Join Us in Tackling Work-Related Stress with Project OSCAR

Did you know, stress accounts for almost half of all cases of work-related ill-health and of all working days lost due to illness (Health and Safety Executive, 2023)? Deloitte’s recent report (2024) estimates that mental health concerns might be costing the UK workforce ￡51 billion per year. This brings us to a crucial question: how can we prevent and reduce work-related stress??

To help answer this question, The Health and Safety Executive has commissioned Project OSCAR (Occupational Stress Consultation and Research) from our collaboration of four organisations: Affinity Health at Work, Institute of Occupational Medicine, Institute of Employment Studies, and Society of Occupational Medicine.??

What do we know about work-related stress?

Researchers have been examining the causes and outcomes of work-related stress for some time. There is strong and consistent evidence linking working conditions (often called psychosocial hazards) to outcomes of work-related stress. For example, we know that high job demands, long working hours, poor leadership, low job control, low social support, poor work relations, low work recognition and high job insecurity are linked to decreased wellbeing, mental health, engagement and many other individual and organisational outcomes (eg.Burman et al, 2018; van der Molen, 2020; Teoh, 2023).?

Despite this, research suggests that only 40% of organisations are taking steps to identify the causes of stress in their own workplaces (CIPD, 2023).??This means that while we know what the common causes are, too few organisations are taking action to prevent and reduce work-related stress.

Why is this?

There are several reasons. There is uncertainty in how work-related stress is defined and labelled at work; and organisations are unsure what actions should be taken to prevent and reduce stress or how to put these in place.

How is work-related stress defined??

Many people go straight to their GP for support when experiencing work-related stress (Nicholson, 2018). And though stress, depression and anxiety are often recorded on GP fit notes for long-term sick leave (NHS Digital, 2017), the extent to which GPs consider the role played by work is unclear. Naturally, a collaborative approach to supporting employees with work-related stress would be best, though this rarely happens in practice (Barnard et al., 2024; Shemtob, 2022; Teoh, 2023).?

Knowing what we already do from research and practice, it is likely that employees, organisations, and GPs describe work-related stress in different ways. This inconsistency makes it hard to identify work-related stress and know what supportive action will be most beneficial. To help organisations and GPs more easily identify work-related stress, we aim to collate evidence from research and practice to understand:?

So, what… you may ask?

Having clarity on how work-related stress is defined and labelled will hopefully spur on finding a joined-up and consistent approach, allowing a focus on ways to prevent and mitigate these identified cases of work-related stress, supporting employees.?

How can organisations prevent and reduce work-related stress??

Many organisations have already been working to implement interventions to support in reducing work-related stress. We can see that there is already a strong business case for investment in mental health with a return on investment of ￡5 for every ￡1 invested in wellbeing interventions (Deloitte, 2022).??

We know a lot about interventions that can help people manage existing stress (e.g., mindfulness training (Donaldson-Feilder et al, 2019), cognitive behavioural therapy interventions (Yunus et al, 2018) and resilience training (Joyce et al, 2018). While preventative research is catching up (e.g. Nielsen and Brough., 2023),? with so many different causes of work-related stress and so many ways to intervene and control for these, which ones are most effective? Are some interventions, activities or control measures only effective for specific causes, or are there some which effectively support multiple???

With new international frameworks on psychosocial risk (e.g. ISO 45003, WHO Guidelines for Mental health at work, Work Safe Australia) and the existing research, we have a rich opportunity to learn from the work-related stress research, policy and practice community about the available evidence base. We aim to harness these learnings, map this evidence, and look to fill in any gaps to better understand:?

To what end? Following the model of how physical risk is assessed and managed in the workplace, mapping the psychosocial risks to their respective effective control measures may help us better manage work-related stress in the future.?

Having a better understanding of how work-related stress is defined and labelled, and prevented and mitigated, will allow us to move steps forward in reducing work-related stress. But to make sure these learning can be put into practice, we need to understand:??

We want to hear firsthand from advisory bodies and organisational leads to understand what issues they are currently facing and what they have found works well on the ground to see positive change in work-related stress.??

What then? By marrying up these perspectives, along with what research has found, it will give us a good foundational understanding on what obstacles exist and how we might be able to overcome them.?

So, in sum…?

Project OSCAR is seeking to gather existing research to understand our three research questions. This is a sizeable task and we will need the help of our community. We are keen to gain as many perspectives as possible – from practice, policy and research - to make sure we can learn from all the amazing research and good practice out there.??

Have you seen any relevant or helpful research? Please go to our Call for Evidence form and send it our way: https://www.affinityhealthatwork.com/oscarcallforevidence?

Want to be kept up to date and be involved in the process? Register your interest here: https://bit.ly/3MvpWBp

Anything else? Feel free to e mail us at [email protected]?