For a long time, stress was treated as something separate from “real” health and safety – a wellbeing issue, a soft subject, something that sat outside the hard world of guardrails and hard hats. That thinking is well out of date, and the HSE is making that clearer than ever.
Work-related stress is a health and safety risk. Employers have a legal duty to assess it and act on it, in exactly the same way they would for working at height, hazardous substances or any other risk on site. And with the HSE placing real focus on mental health and stress through its Working Minds campaign, this is not a duty any business can afford to overlook.
Here is what the requirement actually means, why it matters, and how to approach it without turning it into a mountain of paperwork.
The scale of the problem
The numbers make the case on their own. In 2024/25, an estimated 964,000 workers in Great Britain experienced work-related stress, depression or anxiety – and it led to around 22.1 million working days lost.
That is not a fringe issue. It is one of the biggest causes of lost working time in the country, and behind every one of those figures is a person struggling and a business carrying the cost in absence, lost productivity and staff turnover. The encouraging part is that work-related stress is preventable. Recognising the signs early and taking practical action makes a genuine difference.
What “work-related stress” actually means
The HSE defines stress as the harmful reaction people have to excessive pressures and demands placed on them at work. It is worth being precise about that, because pressure itself is not the problem – a certain amount of pressure is a normal part of most jobs. It becomes a health and safety issue when the demands placed on someone outstrip their ability to cope, and it starts to affect their mental or physical health.
Everyone responds to pressure differently. Someone’s skills, experience, age or health can all influence how stress affects them, which is exactly why it needs to be assessed and managed rather than assumed away.
Your legal duty as an employer
This is the part many businesses miss. Employers have a legal duty to protect their workers from work-related stress, and that duty is met by carrying out a risk assessment and acting on what it finds. You assess the risk of stress, and its impact on mental and physical ill-health, in the same way you assess any other workplace health and safety risk.
There is also a clear rule on recording it. If you have fewer than five workers, you do not legally have to write your assessment down – though it is sensible to, so you can review it later. If you have five or more workers, you are required by law to write it down. It does not need to be a huge document; for most businesses it is enough to note the significant risks and what you have decided to do about them.
In practice, that means work-related stress should sit alongside the other risks you already manage – not be treated as an optional extra you get to if there’s time.
The six areas to look at: HSE’s Management Standards
The HSE’s Management Standards give you a ready-made framework for a stress risk assessment. They set out six areas of how work is designed and managed that are known to affect stress levels, and they are a genuinely useful checklist to work through:
Demands – workload, work patterns and the working environment. Are people routinely overloaded or working in conditions that pile on pressure?
Control – how much say workers have over how they do their work. A lack of control is a well-established driver of stress.
Support – the encouragement, resources and backing people get from managers and colleagues.
Relationships – promoting positive working relationships and tackling unacceptable behaviour like bullying and harassment.
Role – whether people understand their role and responsibilities, and aren’t pulled in conflicting directions.
Change – how organisational change is managed and communicated, since poorly handled change is a common source of anxiety.
Working through these six areas is a straightforward way to identify where the pressure in your business is actually coming from, and who it is most likely to affect.
How to manage it in practice
A stress risk assessment is not a one-off form to file and forget. The approach is a cycle, and it comes down to a few practical steps.
Assess the risks. Identify what could be causing stress in your workplace, and who could be affected and how. HSE provides a risk assessment template and worked examples for small businesses to make this easier.
Take action. Once you know the causes, make practical changes to reduce them. Often these are simple – clearer roles, more manageable workloads, better communication, sensible job design, or flexible working where it’s possible.
Talk to your people. You cannot assess something you never discuss. Open conversations are central to getting this right, and HSE’s Stress Talking Toolkit is designed to help managers start those conversations without it being awkward. Encourage people to raise concerns and make sure they know what support is available.
Monitor and review. Check back in regularly and review whether the actions you took are actually working. Keeping stress prevention part of everyday management – rather than an annual box-tick – is what creates a genuinely healthier workplace over time.
The goal is not to remove every pressure from work, which is neither realistic nor the point. It is to identify the risks, tackle their causes, and build a working environment where people can do their jobs safely and well.
Get ahead of it
With the HSE sharpening its focus on mental health and work-related stress, “we’ve never really looked at that” is not a position any employer wants to be in if questions are ever asked. But beyond compliance, there is a simpler reason to act: a workforce that isn’t drowning in avoidable pressure is safer, healthier and more productive. Managing stress is good for your people and good for your business.
If you are not sure where to start, or you would like help carrying out a proper stress risk assessment for your business, this is exactly the kind of support we provide. Get in touch and we can help you meet your legal duty and build a healthier working environment at the same time.
Useful sources
HSE – Work-related stress and how to manage it (stress risk assessment): https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/risk-assessment.htm
Work Right (Working Minds campaign) – Understanding the impact of stress at work: https://workright.campaign.gov.uk/understanding-the-impact-of-stress-at-work/
Statistics from the Health and Safety Executive, Work-related stress, depression or anxiety statistics in Great Britain, 2024/25.
