Risk Assessment for Stress. A good think?

28/04/2021

In the UK, legislation has long been in place to ensure health and safety at work. Risk assessments are carried out for all roles to enable any revealed risks to be addressed and their potential impact avoided. 

The Health and Safety Executive introduced six pillars of for a healthy workplace environment:

  1. Identify potential hazards
  2. Assess the risks
  3. Control the risks
  4. Who is responsible
  5. Record the findings
  6. Review controls in place

The idea being if all these pillars were observed in the workplace, there would be no issues. The workplaces and teams would thrive.

That sounds logical to me. It also got me thinking. Why don’t we risk assess our personal lives in the same way? 

The benefits of this would be to raise awareness of how we feel when we start to experience stress which in turn identifies our triggers helping us take action to reduce/remove any negative impact. After all we know what goes on at home follows us to work and vice versa. 

Time to assess the risk in all areas of our life to make us healthier, more resilient and thriving instead of just surviving?

My risk assessment is in four parts:

  1. The traditional workplace risk assessment following HSE’s six pillars. Most of us will be used to this framework.
  2. Examines potential stress risk areas outside work
  3. Identify stress indicators unique to you
  4. Action planning for the potential risk areas revealed

Regularly examining and analysing our stress and resilience levels through this kind of exercise, adopting self care routines, non-negotiables – literally making ‘self’ a priority is a ‘no brainer’ isn’t it?