This tool is designed to allow you to assess whether the behaviours identified as effective for preventing and reducing stress at work are part of your management repertoire or not. The aim is to help you to reflect on your own behaviour and management style.

The questions that follow look at behavioural areas identified as being important for managers to prevent and reduce stress in their staff. You are asked to consider a range of specific manager behaviours and put a tick in the column that most closely represents your level of agreement with each statement. Your score will then be automatically calculated. (NB the term ‘team members’ is used to refer to people who report directly to you/who you manage.)

The process allows you to assess your effectiveness in preventing and reducing stress in your staff. It allows you to identify whether your management approach is:

• in need of development;
• reasonable, or;
• effective.

Some tips and ideas on how you can use your assessment to improve your effectiveness in preventing and reducing stress at work, through your management behaviour, are provided at the end of the survey.

75% or below = Development Need: This is an area in which you would benefit from some development. Please refer to back to the questionnaire to explore which of the behaviours you could consider using more often in the future in order to be more effective at preventing and reducing stress in your team.

76% to 89% = Reasonable: You show a good awareness of the behaviours needed for effectively preventing and reducing stress in others. It may be helpful to refer back to the questionnaire to see if there are any behaviours you could add to your repertoire in this area to increase your effectiveness in managing stress in others.

90% and above = Effective: You demonstrate the behaviours that have been shown to be effective in preventing and reducing stress in your team.

WHAT DO I DO NEXT?

In order to improve your effectiveness at preventing and reducing stress at work, we suggest the following steps:

1. Look for the behavioural area(s) which you scored low and focus on this as top priority. If you have identified several areas for improvement, take them one at a time – you don’t have to change everything at once!
2. Look back at the questionnaire to identify the behavioural areas that you indicated you do least and consider what you need to do in order to show these behaviours more often. It may simply be a matter of being more aware of how you are behaving at the moment and making small shifts to add the relevant additional (or alternative) behaviours to your repertoire.
3. You may find it helpful to check with your team whether they would find it helpful for you to show more of these particular behaviours and how that would be different from what you do at the moment. You could ask them to give you feedback on how you are doing.
4. If you feel that it will be difficult for you to make these behavioural changes on your own, consider seeking support. For example, informal coaching or support from your own manager and/or from the HR department might be helpful; you might find it helpful to get some formal coaching or mentoring; and/or you might want to attend a training course to develop the relevant skills.
5. Finally, in addition to the information provided on the Health and Safety Executive website, you may find the following useful for gaining more information about managing stress and mental health at work:

• SHIFT Line Manager’s Resource: for practical guidance on managing and supporting people with mental health problems in the workplace: www.shift.org.uk
• Mental Health Foundation and Mind websites: for information about mental health issues: www.mentalhealth.org.uk and www.mind.org.uk
• Information and resources may also be available through your employer, for example from: Occupational Health, Employee Assistance Programme/Welfare Service and Human Resources.

For more information on the framework of ‘Management competencies for preventing and reducing stress at work’ and the key messages for managers, please refer to the guidance leaflet available for download at www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/health/stress/_strwklnmgr.htm.

To read more about how the ‘Management competencies for preventing and reducing stress at work’ were identified, and how the stress management competency indicator tool was developed, please refer to the full research report available for download at www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/rr633.htm.