What are the common types of stress at work claims?
Stress and injury can be caused in many different ways but broadly speaking, successful claims normally fit into one or more of the following categories:
Bullying and Harassment
Overworked
Exposure to trauma
Lack of support
Poor management
Do I have a valid claim against my employer for bullying and harassment?
The easiest way to find out is to take our indicative test but in normal circumstances there are four hurdles you need to overcome in order to be successful.
- Injury
- Foreseeability of Injury
- Breach of Duty
- Causation
You must show that you have suffered a recognised psychiatric injury (as opposed to just stress).
In order for your employer’s duty of care to prevent you suffering psychiatric harm to be engaged, you must show that your employer knew, or ought to have known, you were becoming ill.
You must show some fault on behalf of your employer that would amount to a breach of the duty of care owed to you. There are various common law duties which place an employer under a duty to protect its employees from psychiatric injury which we can help explain to you.
You must show that your employer’s breach of duty caused, or materially contributed, to your injury and financial losses.
It is a common misconception that you are unable to claim compensation from your employer if you have been bullied at work.
Broadly speaking, civil claims fall into 2 categories:
- Common law bullying claims can only be brought successfully if the employer was aware the employee was becoming unwell as a result of the behaviour complained of. It is therefore vitally important that employees raise their concerns at the earliest opportunity.
- Claimants have 3 years from the date they became unwell to commence a claim.
- Compensation can include awards for their injury as well as past and future financial loses, such as lost earnings, which flow from that injury.
- Claimants do not need to show the harassment related to a protected characteristic (as required for some claims in the employment tribunal).
- Claimants have 6 years from the instances of harassment to commence a claim.
- There is no requirement to show the injury was foreseeable or that any recognised psychiatric injury has been caused at all.
Why use Setfords for your stress claim?
£3.6m
The amount of compensation David Miers has recovered for clients in the last 2 years.£100,000
The average amount of compensation per case David Miers has managed to recover for his clients.15.4 million
Working days lost due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2017/18595,000
Workers suffering from work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2017/1857%
Stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 57% of all working days lost due to ill health in 2017/1844%
Stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 44% of all work-related ill health cases in 2017/18Take the Bullying & Harrassment survey
David Miers
David is an occupational stress and psychiatric injury specialist.
David is one of the few specialists in the country whose practice is solely made up of work related stress claims.His expertise covers:
- Stress at work claims
- Bullying & harassment claims
- Violence at work claims
- Sexual harassment
