How to combat stress in the workplace for a healthy 2012 12/01/2012

For most of us it was a year dominated by bad news. Debt, unemployment, riots, cuts. It seemed everyone – not just those directly affected by the global financial crisis – felt the effects. So, despite the best efforts of Kate n’ Wills, for most of us 2011 was one to forget.  

Perhaps not surprisingly, in our work as psychologists and psychiatrists we saw a rise in the number of people seeking treatment for stress-related problems, and an even greater rise in organisations interested in ways of measuring, managing and preventing the damaging effects of stress.  

And stress is damaging. Not only is it now the commonest form of absenteeism in the workplace, it also dramatically reduces work performance. While most people need a certain amount of pressure to perform at their best, prolonged exposure to stress decreases performance and damages health. In organisational terms, stress is the great unseen cost on the balance sheet.

We worked with over 1000 senior executives in 2011, and our informal poll showed that the most common causes of stress in the workplace were:

1. Volume of work
2. Relentless deadlines
3. Conflicting priorities
4. Feeling undervalued
5. Lack of control over the working day

No surprises there, and on the face of it none of these stressors seems likely to change much in 2012. In fact, some economists are arguing that the worst is yet to come. Happy New Year? It seems unlikely.

What, then, can HR and wellbeing professionals do in a practical way to help people cope?  Well, the good news is – plenty. But first it’s worth describing what we see as the three main types of stress-related problems in the workplace.

At the least serious end of the spectrum, feeling stressed often leads busy professionals into a more distracted style of working in which their attention becomes divided as they constantly switch between tasks.

The problem is that this feels productive, but for any task involving what’s called a ‘cognitive load’ – for example problem solving or decision making – multitasking always makes performance worse. In fact, tasks take nearly twice as long to complete and errors become four times as likely.

Being distracted is the opposite of the ‘flow’ state which is characteristic of peak performance. It also increases the likelihood that we become reactive, only ever responding to events rather than shaping them. Finally, working in a distracted way tends to decrease mental wellbeing by making people less ‘present’ in their lives and more.

This is the classic ‘at risk’ category. When our daily lives are extremely busy there is a greater chance that we lose touch with our objectives, and become disengaged from our sense of purpose at work.

Employee engagement is a huge problem, with over 70% of all UK workers feeling that they are not truly engaged in what they do. These people may turn up for work, but they don’t really feel engaged in their work psychologically, and are often just going through the motions.

People who feel disengaged often report feeling as though they are on a treadmill, with no real output to show for their efforts. And the effects are real. Not only are disengaged workers less productive, they are also twice as likely to develop stress-related illnesses like depression.

The final category includes those people who need more than preventative help. These are the people for whom stress has become chronic and who are battling the classic signs of depression, anxiety-related disorders or burnout.  

This is surprisingly common, with an estimated 1 in 4 of all workers experiencing a stress-related mental health problem at any one time. Yet, 50% of all company bosses think the figure in their organisation is zero! Our experience is that no organisation – from multinational companies to premiership football teams – is exempt.

The good news is that some simple steps can help prevent or mitigate each of these problems, and in so doing help optimise health while enhancing workplace performance.

‘Resilience’ is the catch-all term to describe the ability to perform under pressure, cope effectively with stress and recover from setbacks quickly. A resilient workforce is therefore better able to cope with today’s fast-changing, demanding work environment.  

While there is no magic ingredient to resilience, there are some evidence-based principles that can easily be put in place to help build resilience at both organisational and individual level. These changes need not be major – after all most people working today are already extremely resilient. But we think there are three main areas which HR managers should consider to help their staff survive and thrive in 2012.

Meaning - give people autonomy

The first priority should be to ensure that work feels meaningful to everyone in your organisation. This means clear role descriptions, unambiguous lines of accountability and a ‘line of sight’ between an individual’s job role and the purpose or outcome of the organisation. Allied to that, try to maximise job control for each person or team in your organisation. The famous Whitehall two studies showed that those most at risk of stress-related illness are not those under most pressure, but those with least autonomy over their workload.  

Wherever possible, we should be giving people greater autonomy over how and when to do their job, and the power to identify and fix problems as they go. Job control is a critical predictor of both work performance and wellbeing because it leads to a sense of meaning and purpose, which in turn re-builds engagement.

Movement - away from the desk

If there was a drug which gave the benefits of exercise, we’d all be taking it. Yet the temptation for many knowledge workers is to sit and work at their desks or in meetings without moving and without taking breaks. From the perspective of both health and performance, this is a mistake. The mind evolved to solve problems on the move. Exercise and movement promotes learning, cell renewal and the production of BDNF – the brain’s so called ‘miracle gro’. This is why we so often have our best ideas when moving about or running. Whatever else we do (especially in the year of the Olympics), we need to remember the benefits of movement and exercise and to break down the culture of sitting at desks without a break. 

Mindfulness – rational thought

Mindfulness training is not about ‘zoning out’ or getting rid of stress. Mindfulness is now firmly part of the evidence-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach to managing stress. Teaching people CBT and mindfulness techniques helps them to build individual resilience by training their attention to distinguish what is a useful or rational thought and what is a ‘mind trap’ – uselessly extending stress or distracting from the task.
 
We define mindfulness broadly as ‘thinking about thinking’ and helping people to notice when they are being ‘hooked’ by stress, when they are not being productive and when they need to take a break.   

Measurement – a happy 2012

Mindfulness training is not about ‘zoning out’ or getting rid of stress. Mindfulness is now firmly part of the evidence-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach to managing stress. Teaching people CBT and mindfulness techniques helps them to build individual resilience by training their attention to distinguish what is a useful or rational thought and what is a ‘mind trap’ – uselessly extending stress or distracting from the task.
 
We define mindfulness broadly as ‘thinking about thinking’ and helping people to notice when they are being ‘hooked’ by stress, when they are not being productive and when they need to take a break.  

We would usually suggest a fourth M – measurement – to help work out which kind of approach is needed in each organisation, but we suggest that if HR departments focus on these three main areas then resilience will increase and performance and wellbeing will improve. We know that 2012 is going to be tough, but it’s how we respond that really counts.