Standards
Three standards. One of them is not the law, and neither are the other two.
The duty to assess the risk of work-related stress and act on what you find is legal. Every standard below is guidance on how to do it well. Anybody telling you certification against one of them is mandatory is selling you something.
01 — Compared
What each one is, and what it is not.
| No. | Standard | Status | Why it comes up |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | HSE Management Standards The UK framework. Six areas: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change. | Guidance. Not legally enforceable | The recognised method for discharging a duty that is itself legal. What a UK health and safety function already runs on. |
| 02 | ISO 45003 The first international standard on psychological health and safety at work, published 2021. | Guidance. Cannot be certified against | Usually arrives because a customer, parent company, insurer or tender has asked how psychosocial risk is managed. |
| 03 | BS 30480 The UK’s first national standard on suicide and the workplace. Free to download from BSI. | Guide. In effect 30 November 2025 | New enough that most organisations have not yet worked out what it asks of them. It raises what a reasonable employer is expected to have considered. |
None of the three is certifiable in itself. ISO 45001 is the certifiable occupational health and safety standard, and ISO 45003 is the guidance that sits beside it.
02 — One piece of work
Not three assessments.
The overlap between the three is most of their content. Demands, control, support, relationships, role and change describe the same hazards ISO 45003 groups as work organisation, social factors and work environment. BS 30480 addresses one specific and serious outcome within the same territory.
So the assessment is carried out once, against the six Management Standards, and mapped to the others. The findings arrive in one document that can be handed to whoever asked, in whichever vocabulary they asked in.
Being sold three exercises against three standards is a sign of somebody billing by the framework.
Start with the standard somebody named at you.
Usually the question behind it is narrower than the standard, and worth establishing before anyone quotes for anything. The first conversation costs nothing.