Mental health at work and collective responses

The Management Standards adopt an “organisational” as opposed to an “individual” approach to the tackling of workplace stress and to issues relating to job demands and job quality. Reps can play a key role in ensuring that stress problems are looked at from the perspective of work processes — adapting working practices to reduce stress, rather than seeing the problem as one person’s inability to cope. Unions can devise their own stress surveys, which will usually be based on the HSE’s Indicator Tool. For more information see LRD’s guide for safety reps, Stress and mental health at work: www.lrdpublications.org.uk/publications.php?pub=BK&iss=1716.

Sometimes there is no alternative but to take collective action to tackle these issues. For example:

In April 2011, PCS members in 37 Job Centre Plus call centres took strike action to protest against the lack of control over their working day and its negative impact on their health, job satisfaction and ability to provide good customer service. Staff complaints included being monitored throughout the day and having no control over the stream of calls allocated to them, or the length or timing of rest or toilet breaks, as well as oppressive targets, at the end of which the staff member was expected to wind up the call. Staff struggled to manage the conflict between wanting to provide a high quality service to vulnerable benefits claimants and having to meet unrealistically high call numbers and length targets.

The dispute resulted in an interim agreement containing concrete commitments to improve working conditions, including a written commitment from the DWP to provide staff with “the best possible job design, including varied work and a progression path [and that] staff are fully respected at work and are trusted to do their job without excessive and unnecessary checks and monitoring”.