Breaking point

Then the picture starts to curl at the edges. Something is going on at home - not surprising considering the 60-hour weeks and four-hour round-trip commute, but, then, everybody's in the same boat, aren't they? And twice the client has lodged complaints - uncharacteristic on this project - and one of them was a pretty serious oversight on his part. Then there's the personality clash between him and a team member that happened three months ago but just keeps festering and is starting to get in the way.

This common scenario shows what's best and worst about the industry, according to Caroline Suggett, managing director of RoM, a construction consultancy that offers executive support and counselling. Best: it's a rewarding playground for dynamic, talented people intent on achieving big things. Worst: it burns them out in the process.

Construction could do with slowing down the rate of combustion. For one thing, it's more humane, and for another, it will help companies get more out its people for longer.

Kicking the cat
Construction is stressful. The CIOB reports that 60% of the calls it gets about occupational health are about stress. Construction is second only to mining in the stress league of industrial production occupations, according to a 1988 study at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.

Stress costs money. Stressed staff don't just kick the cat any more; they kick their employers. In 1995 social worker John Walker won £175,000 from Northumberland County Council. In 1999 retired housing officer Beverly Lancaster won £67,000 from Birmingham City Council. And last year administrative assistant Olwen Jones won £157,000 from a local authority in Sandwell.

Those are some of the stress cases that went to court. They were all in the public sector, with its unionised, procedure-oriented workforce. Construction may be different, but stress claims represent a growth industry. The TUC reports 6,428 work-related stress claims this year compared with 516 last year. That's a 12-fold increase in one year. If the nation's workforce is that stressed and litigious, it may be short-sighted for managers to assume that construction, with its work-hard play-hard culture of trust, teamwork, camaraderie and entrepreneurship, will be immune forever.

The human condition
Stress is a barrier to attracting and keeping talent. A 1996 study found that among a group of 22 construction lecturers in Northern Ireland, 14% cited stress as the main or major reason for entering the classroom. Before the jibes about "Them as can't…", consider that in the same study 40% of construction managers still in the industry could understand how stress was driving people out of it.

Whether he knows it or not, the bright young construction manager sketched at the beginning is heading for the fire escape. He will either jump or be pushed.

Stressed staff don't just kick the cat, they kick their employers

"If you don't notice the situation and offer support you'll lose your key assets," says Suggett, who agonised for a year over whether or not to call the service she provides "counselling" because it conjures up notions of therapy and weakness. In the end she decided counselling was what it should be called because that's what it is. She now has four clients in her growing executive support and counselling practice, and all of them are directors or partners. Suggett added on the service after 15 years offering marketing and business development consultancy to construction companies. She reckons that in 80% of her total client base there are individuals who need some help with stress.

"Stress gets misinterpreted as underperformance, personality clashes, attitude problems," she says. "That's because under stress you try the same old responses to situations and they don't work. You blame and block. The remedy is to give people back control over outcomes."

Mary Hale is an independent counsellor specialising in stress and work-related issues, used by ICAS, one of the leading employee assistance programme providers. She says stress is caused by the feeling of responsibility without power, when people try to manage events over which they have no control.

"If you make a strong man helpless, you will make him cry or fly into a mad rage," she says. "If people are using language like 'I can't,' 'It's hopeless,' 'I must,' 'You've no idea…,' it means they feel trapped and helpless. One way of dealing with it is to unpack, unpack and unpack, keep asking questions like 'What would happen if...?' and that way start arriving at the art of the possible. Maybe they need to make the difficult decisions, which could mean disappointing somebody, and speaking up in defence of their decisions."

What is to be done?
Possibly because they are too busy, construction companies don't do much about stress. The acme of best practice now seems to be providing free, confidential counselling to employees through employee assistance programmes (EAPs). A few companies do this, including Galliford Try. Human resources director Tony Welch says the service is worth the small cost.

"We find that stress is most often not work-related," he says. "It could be legal, marital or financial, but being able to open up and talk to someone about it makes all the difference."

Counselling services can be an early-warning system. If there is a cluster of calls about bullying in one department, the EAP provider can raise the issue so the company can sort it out. Welch says about 7% of staff have used the service.

At Pearce Retail Services HR director Roger Leveson plans to introduce voluntary, half-day workshops that diagnose stress and explore causes, and provide access to counselling for staff in need of professional advice.

Many claims, and they tend to be big, are settled out of court to avoid publicity

"If anyone believes that their work is putting them under too much stress, we would naturally take their concerns very seriously indeed," says Leveson, but admits that in the world of fast-track retail contracting, there is only so much a company can do.

"There is a dual responsibility between the company and its people. We run 24x7 working, with tight, fast-track programmes for retail clients, who can be very demanding. Even though we are a people-centred organisation, it is not possible to completely ring-fence individuals from the normal pressures of their job. At interview, we explain to prospective recruits that if they are looking for a 40-hour work week, and to work locally most of the time, this is probably not the right organisation and environment for them."

The law
It's not difficult for a company to defend itself against a claim in court, provided it has done some pretty basic things to take care of its staff. The court cases listed above, considered landmark rulings, generated a few basic principles in how to handle stressed workers.

Work caused Walker to suffer a nervous breakdown. The council arguably had no way of knowing this would happen so it was not liable. But when he returned to work he was placed under the same or worse conditions, and broke down again. Rule number 1: If you can see it coming, do something.

Lancaster was shifted from a back-office job to a public-facing one as a housing officer. She said she needed training. Birmingham City Council promised but didn't deliver. The pressures made her clinically depressed. Rule number 2… well, it's rather obvious, isn't it?

"It's a load of bunkum," said one employment solicitor who advises the construction industry, referring to how flimsy many cases turn out to be. In February, the Court of Appeal quashed all but one in a set of four stress cases. The cases, grouped under Hatton v Sutherland, cleared the air in its return to basic principles of duty of care.

So what about that 12-fold increase in stress claims? What's the problem if most fail in court? There's the rub, according to Paul Mander, a partner with City law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner. He says many claims, and they tend to be big, are settled out of court to avoid publicity.

Stress causes trouble in other ways. Think of the employee who "goes off sick". As weeks turn into months and parties start circling each other, the employee has a potent array of weapons. There is the unfair dismissal and personal injury suites of actions, but also since 1995 the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). Under the Act an employee can claim unlimited compensation for having been discriminated against because they have a condition that affects their ability to perform – stress-related conditions included. An IDS survey of 9,000 DDA cases from 1996 to 2000 found that the second most common condition (18.2%) of applicants was "depression, bad nerves, or anxiety" – and 18% of these claims succeeded.