Today is National Stress Awareness Day. Research launched this week by Edenred found that the issue of stress is still the leading health and wellbeing concern for around four in ten organisations in the UK.
Most of us are aware of the impact of visible signs of stress on ourselves and those around us. Terse conversations, a shorter than normal fuse and overly emotional responses to things that wouldn’t normally warrant more than a passing comment are some things that make stressed people hard to be around.
Stress damages relationships in and out of the workplace and, however much some protest to the contrary, has a negative impact on people and their performance.
Yet the biggest problem with stress isn’t stress itself, it is that we are still in a world where few organisations or individuals appear to have a coherent approach to supporting employee wellbeing at work. There may well be policies in place to help with stress in many organisations, as a CBI survey found this year, but only one in five employees say they feel supported at work when they feel stressed according to the charity Mind.
So what do we do to fix this?
The first thing is to acknowledge that dealing with stress needs more than a policy. It needs an environment where wellbeing and health is valued and championed as a virtue.
Managers play an important role too. The ideas that people who can’t deal with stress are weak or bad at their jobs – something which many employees complain of – is unhealthy for employees and their organisation. From the leadership team to the front line, managers need to be open to conversations about stress and know how to help their colleagues deal with it.
Education also has to play its part. Stress is a symptom which tells us when a person is feeling stretched beyond their capabilities. Understanding the drivers is critical to solving it.
Sometimes the cause will be due to factors in the workplace, sometimes it could be underlying personal or family issues. It can also be a result of poor health and lifestyle. Whichever it is, you won’t remove the stress from an individual without removing its cause.
That is something which is true for people and organisations.
More organisations are waking up to this fact as they put in place proactive wellbeing strategies but with only 40% planning to do so in the next year, it is clear that there is plenty of scope for this to become more of a priority for employers.
Andy Philpott is sales and marketing director at Edenred – for more comment, insight and whitepapers visit www.edenred.co.uk/ehub you call follow Andy on twitter @andy_philpott
