Work-related stress is already your legal duty. The load lands on your managers.
Updated: Aug 25
Outside financial services, work-related stress is not a wellbeing initiative. It is a legal duty. UK employers must manage the risk of work-related stress so far as is reasonably practicable, and evidence that they have. In a law firm, that risk does not sit evenly across the building. It concentrates in one layer: the partners and team heads who absorb the firm's conflict. This piece sets out what the law requires, why the exposure is rising, and the reasonable steps a managing partner should be able to point to before anyone asks.
Work-related stress: what the law actually requires
The duty is older and broader than most firms assume. Under section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, an employer must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health of its employees. Health includes mental health. Under regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, an employer must carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment of the risks its people are exposed to. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is explicit that this includes work-related stress. Stress is not carved out of the risk framework because it is invisible. It is inside it.
To make that assessable, HSE publishes its Management Standards: six areas an employer is expected to keep under control. Demands (workload, patterns, environment). Control (how much say people have). Support. Relationships (including conflict). Role (clarity). Change (how it is managed). HSE's Working Minds campaign presses the same point in plainer terms: reach out, recognise, respond, reflect, and make it routine. The through-line is simple. Assess the risk, act on it, and be able to show your work.
Why the exposure is rising now
The scale is not marginal. In 2024/25, 964,000 workers reported work-related stress, depression or anxiety, and 22.1 million working days were lost to it (HSE, 2024/25). Mental health is now the primary driver of work-related ill health in Great Britain. This is the backdrop against which the duty is being read.
For years, the practical risk of a stress claim or an HSE intervention felt remote, and many firms treated the duty as theoretical. That is changing. HSE made work-related mental health an explicit focus in its Protecting People and Places strategy in 2022, and it has now begun to move from guidance to enforcement. In December 2025 it issued a Notice of Contravention to the University of Birmingham for failing to manage the risk of work-related stress: the risk assessments were too generic, the controls were not implemented, and the monitoring was inadequate. Health and safety lawyers reading that case have been blunt that it is an early signal, and that improvement notices, and in time prosecutions, are a question of when rather than whether.
Running underneath is the emergence of a benchmark. ISO 45003:2021 is the first international standard on managing psychosocial risk within an occupational health and safety management system. It remains voluntary, but it is fast becoming the reference point for what "managing the risk properly" looks like, which matters, because reasonably practicable is measured against what a competent employer could and should have done.
A note on scope, because firms conflate two regimes. In financial services, the FCA has gone further: from 1 September 2026 its non-financial misconduct rules bring bullying and harassment inside the regulatory perimeter for around 37,000 FS firms. That is a financial-services regime. For law firms and everyone outside FS, the relevant duty is the HSE one described here. Two regulators, moving the same direction, but do not borrow the FCA's language for a law firm. The HSE test is the one that applies to you.
Why a law firm is uniquely exposed
Most stress frameworks are written for physical demand: hours, shifts, workload. A law firm's risk is different in kind. It is the sustained carrying of other people's conflict, and it lands on specific people.
Conflict in a firm finds one door first. The associate about to resign. The two partners routing everything through email so they never share a room. The grievance waiting for someone senior to own it. It arrives at whoever is expected to stay composed and sort it, and that person was trained to practise law, not to carry any of this. Workplace conflict costs UK employers around £28.5bn a year (Acas, on 2018/19 data), and in a firm it lands on a manager first, informally, off the record, where nobody counts the absorption.
The manager layer is also the one failing fastest. Manager engagement fell to 22% worldwide in 2025, the steepest drop of any layer (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026), and managers now report worse wellbeing, and more day-to-day stress, than the people they manage. 82% of UK managers entered the role with no formal management training (CMI, 2023). So the layer holding the firm's hardest human load is the layer given the least structure to hold it. For HSE purposes, that is not a wellbeing observation. It is where your risk assessment should be looking hardest, and where, right now, most firms are not looking at all.
The reasonable steps a managing partner should be able to evidence
"Reasonably practicable" is not a mood. It is an evidential standard. If the question were ever asked, whether by a regulator, a claimant's advisers, or your own management board, these are the things that stand up:
A risk assessment that actually covers psychosocial risk. Not a physical-premises assessment with a wellbeing paragraph bolted on. A suitable and sufficient assessment against the six Management Standards, applied to the realities of the firm.
A clear read of where the load concentrates. Which roles carry the firm's conflict and pressure, and are therefore the highest-risk points in the layer. A risk assessment that treats every role as equally exposed has not been done properly.
Proportionate controls, documented. The routes, the release valves, the changes to how the work is structured, and a record of the decisions and why they were made.
Managers equipped, not just trained once. Evidence that the people carrying the load have the structure to carry it, distinct from a one-off resilience session.
Review. A duty that is assessed once and filed is not managed. Show the cadence of review and what changed.
The test is not whether nothing ever goes wrong. People are human and firms are pressured. The test is whether, when it does, you can show you took the risk seriously and acted on it. Most firms cannot, because they mistook provision for management.
Why policies and EAPs are not enough
Here is the trap. Every wellbeing benefit a firm offers has a usage rate, and almost no firm has looked at it. The EAP with single-digit uptake. The resilience webinar that ran once. On the budget line they read as a stress strategy. In an HSE frame they are a receipt, not a control. Provision is not management.
There is a structural reason the uptake is low, and it is the same reason the risk is real. Wellbeing is offered to the individual and used in private. The one benefit that asks a partner to raise a hand and admit they are not coping is the one benefit built on the assumption that they will, when their entire role is performing composure so that nobody sees the strain. So it sits unused, the risk stays buried, and the low uptake gets read as apathy. It is not apathy. It is the risk, showing you exactly what it is. A risk assessment that counts the existence of an EAP as a control has misread the problem.
What managing the risk actually looks like
Managing psychosocial risk in a firm is not another thing to opt into. It is a change to the structure around the people carrying the load, so that relief does not depend on anyone confessing they are underwater. Read the layer: where it will crack first, and what is loading it. Build the structure: the routes and release valves that carry the weight. Hold it: keep the layer read as the pressures shift. That is the difference between a firm that can evidence reasonable steps and one that has a folder of policies and a rising exposure.
I spent 25 years as a family-law barrister, ranked as a Leading Junior in The Legal 500, and I co-founded a chambers. I carried other people's highest-stakes conflict for a living, and I helped run the professional-services partnership that had to hold the people doing it. The Bar builds structure for that load. Most firms hand their partners the same job with none of it.
You survey the building every year. Nobody inspects the stone where the pressures meet.
If you are the managing partner and you could not, today, put your hand on the risk assessment that covers your manager layer, that is the gap worth closing before anyone asks. Book a call.
Common questions
Is work-related stress a legal duty for UK employers?
Yes. Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, employers must assess and manage the risk of work-related stress so far as is reasonably practicable, the same framework that applies to any other workplace risk.
What are the HSE Management Standards?
Six areas HSE expects employers to keep under control: Demands, Control, Support, Relationships, Role, and Change. They turn the general duty on stress into something a firm can actually assess and evidence.
Does ISO 45003 apply to law firms?
ISO 45003:2021 is a voluntary international standard for managing psychosocial risk. It is not mandatory, but it is becoming the benchmark for what managing the risk properly looks like, which is relevant because "reasonably practicable" is measured against what a competent employer could have done.
Is this the same as the FCA's non-financial misconduct rules?
No. The FCA rules (from 1 September 2026) are a financial-services regime for around 37,000 FS firms. For law firms and other non-FS employers, the applicable duty is the HSE one described here.
Read your own firm next
The Manager-Layer Fracture Check is six checks and ten minutes. It scores whether the layer absorbing your firm's conflict has any structure holding it. Get the Fracture Check.
When you want the layer examined properly, the Keystone Briefing is 90 minutes with the person who owns the risk, and the Fracture Point Readout lands within 48 hours. Book a consultation.
The weight this duty keeps missing: the third load.
The structural picture behind the duty: manager layer burnout.
Where the argument goes next: The Third Load, a free essay series.
This article is general information about employers' duties in relation to work-related stress under UK health and safety law. It is not legal advice. Sarah Fearon is a former barrister, and Fearon Advisory provides structural and organisational advisory, not legal services.
