Stress Management Courses

All Stress management courses / workshops cover the following main essential topics and themes.

What is Stress?

Stress is the adverse reaction that people have to the perception of excessive pressure. Stress usually manifests as an unhealthy state of mind or body or both.

The impact of work related stress

Some of the published statistics about stress include:

Stress is the most common cause of long term sick leave.
CIPD Report 2011

Stress and chronic ill health in the workplace costs £100bn
Dame Carol Black, ISMA Conference 2009

Estimates indicate that self-reported work-related stress, depression or anxiety accounted for an estimated 13.5 million working days in Britain in 2007/08
Labour Force Survey

In 2008 – for every 80p spent on health promotion and intervention programmes, £4 can be saved due to reduced absenteeism, temporary staff, presenteeism and improved motivation
The European Network for Workplace Health Promotion

Direct cost of sickness absence estimated as £635 per person per year
CIPD 2008

Identifying the causes of stress

It is important for organisations to identify what specific factors might be causing stress within their organisation, and whilst stressful circumstances cannot be entirely avoided, helping managers and employees to develop coping strategies and resilience is an effective way of minimising the impact of stress. While external causes of stress are more difficult to proactively manage, an employee who feels supported within the organisation is less likely to let stress impact on their work.

The role of line mangers in preventing and reducing stress

Whatever the cause of stress, it can hinder the performance of individuals, their teams and in some cases the wider organisation. Line Managers play an extremely important role in minimising stress and reducing the cost of it’s impact.

In order to ensure that employee stress does not impact on the performance of your organisation, it is essential that line managers:

• Do all they can to prevent stress at work
• Recognise the pressure points and sign of building stress within their team
• Effectively advise and assist individuals in managing and alleviating stress

In times of change and uncertainty which can bring additional pressure it is important that line managers focus in gaining and retaining the trust of their employees.

Undertaking Stress Audits and Risk Assessments

Investors in People “Health and Wellbeing Award” Guidance states that there are three main tasks that can help to tackle stress:

1. Creating a management environment that is aware of the causes of stress and that takes action to avoid it, with an emphasis on altering an individual’s situation or perception.
2. Undertaking a stress audit as part of the risk assessment process.
3. Undertaking individual risk assessments

Workshops and training courses are designed to meet the specific context and needs of your organisation.

© Copyright City Business Psychology, Internet Marketing and Web design by MonkeyFish Marketing