We all know that too much stress diminishes people’s creativity and productivity, increases absenteeism, causes extended sick leave and can result in tribunal payouts of tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The need for stress management courses is a sign that stress levels are already reaching unacceptable levels – these courses are the cure. However the cure is no good if the underlying causes are still there. This is where senior managers can have a massive beneficial effect. Managers have the authority to implement systems that can stop excess stress even before it begins.

Forget “stress climate surveys” and “stress management standards”. This layer of bureaucracy won’t help you to take action They become ends in themselves and even lead to even more stress!

Rather concentrate on easily applied measures to reduce stress and at the same time show employees and regulatory authorities and legal courts that your organisation does take stress seriously. For example;

• Ensure your Employee Handbook and Induction has plenty of wording in it that shows that management knows about the adverse effects of too much stress.
• Have a clear, written and concise procedure that people can follow if they find stress getting out of hand.
• Give people clear job descriptions so they know what is required of them and revisit the description every six months to update them.
• Keep referring to stress in newsletters, speeches and meetings.
• Offer people-management/leadership workshops to managers and supervisors. Many of them don’t know how to get the best from their people.
• Offer stress management workshops and literature.
• Offer a time management workshop. It’s amazing how people can take better control when they know it’s okay to say “no”, to scrap a meeting, to scrap a report, to cut short appointments and to find better, quicker less burdensome ways of doing things.
• Monitor stress levels. twice-yearly by asking people to answer this simple question: “For you personally give three things the organisation could do to reduce unreasonable stress”.

Strategy Improvers would be pleased to share other stress prevention techniques with you.