Work stress can adversely affect your organization. It can increase absenteeism, decrease work commitment from your staff, increase staff turn-over, impair your group’s performance and productivity, increase unsafe working practices and accident rates, increase complaints from clients and customers, increase liability to legal claims and actions by stressed workers, and ultimately damage your organization’s image both internally and externally.

You definitely wouldn’t want these things to happen, so the best thing to do immediately is redesign the work through a new and effective strategy to reduce work stress. Though not exactly simple to do, there are scientific means to carry out the redesign process by delineating and focusing on demands, knowledge base and abilities, support, and control methods.

Change the demands of work. Change the way the job is done. Maybe, you have to change the work environment itself. Redesign the way the workload is distributed.

Stress is a result of the inability to cope with the demands of work. You are always bound to meet incapable employees. Hit the nail on the head. Increase their capacity to meet the demands of work by developing their knowledge and skills.

You can also redesign the way employees control the work they do. Maybe, you’ll need to introduce flexi-time, job-sharing, and more consultation about working practices. The trick is to let your workers know that no job is too difficult for them because they are not alone in doing it, though they are ultimately accountable for their respective tasks.

By allowing more interaction among employees, as well as encouraging teamwork in the workplace, you are thereby increasing the perceived amount and quality of support that the staff gets.

Over and above these, you would do better if you evaluate the steps you have taken to reduce work stress in the office. Nothing is tried and true. Everything is experiential. Stick to what works for you and disregard the ones that don’t – immediately.

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Via Learndirect

There’s an irony to the current raging recession. While millions have lost their jobs, livelihood, and their healthcare plans in all probability, getting promoted at work may also be hazardous to one’s health. Upward mobility at the workplace may not augur too well with one’s physical and mental health.

The logic is simple if we are to go by the findings of a research done in Britain: ‘when people get promoted, they suffer on average about 10 percent more mental strain and are less likely to find the time to go to the doctor.’

But haven’t we known that all along? Of course, we know that higher rungs on the corporate ladder really mean bigger responsibilities and extended working hours, thus adding to stress and subtracting from personal time to even go see a doctor.

The research used information from a yearly survey of British people, including data on Brits who had been promoted. The study is obviously inconclusive and no way global. Among the findings is the 20 percent drop in doctor visits for those who were promoted, attributed to lack of time.

Work stress, though, is a serious matter. And it comes when there is a palpable imbalance between professional and personal life. If unattended, it can lead to mental and physical fatigue that can further deteriorate to disease and absenteeism from work.

So, those who get promoted at work would do well to balance their heavier workload with their personal life lest the new and brighter job position vanish in the light of poor performance turn out due to symptoms and manifestations of stress, counting among them poor memory, poor concentration, irritability, and distress – all things associated with poor employee performance. Just relax for success.

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Via Live Science

Workplace stress can pose numerous problems to a business organization. The company’s performance is definitely put on the line when this malaise pervades the workplace. Stress at work may challenge the healthiness and performance of the business organization. When unhealthy organizations do not get the best performance from their workers, their competitiveness in the market is most affected, sometimes even upsetting their chances of survival.

The manager has tools at his disposal, though, if he is determined to cure this human resource malady. Good management and good work organization are the best forms of stress prevention. In other words, a bad manager produces a stressed worker.

If employees are already stressed, their managers should not turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the situation. Above all, they should know how to help by first being aware of its existence. It would be difficult for employers to alleviate a workers’ stress that comes from outside the workplace. However, he can very well protect workers from stress that arises through work.

Best practices in stress management almost always boils down to two core concepts: preventing stress from happening and preventing it from causing serious damage to workers’ and organizational health, when workplace stress already exists.

In many countries, there are already laws in place that oblige employers to take care of the health and safety of their workers. A good part of this occupational health and safety package is the management of stress-related hazards. Employers would do well to acquaint themselves with these pertinent pieces of legislation.

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Via human resources leader

The Programme of Occupational Health by the World Health Organization (WHO) published a series of occupational health documents entitled Protecting Workers’ Health. This is the result of the implementation effort of the Global Strategy on Occupational Health for All. Both the WHO and the International Labor Organization (ILO) recognize work stress as a major global challenge because it is a known deterrent to workers’ optimal performance as it affects workers’ health. Work stress also affects the overall healthiness of business organizations.

Stress is a result of the imbalance or mismatch between the demands and pressures on a person versus the person’s available capabilities in the form of knowledge and skills. It is the tipping point when someone realizes he is short of human powers to meet a demand. Stress almost always rests in the region of the mind even before it translates to any other manifestation such as physical proof of stress.

Stress is the challenge on a worker’s ability to cope with work. Often, it occurs when the pressures of work exceed the worker’s ability to cope. There are times, too, when a worker’s knowledge and abilities are not appropriately utilized, and this also results in work stress.

Workers who are stressed are apt to be unhealthy, uninspired to work, poorly motivated to succeed, less productive in their tasks, and less alert for the sake of safety at work. The organizations to which they belong become less successful in a competitive market.

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Via HELPGUIDE

The Programme of Occupational Health by the World Health Organization (WHO) published a series of occupational health documents entitled: Protecting Workers’ Health. These contain the implementation approaches of the Global Strategy on Occupational Health for All, a result of the Fourth Network Meeting of the WHO Collaborating Centres in Occupational Health. The WHO, along with the International Labor Organization (ILO), recognizes stress as a world-wide major challenge to workers’ health and the wellbeing of their organizations.

In many countries, legislation mandates employers to take care of the health and safety of their workers. This duty includes the management of stress-related hazards, work stress, and basic mental and physical health of employees. Employers are advised to familiarize themselves with the relevant law in their country.

Corporate stress management is a complex process that includes the prevention of stress at the workplace, and where employees are already experiencing stress, the prevention of further and more serious damage to workers’ health by stress. Corporate management has seen the debilitating effects of work stress to the general health of their organization, as well as to the company’s bottom line.

Poor worker performance, increased absenteeism, decreased commitment to work, and increased staff turn-over are just some of the concrete manifestations of the effect of stress at the workplace. These manifestations subtract from the company’s ability to be competitive. That is why many companies and corporations have joined the work stress relief bandwagon, seemingly spoiling their employees in the process.

And most importantly, the uptrend in the relief of work stress has spawned an entire global industry of health professionals, occupational therapists, fitness instructors, dieticians, and the like to service the needs of thousands of corporations across the globe.

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Via Clarity Seminars