Workplace Stress: a critical evaluation of strategies to understand and combat the stresses of working life.

Over the past decade, 'workplace stress' has become a major concern for companies, campaigning organisations, and NGOs in many parts of the world. There is evidence this is a major cause of mental health problems from anxiety and depression to suicide, and of lost productivity due to absenteeism and 'presenteeism'. Campaigning organisations have been set up, often with the support of large employers, to identify individuals experiencing workplace stress and to provide them with mental health first aid, to teach coping strategies, and where necessary direct them to mental health services. While some of these are managed by the HR departments of large corporations, others are undertaken by specific mental health teams. But what of workplace stress in the work situations of the most marginalised -the workers in the warehouses of the e-Commerce firms such as Amazon, those in the 'gig economy', the self-employed and others in precarious employment, and those whose traditional forms of employment have been eroded by 'globalisation' and economic change?

This PhD project will undertake research on the origins and spread of the concern with workplace stress, place this in the context of the changing character of employment and career structures, identify and characterise the responses to it, including the rise and activities of work place stress campaigning organizations, examine evidence on the efficacy of the different strategies involved, and undertake qualitative research in the UK with organizations and employeesontherationalfor,developmentandimplementationof,andresponsestostrategies for combatting 'workplace stress'.