Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999
Two key elements of a stress prevention strategy are incorporated into this legislation. The first is ‘risk assessment’, and the second is the ‘principle of prevention’.
Risk assessment
Every employer must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of his staff. An employer is interpreted as an agent of the organisation—in other words a manager.
This piece of legislation puts the onus for health and safety risk management firmly in the hands of the employer. It also states that the risk assessments must be reviewed by the employer if there is reason to suspect that it is no longer valid; or there has been a significant change in the matters to which it relates.
For those businesses that employ five or more persons have a legal duty to record the findings of a risk assessment.
Principle of prevention
This principle says that any preventative measures that arise from the risk assessment must be carried out in order to comply with the regulations. If risks cannot be avoided then other protective measures must be introduced. These are the control measures that must be applied:
- Avoid the risk
- Evaluate the risks that cannot be avoided
- Combat the risk as source
- Adapt the work to the individual (ergonomically, technologically, and workflow management)
- Adapt to technological progress
- Replace dangerous conditions with non- or less dangerous conditions
- Develop a prevention policy to cover aspects of work that may lead to work related stress, including workflow planning, working conditions, work relationships
- Give collective measures priority over individual measures
- Provide appropriate instructions to employees
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