Stress-related illness

Retail is not always an easy place to be. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) - the public body responsible for regulating workplace health, safety and welfare - some 7,000 retail staff members report suffering from work-related stress in a year, and for 4,000 of those it is the first time they have suffered from work stress.

Retailers can’t afford to ignore the problem. “Employers have a legal duty of care to ensure the health, safety and welfare of their employees and must assess the risk of employees developing a stress-related illness as a result of their work,” says Tony Almond, policy adviser in the HSE’s work-related stress team.

Axa Icas specialist services consultant Geoff Taylor says retail managers must ensure they can recognise the signs of stress among their staff and also when personal issues are adding to the strain. “We recommend a top-down training approach to teach managers how they can support people. A lot of it boils down to managers having a good relationship with their team, so that the employee feels supported by the manager and can have a dialogue with them. Even that can take a lot of the pressure off,” says Taylor.

Recognising the tipping point is vital. “Pressure is healthy but there comes a point where pressure builds up and individuals begin to crumble,” he says.

Almond agrees: “We all experience pressure, but it’s when we experience too much pressure without the opportunity to recover that we start to experience stress. It is important to identify possible signs and causes of stress as early as possible, before it makes people ill.”

“It’s about being on the lookout for a change in people’s behaviour. That will alert you to the fact something is not quite right,” says Taylor. “You can tell when motivation has tailed off, they have become cynical or they are withdrawing from social contact. It’s those sorts of things that are tell-tale signs that something is wrong. You can’t ignore it because it will just get worse and staff will go off sick,” he says.

Ryman boss Theo Paphitis is a man who rarely gets stressed but when he does he says a full “hairdryer treatment” will leave him feeling calm again. “When it comes out people know about it. I will scream and rant and then it’s gone. There’s a bit of Basil Fawlty in me,” he says.

However, within his businesses he says he ensures staff come first. “We try and make the working environment as pleasant and stress-free as possible. Our staff come first and our customers second, because if the staff feel good they will give great service to our customers so it’s important to make sure staff are not stressed at work,” he says.

In today’s climate managing stress is a stressful a job in itself but doing nothing about it will have a far greater impact on your business than facing it head on.