The week aims to develop a greater understanding of stress and offer individuals and organisations access to proven coping strategies and sources of help.
Let’s start with the NHS as an example. Stress is believed to account for over 30% of sickness absence in the NHS, costing the service and therefore we as taxpayers a whopping £300-400 million per year. The latest NHS annual survey found that over 38% (36% per cent in 2016) of NHS staff reported that they had suffered from work-related stress. Not good!
The Health and Safety Executive (hse.gov.uk) defines stress as an adverse reaction that people have to excessive pressures or other types of demands placed on them. Stress affects people in different ways but there are common factors that can lead to stress and poor health. They report that in the period 2018/19, 602,000 workers went absent with stress and related conditions, notching up a staggering 12.8 million days off.
Returning to the NHS, we can all appreciate the types of stressors our hard-put doctors, nurses and others work with including rising workloads, unpredictable patients, unrelenting shift patterns, long hours and occupational trauma their work entails. We all expect a little stress in our work from time to time, but also all have different tolerances to it and ways of coping or maybe not coping well at all!
It’s not trite to say that the key to combatting stress, other than having stress-free jobs/lives (hardly likely!), is feeling supported and being able to discuss these stress factors without judgement before they assume crisis-proportions. Its proven that being able to do that helps workers to manage those feelings and so drives down the risk of impairment and sickness, with its own collateral impact on their mental wellbeing.
There are lots of good ways to help prevent stress or at least help make it more manageable for your colleagues, including:
1. As an employer, demonstrate you’re awareness and acceptance of workplace stress by de-stigmatising through communicating about it whenever you can – mention it on email footers, posters, the canteen, staff meetings etc.
2. Train your managers (charities such as MIND offer great courses on your premises) to recognise its signs/support staff. Managers should allow staff to discuss stressors in regular staff 1-1s (if you don’t hold these, then start!). Develop and agree simple and deliverable action plans when issues are raised and don’t try to have all the answers – its ok to take advice.
3. Praise and reward managers for the support they give but be sure to watch them for signs too, being a manager doesn’t make them more immune to stress, it makes them more susceptible!
4. Get a good Employee Assistance Programme in place. There are some great schemes out there.
5. Occupational Health – a vital part of prevention and key to support and recovery, acting as a support to the employee but also the manager and HR. You could consider referring or allowing self-referral.
And yes of course it all costs a bit of money and effort, what doesn’t!? However, that investment pales compared to the cost of staff turnover, poor productivity, damaged morale and sickness absence.
For more on International Stress Awareness Week…check out: https://isma.org.uk/national-stress-awareness-week