Stress Awareness Month is an event that has been observed since 1992, it serves as a gateway to open conversations about stress, signpost people to the right support and help us all prioritise our mental health. It is promoted by numerous organisations and the NHS. The HSE published annual reporting statistics in November 2024 revealing that almost half of 1.7 million work-related ill health cases were identified as stress related, with over 776,000 workers suffering from ill-health related to stress, depression or anxiety with each person suffering taking an average of 15.8 days off work.
The Health and Safety Executive have recently been funding research into work-related stress under the title Project OSCAR (Occupational Stress Consultation and Research). The Health and Safety Executive have commissioned Affinity Health at Work, the Institute of Employment Studies, the Institute of Occupational Medicine, and the Society of Occupational Medicine to lead the Occupational Stress Consultation and Research programme. This project aims to provide HSE with the evidence base on which to make policy decisions and underpin guidance on the practical actions that employers can take to prevent and mitigate work-related stress relative to three research areas.
- Preventing & Reducing
- Defining & Identifying
- Examining Barriers & Enablers to Reducing
The CWU are taking part in this research which aims to:
- Explore how the evolving model of WRS (Work-Related Stress) labelling is received and its applicability across different contexts.
- Identify how the Project OSCAR research findings can be made most useful to relevant groups.
- Gather & use suggestions on how employers and health professionals can improve current practices and what needs to be in place to support this.
This research will result in a final report in early 2026, with the aim to better identify what we know about effective interventions to prevent and reduce work-related stress, with a further sharing of new knowledge and good practice.
Stress Risk Assessments
Employers have a legal duty to protect employees from stress at work by undertaking stress risk assessments and acting on the findings. The CWU has national agreements with all the major employers on both individual and group stress risk assessments.
Members suffering the effects of stress are encouraged to approach their Union Rep, Safety Rep, Mental Health First Aider or seek help, support and assistance without delay should they need help at work, or feel in need of crisis support.
When undertaken correctly, Stress Risk Assessments can be an extremely effective tool to reduce personal stress on an individual level or workplace level.
Shared for information and use are links to the following documents:
• CWU Preventing Stress flowchart
• CWU Armed forces veterans & Reservists Questionnaire
These shared documents have been used to beneficial effect within the CWU Mental Health First Aiders networks over several years and have been updated in 2025.
They are provided as information, to aid understanding of potential stressors & stress prevention routes.
- The Stress Prevention flowchart is a simple easy to understand step by step guide guide for supporting with individual stress.
- The Armed forces Questionnaire has been produced by CWU MHFAiders and Reps who are ex-Armed forces, it is designed for armed forces Veterans and Armed forces reservists as a Pre-cursor to any Stress Risk Assessment process.
Further information and useful workplace resources can be found by clicking on the links provided below.