Mental Health and Health and Safety Responsibilities

Published on: 14 October 2021

Now that people are returning to work, the scope of the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) spot check programme has been widened to include questions relating to work-related stress.

In a recent survey of small and medium sized enterprises, most of those companies that had not carried out a risk assessment, were unaware of their legal duty to assess the risk to their employees from work-related stress or mental health issues. The majority of those organisations involved were small and medium sized enterprises with fewer than five employees. There is HSE support to assist companies with this subject withresources available on the HSE website.

For employers with fewer than 50 employees, the automated stress indicator tool (SIT) is now available free of charge. This tool can be used to measure the attitudes and perceptions of employees towards work related stress.

Find out more about the SIT here.