University of Birmingham: Organisational Stress Measure

The Organisational Stress Measure [OSM], developed by partner organisation Applied Research Ltd, was used by the University of Birmingham over a three year programme to identify areas of high stress among staff across Schools and departments. High stress affects performance adversely and reduces the quality of outputs, which in turn affects Research Assessment Exercise ratings. The purpose of this programme was to:

• Enable University of Birmingham to identify and act on aspects of organisational culture and management practice which affect performance
• Providing a clear, practical definition of stress which makes a clear distinction between organisational pressures and individual susceptibility to stress
• Stimulates organisational change by enabling the identification and understanding of the root causes of organisational problems, their impact and appropriate interventions

Leadership and management practice are always nearly found to have a significant impact on organisational conditions leading to high stress. The OSM is a relatively short and straightforward risk based assessment of organisational stress which assesses the relative contribution of work based and external sources of stress and identifies organisational interventions to tackle the sources.

The OSM has been used by a range of other public and private sector bodies in health, police services and commercial organisations.