Stress in the agricultural world is often caused by factors that are out of personal control such as change in market prices, disease and weather. Developing strategies to manage stress can help control it before it spirals into greater issues that may start to affect personal health. It is important to accept that stress is normal, especially in a high pressure work environment. Then understanding how to identify the signs of stress, managing it, and minimising it is the first point of call that can be easily combated.
Long hours and stress impact safety, which is why it essential to address stress on farms.
6 Essential Strategies for Achieving Work-Life Balance in Farming
A set of simple, directly actionable strategies that require minimal resources or time to implement from EnableAg
FIT FOR FARMING, The Farming Community Network’s booklets with advice on both physical and mental health for men and women, are available here
Farmers Guardian – 7 ways to reduce stress and anxiety, click here.
Mind – How to manage stress, click here.
Advice from the Health and Safety Executive
5 simple steps
Complete the 5 steps of HSE’s Working Minds campaign to help to prevent stress and support good mental health of your workers:
- Reach out and have conversations
- Recognise the signs and causes of stress
- Respond to any risks identified by agreeing action points
- Reflect on the actions taken – have things improved?
- Make it routine to check back in on how things are going
Take your business to the next level
Preventing work-related stress, depression and anxiety is a legal duty, it’s good for business and it’s the right thing to do.
By being proactive, you can improve productivity, reduce sickness absence and help retain valued workers.
Register for full online learning for step-by-step advice, tools and templates.
Work-related stress and the law
No matter whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, the law requires all employers to prevent work-related stress to support good mental health in the workplace.
The need for employers to protect workers from work-related stress, depression and anxiety falls under the provision in sections 2 and 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
Find out more about work-related stress and the law.
Stress container
- Understanding what is in your stress container will help you to address those individual issues and reduce the negative impact stress can have on your life, click here to find out more.
Managing workplace stress
According to the Health and Safety Executive, over 20 million working days are lost in Britain every year due to stress, depression and anxiety. In addition to the cost to businesses, there is a significant human cost for those people experiencing stress in their lives and those who work and live with them.
We all have different tolerances to stress and reactions will vary. We can manage a bit of stress – in fact, it helps us stay alert and react at speed when necessary. But when stress levels rise too far, it can make life miserable and cause significant harm.
FCN have developed a PDF download on 10 things to help you manage stress in your daily life.
FarmWell – Identifying, managing and minimising stress pdf document :
- Stress can lead to mental health problems, likewise mental health problems can cause stress, and therefore it is best to deal with the pressures that are causing the stress to try and minimise their effect on the body and mind.
- FarmWell has developed a downloadable resource on stress management, identifying the signs of stress, understanding how to manage stress and from it, build resilience, click here to view.
Coping with the pressures of farming
- The following downloadable document from Teagasc covers ways to cope with the pressures of farming, click here. (Ireland)
- Fit2Farm: Farmers Weekly have developed Fit2Farm aimed at recognising and dealing with stress. There have been a series of articles developed under Fit2Farm to help improve both the physical and mental health of farmers.
YANA stress and depression plan of action, click here.
Down on the Farm-Stress
The NHS have developed a service aimed at stress on the farm ‘Down on the Farm-Stress’. This link explains how to identity stress and the solutions to minimise it https://www.tewv.nhs.uk/services/down-on-the-farm-stress/
Every Mind Matters – feeling stressed? Click here.