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Stress and Well-being Policy

The health, safety and welfare of our employees is important to the Company and we are committed to ensuring this is met. We would like to reduce the causes of workplace stress, acknowledging that this is an important health and safety issue.

The Company understands the role it has in adhering to health and safety legislation. Therefore, we aim to create a safe workplace, including risks to mental health and wellbeing being limited as far as possible.

Many factors in the workplace influence the mental wellbeing of employees. Understanding and addressing these has a wide range of benefits, both for individuals and for the Company.

What is Stress?​

Stress is defined by the Health and Safety Executive as "the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demand placed on them". There is a distinct difference between stress and pressure, as if managed correctly pressure can have a positive effect on an employee, whereas stress can be detrimental to well-being. Stress can become an illness if it is excessive and prolonged, meaning a mental or physical illness can develop.

We will try to identify workplace stressors through collaboration with employees and will try and propose and effect measures to eradicate them as far as possible. We will aim to regularly review any measures we have managed to put in place which correlate with the stressors identified. We may consider it necessary to utilise risk assessments, in which case employees may be asked to fill out a questionnaire which asks about personal experience of the workplace, so we can understand the stressors that our staff experience collectively.

Such stressors may include:

  • Excessive workloads
  • Deadlines
  • Aggressive management
  • Poor communication
  • Unsupportive work environment
  • A lack of work/life balance
  • Discrimination

Examples of how managers may respond to stressors:

  • Recognising preventative and protective measures, and considering what we could implement to prevent or reduce certain stressors. Preventative measures are those that aim to outright avoid the activity which results in stress, such as aggressive management. Protective measures are those that aim to support employees when they undertake tasks where pressure results and could otherwise lead to stress, such as working with deadlines. For more information on how we may implement preventative measures, please see section 3.
  • Ensuring clear communication between management and staff, particularly on organisational changes that may affect staff personally.
  • Potentially providing developmental opportunities to staff.
  • Monitoring staff working hours to ensure staff are not overworking.
  • Managing holidays to ensure staff are taking their full entitlement.
  • Ensuring zero tolerance on bullying and harassment. If this is something you are facing, then please refer to the Anti-Harassment & Bullying Policy.
  • Offering additional support to members of staff who are experiencing stress outside work, caused by issues such as bereavement or separation. Please refer to the Staff Handbook for our policy on Compassionate and Bereavement Leave for questions relating to entitlement and leave requests.

Financial Wellbeing​

Financial worries, which are often due to personal factors, can be an instigator of stress which can present at work. We understand that such worries can also have a major impact upon employees' wellbeing.

If you do have financial worries and would like to discuss these with the Company, you are welcome to speak to a Doza Director in confidence who will help to signpost you to organisations who may be able to provide you with some specific advice including:

  • The Money Advice Service
  • Citizens Advice
  • Princes Trust
  • Step Change

If you are experiencing financial worries and the Company is able to support in any other reasonable way, then it will do so accordingly.

Preventative Measures and Wellbeing​

Not only do we wish to focus on preventing and reducing the impact of stress within the workplace, but we are also committed to supporting and boosting the mental and general wellbeing of all members of staff. This will essentially aid the prevention of stress, where we would like to generally create a positive work environment.

We would like to be proactive in developing management skills to promote mental wellbeing and see that sometimes, there can be benefit in the following:

  • Engaging in conversation and tasks with staff focused on mental wellbeing. An example of this may be holding short and effective meditation sessions.
  • Offering employees flexible working arrangements if the employee feels this would help boost productivity, in both their home and working lives.
  • Granting staff scope to use their own initiative in how they carry out their roles, including varying their working conditions if possible.
  • Giving employees opportunities to develop and round their skillset, including supporting the employee in gaining a further qualification or allowing them to attend relevant training sessions.
  • Periodical reviews of job descriptions to ensure they reflect practice, ensuring the employee's skillset is being utilised.
  • Ensuring that conflict within the workplace is resolved as quickly and as effectively as possible.
  • Creating a clear platform for employees to raise any concerns and to allow them involvement in any proposed changes within the Company.

We also would like to create an environment where members of staff experiencing any mental health difficulty can speak about these in an open and supportive environment. We acknowledge our legal obligation to make reasonable adjustments for anyone dealing with a medically defined mental health problem under the Equality Act.

The Role of a Doza Director​

Your first point of contact to propose recommendations to, or to talk about your mental health with, is a Doza Director.

A Doza Director will consider providing formal and informal opportunities for you to speak about your mental health upon your request, if you feel like this would be beneficial. Even if you feel as though your overall wellbeing is not affected, you are encouraged to speak to a Doza Director about anything you feel could create workplace stress, either for yourself or for the collective group, or to confide in about an external problem.

Knowing team members and forming close working relationships is something a Doza Director aims to do and could give them a proactive role in using what they know about their staff in their capacity as a close working colleague to implement preventative and protective measures.

Long-term Stress​

We understand that sometimes stress will be caused by circumstances outside of the workplace but may have an adverse impact on your workplace performance nonetheless, which can create or compound workplace stress.

The effects of long-term stress can be seen in physical, intellectual, emotional and behavioural signs. These can include headaches, nausea, tiredness, palpitations, worrying, making mistakes, anger, irritability and job dissatisfaction.

Whilst we do try to prevent long-term stress, this could nonetheless result and in severe circumstances could cause sickness absence. In this instance, the Sickness Absence Policy will apply. In such circumstances, we aim to ensure that you are working in a fully supportive environment upon your return and hope to conduct an individual risk assessment which could spark discussion on tailored measures to avoid further sickness absence caused by stress.

Confidentiality​

The Company understands that any disclosure of difficultly relating to mental health is a special category of personal data, therefore will only be disclosed if absolutely necessary, and in accordance with your privacy notice and the Company's data protection policy. If you have not received a copy of your privacy notice or wish to access the Company's data protection policy, please contact a Doza Director.

If there is anything you believe needs to be changed or contributed by the Company to the tackling of workplace stress, we welcome and consider your views. The Company will seek to address an individual's own situation and stressors by tailoring an approach unique to them which may or may not include any of these above listed measures.