School Health Check

Schools and trusts have a legal duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to protect employees from work-related stress. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) requires all employers to carry out a stress risk assessment and act on identified risks.

The School Health Check is a consultant-led stress and wellbeing diagnostic for schools. It helps leaders meet their legal duties around work-related stress while using the process to support meaningful organisational development. Grounded in organisational psychology and aligned with the HSE Management Standards, this structured, evidence-informed approach helps schools identify and address the workplace factors that influence staff wellbeing, performance, and retention.

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Whats Included:​

• A review of leadership behaviours, workload management, support systems, and school culture.

• Flexible data gathering tailored to your school's context:

  • Self-reported wellbeing and stress indicators 

  • Sickness absence and turnover data 

  • Performance markers (e.g. deadlines missed, stuff turnover)

• Staff surveys, interviews, or focus groups, depending on your needs

• A comprehensive workplace stress risk assessment 

• Clear, actionable recommendations based on psychology and sector expertise 

• Facilitated action planning to embed sustainable change

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Outcomes For Your School Or Trust:​

• Fulfil legal duties around workplace stress management

• Gain an accurate, evidence-based picture of pressures affecting your staff

• Develop a targeted action plan to strengthen staff wellbeing, leadership sustainability, and school-wide retention.

• Establish a structured process schools can revisit regularly. This embeds stress risk management into ongoing monitoring and improvement​

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Our School Stress Risk Assessment Process

We follow a structured, evidence-informed process to help schools and trusts understand and reduce the risk of work-related stress, aligned with the HSE Management Standards and principles of organisational psychology in education.

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Step 1: Understand Your Context​

 

​We begin with a review of your current staff wellbeing policies, leadership practices, and organisational culture. This helps us tailor our approach to your specific school, trust, or setting.​

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Step 2: Gather Insight

 

We collect meaningful data through:

• Tailored staff wellbeing surveys

• Focus groups and interviews 

• Sickness absence, turnover, and performance-related metrics

 

This helps us build a clear picture of the workplace stressors impacting your school.

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Step 3: Identify Risks

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We analyse the findings to uncover patterns in staff stress, workload pressure, leadership behaviour, and systemic challenges. This step highlights key organisational risks to wellbeing, engagement, and retention.

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Step 4: Recommend Actions

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We provide a clear, evidence-based report outlining: 

• Current strengths and organisational risks

• Practical, research-led strategies for improvement

• Recommendations aligned to HSE workplace stress standards and best practise in school leadership.

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Step 5: Support Change

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We facilitate a strategic action planning session with your leadership team to help prioritise next steps. This ensures sustainable change that improves:

• Leadership behaviours

• Staff wellbeing and engagement

• Organisational health and culture

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This process supports schools not just to comply with legal requirements, but to embed a proactive, long-term approach to wellbeing and leadership sustainability.