Stress goes global: comparing claims in UK and New Jersey and potential future impact

The International Labour Organization (ILO) have released its landmark 2026 Global report, The Psychosocial Working Environment: Global Developments and Pathways for Action (the Report), providing some stark insights into workplace stress claims in New Jersey.

It is very apparent, comparing the causation tests in New Jersey and UK, that the legal causation issues in UK stress at work claims remain significantly narrower than many of the international compensation frameworks highlighted in the Report. While the ILO analysis reflects a growing global acceptance that psychosocial conditions of work can materially contribute to psychiatric illness, cardiovascular disease and suicide, the UK legal system still approaches these claims cautiously through common law negligence principles, strict foreseeability tests, and complex evidential burdens.

 The legal test in different jurisdictions

In England and Wales, stress at work claims are primarily governed by negligence and the principles established in the case of  Hatton v Sutherland [2002] EWCA Civ 76.

In New Jersey, workplace stress claims face a heightened legal standard established in the landmark 1991 case Goyden v. State Judiciary, 256 N.J. Super. 438 (App. Div. 1991), aff'd, 128 N.J. 54 (1992). Under Goyden, a petitioner seeking workers' compensation for occupational psychiatric injury must satisfy a three-pronged test:

1. Objectively verifiable stressful work conditions — more than subjective testimony

2. Work conditions peculiar to the particular workplace — not conditions common to ordinary life

3. Objective evidence supporting a claim of psychiatric disability.

The key causation difficulty is that UK courts treat stress as inherently multifactorial. Employers are not insurers against mental ill-health. Claimants must therefore establish that work-related stress materially caused the psychiatric condition, rather than merely coinciding with underlying vulnerabilities, personality traits, domestic stressors, or ordinary life pressures.

This contrasts with systems such as:

1. Australia where claims are accepted when employment is the “main contributing factor” for diagnosed psychological injury

2. Canada where multiple provinces recognised work related mental disorders when work is the “predominant cause”

3. Japan where Ministerial criteria link overwork and heavy workload to mental disorders which permit broader statutory recognition of cumulative psychosocial injury.

The UK distinction between “stress” and recognisable injury

A major conceptual distinction in UK law is that “stress” itself is not actionable. The claimant must demonstrate a medically recognised psychiatric illness such as major depressive disorder; generalised anxiety disorder; PTSD or adjustment disorder. This creates a higher evidential threshold than some international compensation frameworks referenced by the Report that increasingly recognise burnout, psychosocial harm, or chronic workplace distress more broadly.

Foreseeability and employer knowledge

UK courts focus heavily on what the employer knew or ought reasonably to have known. Under Hatton, an employer is generally entitled to assume an employee can withstand ordinary job pressures unless there are “plain indications” of impending harm. This remains one of the most definable features of UK law compared with the systems described in the Report. For example, in Japan, overwork itself may trigger compensability thresholds. In Australia, working conditions can be objectively assessed as the “main contributing factor.”

In the UK, excessive workload alone rarely establishes liability unless accompanied by prior complaints, sickness absence, occupational health warnings, or medical evidence putting the employer on notice.

The causation inquiry therefore becomes intertwined with foreseeability. Courts  ask:

“Was psychiatric injury in this employee sufficiently foreseeable that the employer should have intervened? ather than “Did the work materially contribute to the illness?” This is a key divergence from the broader occupational disease approach promoted by the ILO.

Cardiovascular claims face even greater difficulties

The Report strongly links psychosocial hazards with cardiovascular disease, citing ischemic heart disease, stroke, long working hours, and chronic job strain. However, UK courts have historically been extremely cautious regarding stress-induced physical injury claims. Unlike New Jersey’s statutory framework under N.J.S.A. 34:15-7.2, the UK has no equivalent statutory route specifically recognising work-related cardiovascular injury caused by psychosocial stress.

In the UK, claimants would need to prove through expert medical evidence that workplace stress materially contributed to the cardiac event and the injury was reasonably foreseeable. This is  difficult where there are competing causative factors including smoking, hypertension, family history, lifestyle, and non-work stressors.

The multifactorial nature of cardiovascular disease creates substantial causation barriers under UK negligence principles.

The role of epidemiology

One of the most important implications of the Report for UK litigation is evidential. Historically, UK courts have been cautious about broad epidemiological evidence in individual stress claims. However, the ILO data may assist future claimants by strengthening arguments that long working hours, excessive job strain, and effort-reward imbalance are objectively hazardous occupational exposures.  This could become increasingly important in sectors already associated with high stress burdens.

The Report may also influence HSE guidance, employer risk assessments, occupational health standards, and ultimately judicial expectations regarding reasonable preventative measures.

Overall Comparison

Compared with the broader compensation and occupational disease frameworks described in the ILO report, UK stress at work litigation remains fault-based rather than compensatory, highly dependent on foreseeability, medically restrictive, and evidentially demanding.

Whilst New Jersey has a different health system and workplace culture to the UK, so therefore not directly comparable, the Report could strengthen future claimant arguments by providing:

1. global epidemiological evidence,

2. biological causation support,

3. recognition of cumulative psychosocial exposure,

4. and comparative legal examples from other jurisdictions.

Over time, this may place pressure on UK courts and policymakers to reconsider whether current legal causation tests adequately reflect modern medical understanding of workplace psychosocial harm.