Stress risk assessment workshop scoops award

A training workshop aimed at making it easier for managers to understand and assess the impacts of stress on colleagues in their teams has won a national award.

The Work Related Stress Risk Assessment workshop, recently rolled out by our Health and Safety and Occupational Health teams, won in the Health and Wellbeing category of the Universities Safety and Health Association (USHA) annual awards.

USHA is a membership organisation representing all UK universities and 13 overseas. It exists to support the wellbeing of university staff, students and visitors through the promotion of health and safety within higher education.

The stress risk assessment workshop was a collaborative project between Health and Safety Services, Occupational Health and HR.

They explored ways of reducing work related stress and the workshops were developed as an outcome of these discussions.

The workshops are designed to equip managers with the knowledge that they need to spot potential stressors and put in place the right controls to mitigate them.

Margot Bishop, Assistant Health and Safety Advisor, said: “We had tried different ways of presenting the information about work-related stress. We wanted to simplify the terminology a bit and try and make it easy to understand.”

Dawn Grout, Occupational Health Manager, said: “The focus is on supporting managers and supervisors to effectively support their teams. When managers have the confidence to proactively carry out these risk assessments, they can put in place measures that can prevent undue stress on their teams and have a positive impact on their health and wellbeing.”

Sign up for a workshop

Interested managers and supervisors of teams should contact the Health and Safety team at safety@reading.ac.uk and outline their need for the Work Related Stress Risk Assessment training.

If appropriate, they will then be supported to determine current levels of controls for work related stress and arrange a suitable time and date to run a workshop.

The workshop is delivered to managers and supervisors in specific teams, rather than across multiple teams.