The stress screening minefield

By MARK STORY

Imagine asking your boss for help over work-related stress only to be told to either suck it in or go jump off the balcony.

This ghoulish response to police video producer George Brickell's plea for help cost his employer dearly.

In June 2000 the High Court ruled that exposure to horrific material over a long period had harmed Brickell, affecting his ability to work again. So it ordered his employer to pay nearly $250,000.

Cases like Brickell's are extreme, but this year's amendments to the Health & Safety in Employment Act are a wake-up call to all employers.

Companies don't have to eliminate workplace stress. But as well as risking civil claims like Brickell's, employers who don't take practical steps to eliminate stress-related harm face a maximum fine of $500,000 or two years' imprisonment.

Employers have always had health and safely obligations to their staff. But the new act confirms that workplace stress is a potential hazard, says lawyer and co-author of Workplace Stress in New Zealand Andrew Scott-Howman.

And the real test for employers, says the partner with law firm Bell Gully, is to take account of people with lower thresholds to harm.

"This type of person may suffer harm even in a workplace which is regarded as stress-free by others."

Facing such risks, some employers have decided the best approach is to screen out stress-prone individuals before they're even hired, by using psychometric testing to assess personality traits.

The question is whether psychometric tests can actually reveal stress-related personality traits. Surprisingly, they don't, says Leanne Markus, registered psychologist with Performance Group International.

But what employers might deduce from psychometric testing, she says, is that a person may get stressed in a specific role.

By matching people's personalities, abilities and preferences to the job, she believes psychometric testing should help avoid one major and unnecessary stress - the stress of being in a job to which you're not suited.

"As they can give a false impression of ability, pre-employment interviews alone are an inadequate screening process," says Markus, who'd like to see more employers adopt pre-employment stress screening.

Cognitive, IQ and personality tests may boost employers' staff hiring costs, but Markus believes that they're the best predictors of workplace performance and show an applicant's ability to think through issues on the job.

However, employers considering using such tests need to be careful.

While pre-employment screening for stress tolerance is legal, John Hannan, employment law partner with legal firm Phillips Fox, says the challenge is to screen effectively without breaching anti-discriminatory provisions within employment law and the Human Rights Act.

Section 21 of the Human Rights Act prevents employers from discriminating on grounds of disability. But acting like a get-out-of-jail-free card, the act lets employers off the hook if the cost of modifying the workplace for someone with a disability is unreasonable.

If pre-employment screening revealed to an employer that an applicant had an abnormality or illness, the employer would have to show that modifying the workplace to accommodate the applicant would be unreasonable, he says.

But even if employers' careful efforts to match people to jobs comply with the Human Rights Act, they may not be enough to satisfy the Health and Safety in Employment Act.

"For example, the police or armed forces will do pre-employment screening to match people to jobs. But after the event, they may breach this act by subjecting people to huge workloads," says Hannan. "So the key is to maintain good working practices."



Occupational Safety and Health guidelines suggest only a small percentage of employers have work that's inherently stressful. But what's opened a potential mine-field for employers, says executive coach Dr Iain McCormick, is the act's recognition of mental stress and fatigue.

He says with most workplace stress caused by personality makeup and social variables - such as being underpaid or having efforts go unrecognised - the challenge facing employers is to accurately measure the sources of mental stress and the harm it may inflict.

The clearest indicators of stressed staff, says industrial psychologist Stewart Forsyth are high levels of absenteeism, accidents and staff turnover. And he suggests the major cause of a stressful working environment is unclear guidelines on job expectations.

"International research proves convincingly that employers who provide clear guidelines and expectations on corporate values go a long way to eliminating tensions in the workplace," he says. "Instead of merely taking a tick-all-the-boxes approach, employers should try to turn stress management compliance into a productivity driver."

Employer efforts to comply with the new act are keeping executive coaches like McCormick extremely busy.

Many of the corporate wellness programmes now running within larger companies are designed to help staff cope with existing workplace stress. As well as learning how diet, sleep and use of drugs affect stress levels, staff are encouraged to put up their hands when they need help. Some companies such as Carter Holt Harvey even provide assistance programmes which offer employees free counselling.

Scott-Howman applauds these wellness programmes, but he suspects many employers have taken the wrong cue from the new act. The notion that the wellness initiatives alone are an adequate way to manage risk is rubbish, he says.

"This new [corporate wellness] industry is based on the mistaken belief that employers will comply with obligations by attempting to teach staff how to cope with stress in the workplace," he says.

"The real obligation is on the employer to eliminate or minimise the chance of an employee suffering harm from stress."

And research suggests Scott-Howman is right. A TMP survey two months ago revealed that 50 per cent of employers believed they'd done enough to comply with the new act. The fact the survey was done a month before OSH guidelines came out suggests many employers have missed the point.

"It's important employers don't confuse corporate wellness initiatives with reasonable compliance steps," says Scott-Howman. "Being able to cope with harm from stress doesn't contribute to the employer's obligation to minimise harm from stress in the workplace."

When the new act is tested in the courts, employers will be defending themselves against conditions employees allege cause harm through workplace stress. So Scott-Howman urges employers to include both specialist medical evidence and recommended steps needed to support recovery within wellness programmes.

With employees unlikely to receive a cent from prosecutions under the new act, Carter Holt Harvey's environment and safety legal counsel Chris Drayton suspects it will be up to OSH to identify significant breaches.

"The bottom line for managers and HR people," adds Drayton, "is they now have to manage physical as well as emotional harm.

"Employers now recognise that if not managed properly, work-related stress can cost them money and may result in losing good people.

"The real productivity increase comes from staff retention and people wanting to front-up for work every morning."

Employer obligations:
(under the Health & Safety in Employment Act)


* Train staff on workplace hazards in-line with OSH Guidelines

* Identify existing and ongoing workplace hazards

* Involve employees in hazard identification and monitoring

* Any diagnosed harm must be recorded and notified


www.ema.org.nz

www.osh.org.nz