Occupational Stress
Claims

Where an employer fails to protect their employees from occupational stress that goes onto develop into a positive psychological illness, then they can be held liable for that illness.

Occupational stress is defined as the adverse reaction people have when they try to cope with tasks, responsibilities, and pressures connected with their jobs, but find difficulty in managing them. The main symptoms of occupational stress are depression, anxiety, insomnia and tiredness. Common causes of occupational stress include lack of job security, poor conditions, harassment, bullying, lack of child care, excessive hours, excessive demands, excessive workload, poor training, bad management, etc. It is now recognised that occupational stress can lead to psychological illnesses such as clinical depression and post traumatic stress disorder.

Employers will be liable for occupational stress if:-

• The employer failed to provide a safe place of work
• The occupational stress the employee was subjected to was sufficient to create a reasonably foreseeable risk of injury
• The employer failed to do all that they reasonably could to prevent the occupational stress from arising
• The employee suffered a positive psychiatric illness as a result of their occupational stress