systems to deal with these, according to Antony Vriens, medical director of Well for Life.
This has partly been the result of financial limitations, especially for smaller companies. Also, employees themselves have often hampered progress – reluctant to face the prospect of yet more changes in the workplace.
Both Vriens and McEwan see difficulties ahead for the “unfortunate” judges faced with the task of interpreting “stress” in the courtroom given there is no definition in the Act. How will they decide what degree of workplace stress is excessive? How will the cumulative effects of “outside-work stress” and “work-related stress” be separated out and quantified?
These are few of many grey areas that will only become clearer as the Act is tested in the courts.
McEwan suspects that there will be several key questions that the judges will need to ask faced with the unenviable task of enforcing the new legislation. For individuals, these could include:
• Has this employee been overloaded at work?
• Was it reasonable for employers to suspect that they needed help?
• Have their pleas for help been ignored?
• And perhaps most importantly, what provisions has the employer made to educate and support staff regarding stress?
What is stress?
Having spent years working in the corporate health area, Vriens has realistic overview of workplace stress and some common causes.
These include:
• personality differences with superiors and workmates;
• lack of decision-making and control at work;
• overcrowding and poor aesthetics in the workplace;
• unrealistic expectations and long working hours.
He also describes disturbingly common scenario as accounting for much of the chronic stress he encounters.
“Economic realities have resulted in generalised trend of downsizing which leaves employees taking on more and more work responsibility, often without adequate training for their new roles. Add to that the sheer pace of change in the workplace, and it contributes to sometimes unbearably high workplace stress.”
With lengthy forewarning of the impending legislation, some New Zealand companies successfully implemented appropriate changes long before the May 5 deadline. This ranged from large corporations such as Westpac Bank and NZ Post to smaller operators such as IT company Ericsson. Despite their obvious differences, these three organisations demonstrate people-focused management style and concern for their human capital.
Westpac’s approach
With 6000 employees in well over 200 sites throughout New Zealand, Westpac appears to have taken the health and safety amendments in its stride.
While they certainly raised awareness of issues relating to stress and fatigue, it’s been pretty much business as usual. The culture of “people-first” was guiding principle long before May 5, according to Andrew MacKenzie, general manager, people and performance at the bank.
It’s all part of wanting to be an employer of choice, says MacKenzie.
“We have frontloaded all our health and safety initiatives, with ongoing education and prevention of stress-related problems. We’re not interested in putting the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.”
All Westpac employees can access an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), which offers free counselling for them and their families. This is completely confidential and can be accessed through self-referral, or through referral by manager. It’s well-publicised service with new employees receiving an information brochure as well as regular reminders.
While individual outcomes are strictly private, Westpac is provided with regular statistical analysis to determine trends. If staff from particular area are regularly using the service, it is an indicator to look more deeply at its operations.
The Westpac intranet site posts regular health-related information and provides information for managers to encourage the creation of work environment that recognises, respects and values employees. healthy work/life balance is encouraged plus there are range of wellness initiatives such as pare
