About the SSPPT Tools and APMR Framework
SSPPT stands for Stressful Situations Profiling and Planning Tools, which were developed by Business Psychologist, Alan Bradshaw. If you want to find out more about Alan's back story, click the previous link.
On this page, I'd like to give you a bit of background about the tools and framework, about where they came from and what led to their development. I started working on the tools about 20 years ago. They largely grew out of my experience working with, and training, managers and also conducting many organizational surveys to help with stress risk assessments.
Back in 2004, the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had launched something called the Management Standards, which provided guidance and framework for managing stress risks in organizations. They also launched a 35-item survey tool. I worked very hard to promote the Management Standards approach and ran roadshow events all over the country to do that. I also ran very many surveys using their survey tool. More recently, HSE became a client of mine. I have trained most of their management population and provided many wellbeing webinars to employees during the Covid pandemic. HSE is an outstanding organization filled with committed and talented people trying to make a difference in many complex workplace health risk scenarios. What I have to say next in no way implies criticism of the organization. I have hugely enjoyed working with them and met many, truly brilliant people there.
But to me, something fundamentally wasn't right about the Management Standards approach. It wasn't really effective. Managers in the many different client organizations I've worked with, who really needed to own the management of stress risks at work, just didn't. The stress survey to them was 'just another survey' to be cynical about. It was usually run by either the silos of HR or Health and Safety and didn't apply to them as they saw it. The approach didn't work at the level of the manager, team or individual. I saw many and varied attempts by clients to address that issue, but they again were ineffective. Or worse, they ended up causing more stress, particularly for the line manager.
This got me thinking deeply about what it was that was wrong with the approach, because for sure managers did need practical tools, and they did need to own the management of stress risks at work. Also, they needed something they could use proactively to prevent stress, for example in teams, and something they could use reactively when they had a concern about stress or mental wellbeing in an individual.
Unfortunately, the Management Standards approach didn't work well for either of those scenarios. When managers tried to use it in those contexts, they would typically go through the areas covered by the Standards (demands, control, support, relationships, role and change) one by one and ask questions in a way that was, to me, like leading the witness in a legal case. If you ask about demands, you'll get a list of things related to demands. Same for control. Same for support and so on. Managers would end up with a huge list and this was unmanageable. Worse, it wasn't really helpful, because it didn't really reflect the reality of what the basic stress issues were and which were more important.
If you ask a team what the stressful situations or issues are that cause them stress (or other negative emotions), they will tell you (very directly!) what they are. They'll also tell you which of them is most important or having the most negative effect on their wellbeing. I realised then that we were doing everything in the wrong order. The Management Standards were genuinely useful, but as means of categorizing stressful situations that had already been identified and prioritized. Categorization in this way helps both with solution generation and with identifying patterns and trends.
At the level of the indvidual, the approach was even less helpful, because what causes stress for an individual employee is often not work-related or is a messy combination of work and non-work factors. But those real-life, messy situations are still work-relevant, because they have an impact on the individual at work, not just on wellbeing but also performance. So trying to use the Management Standards approach just didn't reflect reality for individuals experiencing stress. That meant that trying to use the Standards in this way was plain wrong.
So I began to think all that through and tried to come up with some better tools and a new methodology. I realised that two basic processes needed to happen, profiling and planning. But not profiling of the person, not another psychometric test (we definitely have enough of those!), and not something that highlighted how resilient someone was or how vulnerable to stress. That was missing the point and was also potentially dangerous, especially around blaming the victim. What was needed I thought, because stress after all is something perceived, was a profile of how a person or team saw the situation they were in. That's what I came to call a Stressful Situations Profile. When I started introducing this, managers liked it straight away. They got where I was coming from and they really found it useful. And it didn't create more stress or overload, because the Profile prioritized stressful situations and issues for action. The way the Profile was contructed also meant that it could easily be used as a benchmark and so was genuinely useful for evaluation and review following implementation of plans.
Of course, having a Stressful Situations Profile is all very well. You then need to do something to prevent and reduce stress. So I developed planning tools. I realised that two kinds of plans needed to be considered, preventive plans and if-then plans. Both were valid and effective ways of thinking about what to do: preventive plans for looking at what could be done about the situation itself or at least elements of it, and; If-then plans for what could be done if/when the situation occurs. Often, I found that people assumed, wrongly, that there was 'nothing we can do about it.' A focus on preventive planning encouraged ownership and improved perceptions of control, which is usually a profoundly good thing for wellbeing. Of course, some stressful situations can't be prevented, so the alternative is if-then planning. This is what 'we agree that we'll do' to cope better, stay calm or get support. I already knew that if-then plans were good for stress management - they reduced anxiety and particularly 'dread' about stressful situations that employees knew were going to recur (even if they didn't know exactly when). Looking at both types of stress management planning was what was needed.
I realised too that there needed to be a pre-planning stage. An opportunity to generate ideas first led to better plans, so I developed a template for that. And of course another template was necessary for evaluation and review of implemented plans.
I started testing and using the tools as part of training courses back in about 2012 to 2014 and they have been evolving since then. One thing I learned is that there are important differences between using the tools with teams and individuals. For example, it makes sense to focus mainly on work-related stress issues with teams. But for individuals, because non-work issues can be such a major cause of stress, the opportunity to include those issues in their Profile was very important. That highlighted too that issues of trust and confidentiality, especially between an individual and their manager, had to be taken into account. Dealing with individuals already struggling is very different from working proactively with teams. This is why there are two sets of templates and why managers need training in how to use the tools in those different contexts.
The other main area of development I worked on was the APMR Framework. You can find out more about that on the Framework page. APMR came really from working with organizations and managers on stress management over many years. I started to look in a 'big picture way' at all the evidence about the broad categories of risks (health risks, business risks and legal risks) linked to stress and mental health at work. I began to realise that it came down to four areas of stress management best practice, about what to know and what to do to manage and minimise the risks. The more I thought about it the simpler it seemed to be. It was really about raising Awareness, managing risks proactively and improving behaviours (Prevention), spotting problems early and establishing cause for concern (Monitoring), and Responding appropriately with support when there was a cause for concern. All of the most important risk management actions could fit into that simple framework. My organizational clients liked the simplicity of the framework and it helped them with culture change and policy development. And it worked just as well as a framework for management training and development. I've been working with the framework for many years and my views on it haven't changed. It still makes sense. It's simple but effective. It works.
Of course, I've done lots more and developed all kinds of training, toolkits and resources across my career. But I think this represents my best work and I've decided to share it with the world because I know the framework and tools can and will make a difference, helping organizations, managers and employees prevent and reduce stress and boost workplace wellbeing. Please help if you can by letting people know about this site and the tools they can access here. Also, please contact me directly if you would like to discuss partnering with me to help your people develop the skills in how to use the tools and framework.
Thank you
Alan Bradshaw, Business Psychologist
On this page, I'd like to give you a bit of background about the tools and framework, about where they came from and what led to their development. I started working on the tools about 20 years ago. They largely grew out of my experience working with, and training, managers and also conducting many organizational surveys to help with stress risk assessments.
Back in 2004, the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had launched something called the Management Standards, which provided guidance and framework for managing stress risks in organizations. They also launched a 35-item survey tool. I worked very hard to promote the Management Standards approach and ran roadshow events all over the country to do that. I also ran very many surveys using their survey tool. More recently, HSE became a client of mine. I have trained most of their management population and provided many wellbeing webinars to employees during the Covid pandemic. HSE is an outstanding organization filled with committed and talented people trying to make a difference in many complex workplace health risk scenarios. What I have to say next in no way implies criticism of the organization. I have hugely enjoyed working with them and met many, truly brilliant people there.
But to me, something fundamentally wasn't right about the Management Standards approach. It wasn't really effective. Managers in the many different client organizations I've worked with, who really needed to own the management of stress risks at work, just didn't. The stress survey to them was 'just another survey' to be cynical about. It was usually run by either the silos of HR or Health and Safety and didn't apply to them as they saw it. The approach didn't work at the level of the manager, team or individual. I saw many and varied attempts by clients to address that issue, but they again were ineffective. Or worse, they ended up causing more stress, particularly for the line manager.
This got me thinking deeply about what it was that was wrong with the approach, because for sure managers did need practical tools, and they did need to own the management of stress risks at work. Also, they needed something they could use proactively to prevent stress, for example in teams, and something they could use reactively when they had a concern about stress or mental wellbeing in an individual.
Unfortunately, the Management Standards approach didn't work well for either of those scenarios. When managers tried to use it in those contexts, they would typically go through the areas covered by the Standards (demands, control, support, relationships, role and change) one by one and ask questions in a way that was, to me, like leading the witness in a legal case. If you ask about demands, you'll get a list of things related to demands. Same for control. Same for support and so on. Managers would end up with a huge list and this was unmanageable. Worse, it wasn't really helpful, because it didn't really reflect the reality of what the basic stress issues were and which were more important.
If you ask a team what the stressful situations or issues are that cause them stress (or other negative emotions), they will tell you (very directly!) what they are. They'll also tell you which of them is most important or having the most negative effect on their wellbeing. I realised then that we were doing everything in the wrong order. The Management Standards were genuinely useful, but as means of categorizing stressful situations that had already been identified and prioritized. Categorization in this way helps both with solution generation and with identifying patterns and trends.
At the level of the indvidual, the approach was even less helpful, because what causes stress for an individual employee is often not work-related or is a messy combination of work and non-work factors. But those real-life, messy situations are still work-relevant, because they have an impact on the individual at work, not just on wellbeing but also performance. So trying to use the Management Standards approach just didn't reflect reality for individuals experiencing stress. That meant that trying to use the Standards in this way was plain wrong.
So I began to think all that through and tried to come up with some better tools and a new methodology. I realised that two basic processes needed to happen, profiling and planning. But not profiling of the person, not another psychometric test (we definitely have enough of those!), and not something that highlighted how resilient someone was or how vulnerable to stress. That was missing the point and was also potentially dangerous, especially around blaming the victim. What was needed I thought, because stress after all is something perceived, was a profile of how a person or team saw the situation they were in. That's what I came to call a Stressful Situations Profile. When I started introducing this, managers liked it straight away. They got where I was coming from and they really found it useful. And it didn't create more stress or overload, because the Profile prioritized stressful situations and issues for action. The way the Profile was contructed also meant that it could easily be used as a benchmark and so was genuinely useful for evaluation and review following implementation of plans.
Of course, having a Stressful Situations Profile is all very well. You then need to do something to prevent and reduce stress. So I developed planning tools. I realised that two kinds of plans needed to be considered, preventive plans and if-then plans. Both were valid and effective ways of thinking about what to do: preventive plans for looking at what could be done about the situation itself or at least elements of it, and; If-then plans for what could be done if/when the situation occurs. Often, I found that people assumed, wrongly, that there was 'nothing we can do about it.' A focus on preventive planning encouraged ownership and improved perceptions of control, which is usually a profoundly good thing for wellbeing. Of course, some stressful situations can't be prevented, so the alternative is if-then planning. This is what 'we agree that we'll do' to cope better, stay calm or get support. I already knew that if-then plans were good for stress management - they reduced anxiety and particularly 'dread' about stressful situations that employees knew were going to recur (even if they didn't know exactly when). Looking at both types of stress management planning was what was needed.
I realised too that there needed to be a pre-planning stage. An opportunity to generate ideas first led to better plans, so I developed a template for that. And of course another template was necessary for evaluation and review of implemented plans.
I started testing and using the tools as part of training courses back in about 2012 to 2014 and they have been evolving since then. One thing I learned is that there are important differences between using the tools with teams and individuals. For example, it makes sense to focus mainly on work-related stress issues with teams. But for individuals, because non-work issues can be such a major cause of stress, the opportunity to include those issues in their Profile was very important. That highlighted too that issues of trust and confidentiality, especially between an individual and their manager, had to be taken into account. Dealing with individuals already struggling is very different from working proactively with teams. This is why there are two sets of templates and why managers need training in how to use the tools in those different contexts.
The other main area of development I worked on was the APMR Framework. You can find out more about that on the Framework page. APMR came really from working with organizations and managers on stress management over many years. I started to look in a 'big picture way' at all the evidence about the broad categories of risks (health risks, business risks and legal risks) linked to stress and mental health at work. I began to realise that it came down to four areas of stress management best practice, about what to know and what to do to manage and minimise the risks. The more I thought about it the simpler it seemed to be. It was really about raising Awareness, managing risks proactively and improving behaviours (Prevention), spotting problems early and establishing cause for concern (Monitoring), and Responding appropriately with support when there was a cause for concern. All of the most important risk management actions could fit into that simple framework. My organizational clients liked the simplicity of the framework and it helped them with culture change and policy development. And it worked just as well as a framework for management training and development. I've been working with the framework for many years and my views on it haven't changed. It still makes sense. It's simple but effective. It works.
Of course, I've done lots more and developed all kinds of training, toolkits and resources across my career. But I think this represents my best work and I've decided to share it with the world because I know the framework and tools can and will make a difference, helping organizations, managers and employees prevent and reduce stress and boost workplace wellbeing. Please help if you can by letting people know about this site and the tools they can access here. Also, please contact me directly if you would like to discuss partnering with me to help your people develop the skills in how to use the tools and framework.
Thank you
Alan Bradshaw, Business Psychologist