"Stress Management"

Kathryn Tyler

HRMagazine

September 2006, pp. 79-83

Aside from the well-known health concerns connected to excessive stress, recent research indicates that 51% of employees say they have high levels of stress with extreme fatigue/feeling out of control; 50% of employees miss one to two days of work per year due to stress; and 46% of employees say they come to work one to four days a year when they are too stressed to be effective. Because of issues like these, many employers are identifying the chief stressors in employees' lives, reducing or eliminating work-related stressors, and helping employees manage and cope with stress, from the workplace or elsewhere.

The article discusses the following possible approaches to reducing the causes of negative workplace stress:

• Training employees and managers to boost productivity—If employees can do their jobs better, the workplace will be less stressful. More effective managers also reduce negative stress
• Restructuring work teams—This can reduce allow social support to share the load of potential workplace stressors
• Encouraging employees to take vacations and weekends off—in one company, if an employee sends an email on the weekend, a pop-up reminds them to disconnect from work and allow others to do the same
• Offering flextime—This helps deal with potential non-work-related stressors

Some ways to assist employees to cope are:

• Offer a variety of employee assistance methods
• Invest in stress reduction training
• Offer organizational concierge services, including dry cleaning, oil changes, watch repair, travel arrangements, mailing services, and restaurant food delivery—employees pay for the services they need, but not for the concierge service itself
• On-site child care
• Serenity rooms to get away from it all for a brief period
• On-site massage therapy
• Providing snacks and meals
• Wellness initiatives

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