Vigilance cannot be stressed enough

摘要

Stress at work claims can be very expensive for employers (in terms of compensation payable and in management time) and usually hinge on whether the employer could reasonably have foreseen that a particular employee would suffer psychiatric illness as a result of workplace pressures. Since the Court of Appeal's decision in Sutherland v Hatton in 2002, employers have felt able to take a fairly robust approach to such cases. This is because the guidelines set out in that case suggest that employees face a high hurdle when seeking to show that the employer could have reasonably foreseen their injury.