According to the Health & Safety Executive stress is ‘the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them’ by their job.
As an employer, you owe your employees a duty of care. That is, a duty to provide a work environment where employees are not caused psychological harm and should they suffer work-related psychological harm, you must do everything that is reasonable to prevent continuing harm.
‘In determining whether an employer is responsible for stress in the workplace and therefore liable to pay compensation, the court will determine whether an employee’s work-related stress was 'reasonably foreseeable' by the employer,’ explains Gillian Reid, employment law specialist at Ware & Kay in York & Wetherby. ‘In other words, could you have predicted the work-related psychological harm and should you have prevented…