Stress at Work Claims

Stress in the workplace is a major cause of ill health in the UK. The Health and Safety Executive reported that 1.7 million workers suffered from work-related health issues in 2023/24, with approximately half of those caused by stress (776,000 cases).

Stress at work is particularly problematic in certain professions, including medical and law. The NHS Staff survey 2023 showed that 42% of all staff felt unwell because of work-related stress. Doctors in particular experience high levels of stress with 62% reporting suffering with depression, anxiety, stress, burnout, and emotional distress, and being three-to-four times more likely to die by suicide than the general population.

If you have suffered from stress in your workplace and your employer did nothing to address it, we can help you make a claim. We represent people in a variety of roles, such as:

• Doctors, nurses, and NHS managers
• Solicitors and other legal professionals
• Pilots and aviation industry management
• Accountants and financiers
• Executives, directors, senior and middle management
• Marketers
• Recruitment
• IT Professionals

Proving that work-related stress has had a direct impact on your health can be complicated, but it is possible. We will need to be able to prove that your employer knew or should have known about your situation and failed in its duty of care to improve your working situation.

One way of doing this is through any emails or written communication you have had with your employer regarding your stress at work. Occupational health guidance or internal investigation reports are equally useful for this. These can be used to show they haven’t made necessary adjustments to address your stress.

If you visited your GP or a therapist about the impact workplace stress was having on you, this can also be useful evidence.

We can use independent medical experts to show a link between your work stress and your health. These include psychiatrists, psychologists, and occupational health specialists. With your permission, we will also reach out to any colleagues who can support your claim.

Certain criteria must be met before you can make a claim for work-related stress. We will need answers to questions like:

• Did your employer know your working conditions were causing you stress before you became ill?
• Do you have time-stamped communications to show what your employer knew?
• When and how you raised your issue with them, did they take any steps?
• How did your situation affect your life?

These four things will help us establish if you have a claim.

Assessing what your employer knew or should have known about how your working conditions were damaging your health is a complex process.

We also need to see what steps your employer took to ease your stress. We must prove that your work stress made a material contribution to the illness you developed.

Once we establish that your employer failed in its duty of care to you, and that it contributed to your illness, it will be easier to get you the compensation you deserve.

Common reasons for making a workplace stress claim include:

• Unmanageable workload
• Unreasonable deadlines
• Unreasonable or excessive work hours
• Unreasonable changes to your responsibilities
• Lack of support from your employer
• Bullying or harassment by individual colleagues

PTSD can be triggered at work if you have been involved in or observed a frightening or distressing accident, or after a prolonged traumatic experience. It is said to develop in approximately one in three people who have suffered because of severe trauma.

If you have had depression or anxiety in the past, you are more likely to develop the condition. Furthermore, factors like having a lack of support from family and friends is said to contribute.

When at work, PTSD could develop if you saw a fellow employee being hurt in an accident or if you were in an accident yourself. Your employer has a duty to keep you safe and must follow health and safety regulations to prevent your risk of being in an accident.

There are many PTSD symptoms you could experience after an accident at work, including:

• Re-experiencing: You could suffer from flashbacks, nightmares, repetitive images and sensations or physical sensations such as sweating, trembling and nausea.
• Avoidance: To stop being reminded of the event, you might start avoiding certain people and places and avoid talking about the accident. You could also distract yourself to stop thinking about what happened.
• Hyperarousal: PTSD can make it difficult for you to relax, causing irritability, angry outbursts, insomnia and difficulty concentrating.
• Other mental health problems: Your condition could cause anxiety, depression and severe phobias.
• Destructive behaviour: Sometimes PTSD can lead people to self-harm or to seek solace by misusing drugs and alcohol.
• Physical symptoms: These include headaches, dizziness, stomach aches and chest pains.

By making a claim, we can help you access the psychotherapy you need to reduce the impact PTSD has on your life. We can also ensure that something similar doesn’t happen in your workplace again, preventing others from being injured in accidents and experiencing psychological problems.

Providing your claim is based on the truth, your employer can’t fire you for making a claim against them. Regardless of whether your claim is successful or not, your employer would be breaking the law if it dismissed you unfairly. If this does happen, you can make a claim for unfair dismissal.

By the same token, your employer can’t demote, discipline, or stop you from applying for a promotion if you make a claim against it. This would count as discrimination.

Get in touch to speak to us in a free initial consultation to discuss your situation. If you choose to claim for discrimination, you won’t be able to claim for stress at work as they will both be based on the same evidence. Our legal experts will listen to your case and let you know if you can make a claim.