Workplace stress is a health and safety issue and is included in the Occupational Safety and Health Act. This means that the University, through its managers and supervisors, is obliged to prevent and address stress in the workplace using a risk management framework. In implementing a risk management framework, it is important to note that both organizational and individual interventions to address the causes of psychological injury are generally more effective than approaches that focus exclusively on the staff member.
Staff-focused approaches such as counseling, relaxation training, time management skills, and stress management training can help staff develop greater resistance to work stress or help them cope better with personal stressors. Stress management programs teach workers about the nature and sources of stress, the effects of stress on health, and personal skills to reduce stress. This training can quickly reduce stress symptoms such as anxiety and sleep disorders; it also has the advantage of being cheap and easy to implement. However, these approaches do little to address the organizational sources of work-related stress. As such, they are less likely to produce sustainable prevention outcomes, address the root causes of stress or result in improvements in organizational performance.
Organizational stress management focuses on improving working conditions or climate. This approach is the most direct way to reduce stress at work. It involves identifying stressful aspects of work and designing strategies to reduce or eliminate identified stressors. The advantage of this approach is that it deals directly with the root causes of stress at work and produces the best results. However, managers sometimes feel uncomfortable with this approach, as it may involve changes in work routines or production schedules, or changes in organizational structure. Approaches developed within a framework for continuous improvement are also recommended, rather than with a dramatic and uniformly positive expectation of impact.