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How Much Compensation Can I Claim For Stress At Work?

By Marlon Cooke. Last Updated 16th February 2023. Have you suffered work-related stress? Do you believe third-party failings were responsible? If so, did you know you could make stress at work claims? In this guide, we’ll answer “how much compensation for stress at work could I be owed?” and explain everything you need to know about your rights in this situation.

Work-related stress is one of the most common forms of work-related illnesses in the UK. People from all walks of life, performing a vast range of job roles, can suffer from stress at work. In many cases, compensation for work-related stress can be claimed. This detailed guide will help guide you through the claims process.

If at any point while reading this guide you would like more free legal advice on making a claim or if you’d like to make a claim, please get in touch with our friendly team. You can reach them in various ways:

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A Guide To Claiming Compensation For Stress At Work

Stress at work claims

If you suffer from work-related stress or have done in an old job, then you may have a valid reason to claim compensation for it. You may want to make a claim against your employer, be it your current employer or a previous employer. When you are trying to claim stress at work compensation, you can make a claim for incidents occurring up to 6 years ago in the UK.

This guide is intended to help people who have or are suffering from work-related stress by giving them a detailed overview of the process of making stress at work claims, answering common questions asked by claimants such as “how much compensation for stress at work?”.

We’ll also provide some legal advice on what to do before making a compensation claim to give your case the best chance of success. Finally, we’ll explain the No Win No Fee claims service that we provide and how you could benefit from it yourself.

What Is Work-Related Stress?

To begin our guide on how to claim stress at work compensation, let’s look at a definition for work-related stress.

Work-related stress is a psychological and physical health condition that is either primarily caused by or significantly attributed to by a person’s working environment and job role.

Primarily, work-related stress is caused by pressure and unhappiness in a person’s working environment, such as stringent deadlines, the fear of unemployment, general dissatisfaction or even abuse from co-workers.

Whether these are tangible effectors that a person faces or intangible effectors that are simply imagined, significant work-related stress can result, often leading the suffer to develop issues coping with day-to-day life.

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How Long Do I Have To Make A Stress At Work Claim?

Are you aware that personal injury claims, including stress at work claims, have a time limit within which they can be made?

In most circumstances, this time limit is 3 years from the date of the incident you wish to claim for or the date that you realised you were affected as a result of it. However, there are some exceptions that may apply to this limitation period.

For example, if the claimant can’t claim for themselves, whether they’re underage to make legal proceedings or they’re mentally incapacitated, a litigation friend can claim on their behalf. In such cases, the usual 3-year time limit would be frozen until the claimant was able to make a claim for themselves.

So, once an underage claimant turns 18 or a mentally incapacitated claimant gains the ability to pursue compensation, the time limit would come into effect, leaving them with 3 years to make legal proceedings. Alternatively, if a litigation friend makes their claim on their behalf, the time limit would come into effect once they entered into legal proceedings.

To see if you’re within the relevant time limit to make a claim or to learn more about whether you have grounds to make a claim in the first place, please get in touch today for a free consultation with one of our specialist advisors. In the meantime, please read on to learn more.

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The Most Common Causes Of Stress At Work

Although there are many causes of work-related stress that can lead to people claiming stress at work compensation, there are several causes that are more common than others, including:

  • High workload – in some jobs, people are simply expected to do too much. Too much work piled up, or tight deadlines, lead to pressure, which can cause people to worry or panic.
  • Low workload – surprisingly, job roles that leave a person with insufficient work to keep them busy for a full day, are also very likely to suffer from work-related stress due to boredom and lack of stimulation.
  • Too much guidance – people who work in highly regimented jobs (such as the armed forces or the police force) often suffer from work-related stress due to the lack of freedom they incur.
  • Lack of support – people who find that they have little in the way of support from their fellow workers and managers can feel isolated.
  • Inadequate experience or training – people who are asked to perform a job for which they are not fully qualified, may not have the skills needed to tackle the day to day workload.
  • Being promoted above capabilities – people often find themselves promoted into a job that they simply do not have the skillset to tackle. This is especially true for people promoted into a management role without any experience managing others.
  • Worrying about job security – people who are at a risk of being fired, made redundant or their employer going out of business often suffer from work-related stress.
  • Abuse from work colleagues – bullying and harassment at work by work colleagues and line managers, is a significant cause of work-related stress.
  • Toxic corporate culture – every company has a different corporate culture that evolves over time. In some companies, a toxic, blame-oriented culture evolves, and working in such an environment is a significant cause of stress.
  • Bad management or management chain – where people have to report to several managers or are managed by an ineffective manager. Furthermore, being over-managed is also a significant cause of work-related stress.
  • Uncomfortable workplace – when your place of work is too cold, too hot, damp or uncomfortable in any other way.

These are some of the main reasons why people suffer from work-related stress and seek stress at work compensation. However, this list is not exhaustive, so if you suffered work-related stress for a different reason, you could still be entitled to compensation.

If you believe you have a valid case to make a claim and would like to know how to proceed, please contact us and see how we could help you on a No Win No Fee basis. In the meantime, if you’re wondering “how much compensation for stress at work could I be owed?” or have any other queries, please read on to learn more.

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Is An Employer Required To Do Anything To Help With Stress At Work?

If you’re wondering whether your employer has any legal responsibility to prevent you from suffering work-related stress, the answer is yes. If they fail to uphold this duty of care, you could be able to claim stress at work compensation from your employer.

The UK Health & Safety Executive outlines strict legislative requirements for employers dealing with stress at work. All employers have a minimum set of precautions that must be taken with the following aims in mind:

  • Employees are less likely to suffer from stress
  • Causes of stress are proactively sought out and removed from the work environment

However, many employers take matters much further, making sure that employees are reviewed regularly for signs of stress and that workplace counselling is available for people who are showing any symptoms, however mild.

To learn more about how to claim stress at work compensation and see “how much compensation for stress at work could I be owed?”, please read on.

Work-Related Stress Rights

If you are an employee in the UK suffering from work-related stress, you have rights and protections in place in health, employment and equality legislations.

Your employer cannot immediately dismiss you if you have been medically diagnosed with stress, or a psychological injury, and are taking time off work because of this. They are expected to try and accommodate your illness.

Your employer could also be liable for your work-related stress. If your stress was caused by something in the workplace that they will have been expected to address – e.g. bullying by a colleague that you had brought to their attention – then your employer may have breached their duty of care to you. You could in this instance have a right to sue them in the UK for compensation for stress and anxiety.

If you are looking to make a claim against your employer for breaching their duty of care to you, then please reach out to one of our advisors.

What To Do If You Have Suffered From Negligence

If you suffer from work-related stress or you have done in the past, you may be able to claim stress at work compensation for your suffering providing that third-party failings were responsible.

If you find yourself in this situation, then there are some things you can do to help improve the chance of your claim being successful, including:

  • Document a timeline of your stress – try and establish when you first noticed the symptoms of work-related stress, and what you believe may have caused it. Create a timeline of other events at work that contributed to your incident.
  • Speak to a professional counsellor – either at your workplace or through your GP. You will need a positive diagnosis of work-related stress from a registered medical professional to make a compensation claim.
  • Assess how it’s affected your life – such as lowering your enjoyment of social events, causing you to lose sleep due to constant worry, and acuter physical symptoms such as depression and anxiety.
  • Evidence any financial losses – if you have had to cancel a holiday, suffered loss of earnings through time off, or any other form of expense, then list these down so that you can claim compensation for them.
  • Get expert legal help – by using the No Win No Fee claims service that we offer, you could make legal proceedings with help from one of our solicitors

To get more help and advice on what to do when it comes to seeking stress at work compensation, please get in touch. In the meantime, please continue reading to see “how much compensation for stress at work could I be owed?”

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What Can Be Claimed For As Compensation For Stress At Work

With most work-related injury claims, the physical effects of the injury are evident. With stress at work claims, the symptoms may be far more intangible. However, generally, the following types of damages can be claimed for:

  • General damages – these are all of the physical aspects of the condition. Although the physical side of work-related stress is quite hard to quantify, there are some tangible ones. For example, people suffering from work-related stress sometimes also suffer from depression, anxiety or general lethargy.
  • Special damages – anything not to do with the physical effects of the condition, that are being claimed for in compensation, comes under general damages. This will include direct expenses such as medical costs. It also includes other financial losses, such as cancelling a planned event that has already been paid for. All medical fees and ongoing cost of treatment also come under general damages, as does care costs.

To learn more about compensation for stress and anxiety in the UK, please get in touch with our personal injury advisors.

No Win No Fee Solicitors

The legal fees involved in accident claims of any kind can be quite high. Even if you do pay your own legal costs, and you fail to win your case, you will lose them. But why take the risk? We have a solution.

We offer a No Win No Fee claims service. What this means, is that you won’t need to pay any fees at all during the time we are helping you with your compensation claim. If we don’t win your case, then you don’t pay us anything at all. No risk at all, so there is no reason not to begin your claim today should costs concern you.

If you have any questions at all about No Win No Fee stress at work compensation claims, please get in touch on the number at the top of this page.

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Stress Compensation Calculator

You may be seeking a stress compensation calculator for an evaluation of your claim. However, these tools may not always be able to consider every aspect of your claim. Many factors will be considered when your claim is being evaluated. This is also why we cannot provide an average payout for stress at work.

The table in this section uses figures from the 16th edition of the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG), which is used by legal professionals alongside medical evidence to value personal injury claims.

Using compensation brackets from the JCG, we can give you an idea of what you could receive for a psychological injury. The figures shown are not guaranteed.

Edit
Injury Severity Amount Notes
Psychiatric Damage Generally Severe £54,830 to £115,730 Serious long-term effects of stress, having adverse effects upon quality of life.
Psychiatric Damage Generally Moderately severe £19,070 to £54,830 Significant medium-term effect upon the quality of life.
Psychiatric Damage Generally Moderate £5,860 to £19,070 Very slight stress, with almost no effect on life outside of work.
Psychiatric Damage Generally Minor £1,540 to £5,860 Minor, short term incidents of stress such as panic attacks.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Severe £59,860 to £100,670 Involving permanent effects which prevent the injured person from working at all or at least from functioning at anything approaching the pre-trauma level.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Moderately Severe £23,150 to £59,860 As above, but with a better prognosis for recovery with professional help
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Moderate £8,180 to £23,150 the injured person will have largely recovered and any continuing effects will not be grossly disabling.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Less Severe £3,950 to £8,180 A virtually full recovery will have been made within one to two years and only minor symptoms will persist over any longer period.

The amounts shown only relate to general damages, which is awarded for the pain and suffering experienced by the claimant. Solicitors will also consider any special damages, such as a loss of earnings, when valuing your claim.

For a more accurate estimation of your claim, speak to our advisors. They can discuss compensation for stress and anxiety in the UK and what you could be awarded in a successful claim.

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How much compensation for stress at work?

We hope that our guide has provided you with helpful insight into how you could seek compensation for stress caused at work.

You can always reach out to one of our advisers for any additional questions you may have. They could offer you free legal advice and go into more detail about everything we have discussed in this guide. They could also:

  • Give you a free evaluation of your eligibility to make a claim
  • Talk to you about how compensation for stress and anxiety can be valued
  • Provide you with information on the stress at work claims process

For any enquiries you have about work related stress claims, you can contact an adviser by:

Useful Links

Below are some links related to claiming stress at work compensation that might help you:

In addition, here are some other guides from our website:

Thank you for reading our stress at work claims guide, where we hope to have answered the question of “how much compensation for stress at work could I be owed?”.