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Empowering Manager News September 2006

leadership through partnership

In this issue

Stressed? Me? Never!

Why stress matters to organisations

What can you do?

More information

Stressed? Me? Never!

Today I defrosted the freezer. I don’t want to think about how many years’ worth of ice dripped, and dropped away. It had become totally normal to have most of the top shelf occupied by a trainee iceberg, leaving only a tiny space there to make ice cubes, and I had got used to not being able to open the next drawer down at all. An abundance of fruit and veg in the garden has finally led me to get on with the job today to have room for produce in the freezer.

When something builds up slowly like ice in a freezer, it’s easy to get used to the small scale irritation of minor inconveniences, so that the whole thing becomes invisible even while it grows. Sometimes it takes a crisis or a compelling reason before we notice the polar bear on the shelf and, more important, do something about it.

In my experience, it can be like that with stress at work. It’s unusual that an overload of stress suddenly appears overnight. It often creeps in through:

· incremental increases in hours or workload,

· inefficient or out of date work practices that are just ‘the way we’ve always done the job’,

· the culture within the organisation which is made up of many small actions by many people

· repeated and long drawn out re-organisations, especially where redundancies are likely

These examples can be relatively easy to address once they have surfaced. More challenging in my view are the stresses people experience from the leadership styles of those in management positions. Nearly a third of employees said in a recent poll commissioned by Investors In People that they would swap their boss if they could.

In this issue, read about why stress matters to your organisation, what you can do about it and how Empowering Manager provides support, including the new Handling Stress Positively programme.

Here’s to a very fruitful Autumn for us all!

Alison Smith CPCC

Empowering Manager

leadership through partnership

Handling Stress

Why should employers be interested in stress?

Pressure is part and parcel of all work and helps to keep us motivated. But excessive pressure can lead to stress, which not only affects the individuals concerned, it can make a big difference to performance and profitability.

Work related stress has been shown to have adverse effects on:

employee commitment to work
staff performance and productivity
staff turnover and intention to leave
attendance levels
staff recruitment and retention
customer satisfaction
organisational image and reputation
potential litigation

Work-related stress can also impact teams. For example, losing one colleague for an extended period with a stress related illness can have a dramatic impact on the workload and morale of the rest of the team.

As well as the sound business reasons for addressing stress at work, employers also have a legal responsibility to tackle work related stress. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) expects organisations to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment for stress and to take action to tackle any problems identified.

What can you do?

In the past, interventions to deal with work related stress were mainly on an individual basis, often in the form of stress management courses for individuals. More recently a new approach is being endorsed by the HSE. Organisations are encouraged to measure themselves against Management Standards designed to reflect the conditions expected in an organisation with high levels of health, well being and organisational performance.

This new Management Standards approach brings the focus onto the organisation and causes of stress within it, rather than only concentrating on supporting individual stressed employees. The HSE provides very clear guidance and toolkits to help organisations implement the Standards click here for more. For in-house teams wanting help using the HSE toolkits, Empowering Manager provides support and offers Focus Group facilitation.

The HSE also say that

employers should acknowledge that stress has the potential to affect any member of staff, and
all parties should work together to provide individual support to people experiencing stress and stress-related illness.

Successful people need to know how to handle stress well to stay successful. Yet many people still don't want to admit they are experiencing stress for fear of being stigmatised. The Handling Stress Positively programme is designed for people in stressful situations, who want to be more effective at work, improve their work/life balance, and reduce the impact of stress on themselves and those around them.

Including the Handling Stress Positively programme in your organisation's Well-Being package will send a clear message that getting help with stress is encouraged, and complement the work you are doing to address organisational causes of stress.

And what if your HSE survey and focus groups have uncovered issues with the behaviour or management style of one or more people in leadership roles? Addressing this within the organisation can be difficult and you may want to bring in outside support. Empowering Manager works with leaders in groups and one-to-one to help them develop new ways to bring out the best in their staff. The Empowering Manager Group Workshops are also ideal for organisations wanting to move their management culture towards greater empowerment of staff.

Contact us now

for help with

¤ Implementing the HSE Management Standards

¤ Focus Group facilitation

¤ Addressing causes of stress

¤ Programmes for managers

¤ Programmes for staff

¤ Setting up activities for Stress Awareness Day 1 November 2006

Contact us now