ALL ABOUT STRESS
Under current UK legislation, employers have a duty of care to protect the safety, welfare and health of all their employees at work. They have to assess the risks arising in the workplace and also any work-related stress their employees might experience.
There are three major sources of stress
1. Work related
2. External
3. Personal
What is Stress?
“Stress is the demand of effort upon energy” - Stress is an essential component for any kind of work that takes place. Problems only arise when there is too much effort required for available energy or more energy is available than can be expounded in work.
- Stress is important and not all stress is detrimental to health.
- However, workplace stresses are on the increase - presentation, deadlines, longer hours, job dissatisfaction, bullying to name but a few.
- Everybody is working longer hours, so leisure and personal time is reduced.
- Stress is the underlying cause of approximately 75% of health issues today.
- Stress problems within organisations account for 1/3 of all absences, this equated to 13.5 million working days of lost productivity in 2007/8.
- Stress is currently costing the country approximately £10 billion a year in lost production.
- This is a huge expense for employers and employees.
- Stress experienced in the workplace can be a cause of life-threatening conditions.
Work / Life Balance
- Avoiding working constantly and frequently taking work home.
- Not taking home related stress into work if it can be avoided – keeping work and home life separate.
- Taking appropriate time off, i.e. holidays, weekends.
- Making sure you leave work behind when on holiday.
- Finding things to distract you out of work, i.e. hobbies and interests.
- Learning to slow down, switch off and relax out of work.
- Becoming more physically active, a brisk walk or change of scene can clear your head.
So how can we help you?
Our aim is to allow people to look at their stress and its very negative effects and to realise if they cannot change the stressful situation, they can learn to change their reaction to it. We will demonstrate easy techniques that can be used on a daily basis and are well known to radically reduce stress levels.
"Work / life balance is just like putting together the pieces of a puzzle and making them fit".