’83% of employers believe stress is interfering with productivity and now costs British companies 1.24bn a year. ’It is seriously damaging the attempts of British businesses to increase productivity and to attract and retain staff’ - Research by the Health & Safety Executive, quoted in the Guardian, 25 October 2003.
One in five people in Britain say they are either ’very’ or ’extremely’ stressed at work. It is one of the biggest causes of ill health in the workplace, making half a million people unwell every year - Daily Mail, 28 January 2003.
To promote sensible remedies for a problem now acknowledged by all mainstream commentators The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) is holding a One-Day Regional Conference at The Thistle Marble Arch, London on Thursday, 27 November 2003 - Events@bacp.co.uk, telephone 0870 443 5252.
Is stress endemic? One psychological expert put it this way. Many people in 2003 sleep like babies. They wake up every two hours and cry.
Introducing the conference, BACP Chief Executive Laurie Clarke says: Pressure in the workplace is fine.
If you don’t feel at all nervous when managing a tricky confrontation, then you’re not really alive. But ’stress’, by definition, is harmful to human beings.
He quotes Dr Sidney Lecker of the Stress Control Center, New York, who claims that between one third and one half of all US executives now have their careers damaged by burnout - The scale of technology has grown to the
point where only a machine can cope with the demands of the system. Who else can be on call 24 hours a day, refuel in midflight, ignore domestic ties and contemplate redundancy with
a smile?
Another stress expert, Dr Malcolm Carruthers has written perceptively: To live for your work may seem admirable but to die for it seems both unnecessary and uneconomic.
Keynote speakers at the Conference include Professor Stephen Palmer of City University on Stress prevention and Management at Work; organisational consultant Dr Cheryl Travers on the question Could employees be killing
themselves? and occupational psychologist Joe Jordan on How the Best Organisations in the UK approach stress prevention.
Over-stress is a time-bomb ticking away in the basement of UK PLC. Burnout affects blue collar workers and workaholic managers alike, disrupting family life. It is not just a question of shopfloor versus management. In this
cost-and-corner-cutting culture we are all in the stress firing line. Managers who work 16-hour days are as culpable as lorry drivers who fall asleep at the wheel.
Research by Professor John Mcleod of the University of Abertay shows that one of the most effective organisational remedies is properly targeted workplace counselling:
* Overall, it can reduce levels of stress in the workplace by more than 50 per cent - and that is a staggering figure.
* Levels of work-related symptoms return to the normal range for more than half of all clients, says Professor McLeod.
* Levels of sickness and absence ALSO fall by between 25-50%. In one 1998 study by Professor Cary Cooper of the University of Manchester Institute of and Technology, the rates of sickness/absence actually fell by an average of 60 per cent.
* Nor is it just stress. Workplace counselling is effective in relieving the symptoms of both anxiety AND depression.
* The majority of those who use workplace counselling say they are highly satisfied with it.
* The same number would use the service again (if necessary) and would recommend it to their colleagues.
* Work-related anxiety will not go away until we learn how to respond to it differently. Counselling helps people respond differently and quickly.
* As a result, levels of job commitment and satisfaction ALSO rise.
* And levels of substance abuse are reduced.
* All styles of counselling turn out to be helpful. It is more important to see a well-trained practitioner than opt for one particular approach.
* Successful results can be achieved after as little as 3-8 sessions of counselling, says this report.
* AND Workplace counselling always covers its financial costs.
The task is to persuade EVERY working person that stress actually kills - after it has first stolen your quality of life.
Is work killing the workers?
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