Stress can be described as the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other excessive demands placed on them.
Every manager and employee needs to understand the causes of stress, how to recognise it and what to do about it. By working together and using effective management techniques, you and your employees will be able to avoid most problems.
Stress affects individual workers. Working time is lost, less work is done; therefore costs increase and overall performance suffers. In turn, workload on colleagues increases and this may cause stress for them too.
Personal performance may improve with pressure, up to a certain point. Beyond that point, continuous pressure leads to a fall in performance as the person is no longer able to cope.
Signs of this are fatigue, poor judgement and bad decision making. In turn, this can lead to serious business problems.
However, effective management of stress can reduce absence, increase work quality and performance, reduce resistance to change, improve relationships with customers, colleagues and suppliers, and reduce staff turnover. So it contributes to good company performance and is a key part of a positive, proactive human resources policy.
In most cases, pressure can be a motivator as perceived by the person concerned. Many people need some level of pressure, whether it is applied by their manager, work colleagues or even themselves in order to provide the necessary drive to achieve targets that have been set for them or that they have set for themselves.
In this respect, pressure can come from many sources including:
- the intention to meet personal and/or business targets;
- the need to follow agreed procedures in order to work in a safe and socially acceptable manner; and
- the desire to further their own career.
It is only when the pressure becomes excessive that it can create stress and, when prolonged, this can lead to a range of mental and physical problems.
According to the HSE publication Tackling Stress: The Management Standards Approach, only 20 percent of people say that they find their work either very or extremely stressful.
Managing stress at work
The HSE and EEF have both produced guidance and assessment tools to help you to judge the pressure points in your organisation in a reasonably objective manner. See the HSE's Management Standards and EEF's Work Organisation Assessment Tool.
Managing stress is similar to managing other hazards in the workplace. The key elements in the process are:
- recognising the problem;
- determining the levels of risk in various parts of the business;
- identifying and putting in place appropriate controls to minimise the identified risks;
- monitoring the effectiveness of the controls; and
- reviewing and, where necessary, re-assessing the risk levels.
Good stress management is essentially about good people management. When introducing a programme you should include:
- awareness and consultation sessions for all staff on the arrangements for implementing the stress management arrangements;
- a training programme for managers and supervisors on recognising the signs of stress, for example, with regard to reasons for sickness absence given on self-certificates or GP certificates and the need to give assurances on confidentiality;
- action to be taken if any employee shows signs of stress or if any employee were to declare that they had a problem; and
- advice on how stress risk assessments and evaluation are to be carried out together with assurances that the programme is structured to ensure the anonymity of all participants. Also details on how the results will be used to introduce any necessary improvements.