Short answer: yes. And once you have 5 or more workers, it needs to be written down.
Most founders discover this from a lawyer or an inspector, which is the expensive way. Here’s the cheaper version.
This is a plain-English guide, not legal advice. If you’re facing a specific situation, talk to a specialist.
What the law says.
2 pieces of law do the work.
The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 gives every employer a general duty to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees, so far as is reasonably practicable. Health includes mental health.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment. The Health and Safety Executive is clear that this covers work-related stress, alongside slips, trips and everything else. If you have 5 or more employees, you must record the significant findings.
The HSE treats stress as a workplace hazard like any other: identify it, assess it, control it, review it.
Why it matters now.
Work-related stress, depression and anxiety affected 964,000 workers in Great Britain last year, according to the HSE. They accounted for 22.1 million lost working days, and 62% of all days lost to work-related ill health.
The HSE has started acting on it. In December 2025 it served a formal Notice of Contravention on the University of Birmingham for failing to manage stress risk effectively. The university had a policy. The HSE found it wasn’t working in practice. We look at that case in detail here.
Meanwhile, practice is patchy. Among UK organisations actively trying to reduce stress, only 38% use risk assessments or stress audits, and just 1 in 5 use the HSE’s own Management Standards (CIPD, 2025).
The 6 things to assess.
The HSE’s Management Standards boil workplace stress down to 6 areas. They’re the most practical place to start.
Demands. Workload, pace, hours and the working environment.
Control. How much say people have in the way they do their work.
Support. Encouragement, resources and backing from managers and colleagues.
Relationships. Positive working, and how conflict and unacceptable behaviour are handled.
Role. Whether people understand their role, and whether roles conflict.
Change. How organisational change is managed and communicated.
Read the list and notice which one your team would wince at. Start there.
How to do it, in 5 steps.
1. Gather what you already know. Absence and leave patterns, turnover, exit interviews, engagement surveys, grievances. Look for clusters by team.
2. Ask people. The HSE provides a free indicator tool built around the 6 standards. Anonymous surveys and small group conversations both work. Consulting staff is part of the duty.
3. Decide who might be harmed and how. Which teams carry the heaviest demands? Who has the least control? Where has change landed hardest?
4. Agree controls and write them down. Specific actions, owners and dates. “Promote wellbeing” is a slogan. “Cap Friday afternoon meetings in the operations team” is a control.
5. Review it. After significant change, and at least once a year.
The bit the paperwork can’t do.
A risk assessment fixes how the work is set up. That’s essential, and it’s the legal floor. It doesn’t change the state people are in when they meet that work on a Monday morning.
That’s the second half of the job. A nervous system that can come down from pressure handles demands, change and difficult conversations far better than one stuck on alert. Breath is the most direct way in. It’s trainable, takes minutes and works across a whole team at once. Used alongside a proper risk assessment, it moves the needle on both halves.
This is part of a series on the hidden cost of dysregulation. Start with presenteeism.
The Working Well assessment shows you where your organisation sits and what dysregulation is likely costing you. Your Working Well briefing, with the full cost model, follows by email.
Take the Working Well assessment today. workerbe.co.uk/working-well
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