While stress may be a daily occurrence in your workplace, when it causes you physical and psychiatric harm it becomes a personal injury that may have been avoided.
David Miers, a specialist work-related stress solicitor at Slater and Gordon Lawyers, explains what a work-related stress claim is and how it differs from a claim brought in an employment tribunal.
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Transcript:
By and large they tend to fall into two categories: overwork and bullying. In terms of overwork it’s as you would expect: somebody has worked too many hours, perhaps exceeding the hours permitted or stated in their contract. As a result of those additional hours and a failure for their employer to take steps to mitigate the risk to injury my client has become ill. The other type of claim, which I’m saddened to say is more prevalent these days is a claim for psychiatric injury caused by bullying and harassment in the workplace. And bullying and harassment can take two forms where somebody has been harassed and the definition of harassment is that the conduct has to border on criminal activity, so where someone’s been threatened with violence or abuse in the workplace and that has given rise to an injury, or there are more traditional employment disputes between managers and employees, tensions between staff.
Where somebody has given notice that the behaviour they’re complaining of is harming their health the employer then has a duty of care to ensure that a risk assessment is undertaken and measures are put in place to ensure that person isn’t being made worse or a fresh injury doesn’t take place. That person is still going home at the end of the day feeling rubbish about themselves through no fault of their own and if that’s brought to their employer’s attention the duty of care is incumbent upon the employer at that point to do something about it.
Claims for work-related stress are probably best considered a hybrid between an employment claim and a traditional personal injury claim. So, for example, one of my employment colleagues might bring a racial discrimination case in the employment tribunal but based upon the same facts I could bring a claim if those events gave rise to a psychiatric injury, but I would bring it as a bullying case in the civil courts. So while the facts of the case are the same the way it is presented and the venue are different. And so, quite often, stress cases are employment cases but brought in a civil context.
