Management

OSCR v HSE stress tool

By Will Campbell ⋅ November 28, 2008 ⋅  Printable version ⋅

The Health & Safety Executive have a stress tool available from their website - you’ve probably seen it, or used it. It’s free, so why should you pay for a stress audit? This article looks at the benefits of OSCR over the HSE’s stress tool

What is being measured

The first thing to note is what is being measured by the two different approaches. When you break them down, HSE questions are focused on analysing the work position, rather than the worker. How do we know that? Well, the questions look at stressors, the causes of stress, rather than individuals and signs of stress. Is this bad? No, it’s not bad, but more accurate results, and we would say more useful results, are obtained by actually measuring people’s stress, rather than the stressors that their job gives them. This is the key point - are your workers stressed, and not, what is the likelihood of stress occurring within this department?
It’s all relative - take a job that we all recognise - teaching - more specifically teaching a class of thirty 12 year olds. Most of us wouldn’t cope after 30 minutes, yet, teachers do this for years without suffering stress. How about firefighters - that must be stressful? Yet many firefighters serve for years without suffering from stress. Why? Because stress is individual and personal, it’s about you, your job, your confidence in your own abilities and your control. Put a firefighter in front of a class of 12 year olds for a week and they’ll be stressed. Put a teacher up a ladder into a burning building and they’ll stress out. This is about individuals, in specific circumstances, and that’s what we need to measure.

Gathering the data

We feel we have a distinct advantage with this one - if you are carrying out the HSE survey, do you think that you are getting real honest responses? If your company has a positive, trusting culture, then yes, however in cultures which are negative, the degree of mistrust that employees feel will in no way enhance the likelihood of honest answers, or even participation. As an outside party, we find our response rates are higher, and the level of information we receive is beyond that which an internal audit would reach. People don’t want to tell their friends and colleagues personal information.
Our methodology of using an online survey also means the anonymity is preserved, the survey is available 24 hours a day and can be taken by colleagues when it suits them, at home or at work.

Analysis

So, we’ve got that data - what do we do with it? Well, the HSE stress tool does it all for you, and then gives you some numbers to compare against previous surveys and industry standards. So the analysis is by spreadsheet and your HR. With OSCR, our analysis is done in two stages. The first stage is computer analysis, which breaks down the results, cross checks, and then filters the results by various groups - whether that be age, sex, department, role etc. Analysis is the wrong word, it’s just sorting the results into nice neat piles for the real analysis. Humans, or more specifically, humans who are psychologists, carry out the analysis of the results. Yes, real people, who trained and have experience, look at the results, and then form an opinion on what’s going on. The report your company receives is full of words, not numbers, and gives meaning and recommendations on any issues that arise.

What about our existing HSE results for comparison?

With OSCR, we can run similar data analysis to get reach the indicator values used in the HSE audit - so you get the best of both worlds, true results, and still having the capacity to measure against your existing results. Of course, re-runs of the survey should be compared against previous, however, the facility is there to use.

Is the HSE stress tool useless?

Absolutely not. It is an excellent tool which performs its functions well. You just have to recognise what its function is, and what the results are telling you. If we think of stress as speeding on a road, then the HSE stress audit will tell us where the accident blackspots are, where people are likely to be speeding, whereas OSCR actually measures the speed of each car passing. That’s the difference - measuring actuals or identifying probables. Do you want a traffic survey or a speed trap? What’s more effective at measuring and identifying speeds? In the same way, assessing stress levels without actually measuring individual’s stress has its limitations.

Summary

So, in a nutshell, we think the HSE Audit is better than nothing, but it’s taking a broad brush, statistics based approach to identifying areas within your organisation where stress may occur. OSCR, on the other hand, measures actual stress levels of real people, and feeds back to the organisation with real, meaningful reports and recommendations. What’s best for you and your organisation?

Tags: hse, oscr, Stress