HSE Management Standards and stress-related work outcomes

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122 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background The UK Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Management Standards (MS) approach has been developedto help organizations manage potential sources of work-related stress. Although there is generalsupport for the assessment model adopted by this approach, to date, there has been no empiricalinvestigation of the relationship between the actual MS (as measured by the final revised version of theHSE Indicator Tool) and stress-related work outcomes.Aims To investigate the relationship between the HSE MS and the following stress-related work outcomes:‘job satisfaction’, job-related anxiety and depression and errors/near misses.Methods An anonymous cross-sectional questionnaire was distributed by either e-mail or post to all employeeswithin a community-based Health and Social Services Trust. Respondents completed the HSE IndicatorTool, a job-related anxiety and depression scale, a job satisfaction scale and an aggregatedmeasure of the number of errors/near misses witnessed. Associations between the HSE Indicator Toolresponses and stress-related work outcomes were analysed with regression statistics.Results A total of 707 employees completed the questionnaire, representing a low response rate of 29%. Controllingfor age, gender and contract type, the HSE MS (as measured by the HSE Indicator Tool) werepositively associated with job satisfaction and negatively associated with ‘job-related anxiety’, ‘jobrelateddepression’ and ‘witnessed errors/near misses’.Conclusions This study provides empirical evidence to support the use of the MS approach in tackling workplacestress.Key words HSE Management Standards; job satisfaction; job-related anxiety and depression; stress; witnessederrors/near misses
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)574-579
JournalOccupational Medicine
Volume59
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 2009

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