The effects of work related stress and working in a call centre, Dissertation

The effects of work related stress and working in a call centre, stressfull or not - Dissertation Example According to the HSE, a total a total of 12.8 million working days were lost to stress in 2004-2005, while the CIPD annual absence management survey for both 2005 and 2006 revealed that stress was one of the primary reasons for long term absence for non manual employee (CIPD, 2010). The term â€Å"stress† has now crept into common parlance and is widely used both in personal and professional life. However, the term has many definitions and in a generic sense can be used to cover a wide variety of different situations. For the purposes of this study, stress will be defined as â€Å"the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demands placed on them† â€Å"stress can be caused by things at work or outside work, or both† (HSE, n.d) Even within this definition it is important to accept that stress is not an illness in itself but a condition which, left unchecked, can contribute to a whole host of health problems: â€Å"Between fifty and s eventy per cent of all illnesses are linked to stress response† (Corbin, Lindsay, & Welk, 2000, p. 15). ... several challenging targets as part of a long term strategy: In Securing Health Together, they aim by 2010, to: reduce the incidence of work-related ill health by 20 per cent reduce ill health to members of the public, caused by work activity by 20 per cent reduce the number of working days lost due to work related ill health by 30 per cent The rise in the condition has also prompted national legislation and regulation. Changes in the Disability Discrimination Act in December 2005, means that mental impairment no longer needs to be â€Å"clinically well recognised† to potentially be classified as disability (CIPD, 2010) The significance of which, is that it is now easier for employees to bring disability cases and discrimination claims involving stress and depression. The potential risk to employers is therefore high, and expected to become even more substantial as future EU legislation is likely to put more responsibility on employers for the health of their workforce. The co st of litigation, should an employee decide to sue is substantial. John Walker, a social worker at Northumberland Country Council, was the first British employee to prove that working conditions caused his stress related breakdown. As a result The High Court ruled in 1996 that Northumberland County Council had failed to reduce his workload and awarded Walker with compensation of ?175,000 (WorkstressNet, n.d.). In 2004, 6,428 stress claims were made costing British employers ?321 million (BusinessHR, 2004). Within the financial Services sector there have been two high profile cases, one involving Commetzbank, in 2004, and the other Deutsche Bank, in 2006. As a result of these cases both these organisations took steps to strengthen their stress management strategies. Alongside the regulatory