1. Talk with your fellow employees - See if other people at work are experiencing stress. You can use stress surveys and other materials such as posters and stickers to raise awareness of stress at work.



2. Call a meeting: Ask other employees at work about calling a meeting to discuss the issues. Include your health and safety representative and your shop steward if you have them in your workplace. If there is not support for a formal meeting at this stage, you could keep the issue alive through informal discussions with other employees, and call a meeting when people feel more confident. There is no need to hold the meeting at work in the first instance.



3. Open Discussion: At the meeting, you could have an open discussion to identify the causes and possible solutions to stress in your workplace. What would make this a better place to work? Use the stress survey results to help discussion.



4. Identify the issues: Make a list of the causes and solutions to stress in your workplace, prioritise them, and arrange a meeting to discuss them with your employer. Involve the H&S representative and the shop steward if you have them. If your employer is unwilling to listen or to make improvements, consult your union or association for advice.



5. Provisional Improvement Notice: In some cases, elected workplace Health & Safety Representatives have the legal right to issue a Provisional Improvement Notices to an employer in order to remove employees from unsafe work, and which require employers to remedy an unsafe workplace or work practices. For instance in Commonwealth Government workplaces, HSRs have this right. Again, involve the shop steward, or consult your union for assistance.



6. Refer stressed employees for help: Employees with stress related illness should be referred to a doctor/counselor for medical advice, and to your union's compensation officer or solicitor for legal advice.



7. Keep records: You should keep a record of events in the workplace to assist in identifying the causes and possible solutions to stress. This may also be useful in assembling witness statements and evidence in the event of any legal proceedings. It is also wise to document all approaches made to the employer. If this is done, the employer will not be able to successfully argue that he/she was not aware of stress in the workplace.

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