The Management Standards

The Management Standards

Overview:
This page will summarise the Health & Safety Executive's Management Standards.

One recommended evidence-based approach is the adoption of the Health and Safety Executive’s Management Standards. These standards provide a framework for assessing and managing work-related stress and staff wellbeing within schools. They cover six key areas: demands, control, support, relationships, role, and change. By evaluating your school against these standards, you can identify areas for improvement and take action accordingly.

The Management Standards offer a set of conditions indicative of high staff wellbeing and school performance. They enable schools to:
  1. Demonstrate good practice through systematic risk assessment.
  2. Assess the current situation using various data collection methods.
  3. Engage in discussions and collaborate with staff to implement practical improvements.
  4. Simplify risk assessment for work-related stress by identifying key risk factors and focusing on prevention.
  5. Provide a measure for evaluating the school's performance in addressing stress factors over time.
The staff survey, an integral part of these standards, helps schools and trusts understand their current working environment and prioritise necessary improvements. It's important to accept all survey questions, even those likely to reveal lower scores among school staff, as part of maintaining an evidence-based approach.
The six Management Standards are:

▶ Demands – this includes anything that places a demand on a staff member, such as workload, work patterns, working hours, deadlines, their timetable, the time given for them to complete tasks, and the behaviour of students, colleagues and leaders.

▶ Control – this is the level of autonomy a staff member feels they have, including; the say they have over what they do at work; how they do their work; the level of choice they have over what to do when taking a break; and the level of flexibility available to them.

▶ Support – this includes the encouragement, sponsorship and resources they receive or have access to and are provided by the school, line management and colleagues.

▶ Relationships – this includes the extent to which staff behaviour is appropriate, how well positive working is promoted to avoid conflict and how effectively and quickly unacceptable behaviour is dealt with.

▶ Role – this includes how well people understand their role, what is expected of them, how it fits with the role of their department or function and the overall aim of the school and whether leaders ensure they do not have conflicting roles.

▶ Change – how changes at school (large or small) are managed and communicated to all staff and stakeholders, including effective consultation and whether opportunities are given for staff to question leaders.


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