Stress - some interesting facts

Our lifestyles have become ever more stressful and the World Health Organisation now describes stress as a 'world wide epidemic'. Stress-related illness costs industry millions of pounds every year. According to the Government’s Health and Safety Executive:

• In 2017/18, 595,000 people in the UK reported work-related stress at a level they believed was making them ill.
• Work-related stress and anxiety is the leading cause for ill health and sickness absence in Britatin
• 15.4 million working days were lost to work-related stress in 2017/18 with an average of 25.8 days lost per case*

* from the Labour Force Survey (LFS)

What is stress?
Harnessed properly, pressure can be a hugely productive force, but when demands and pressures become excessive they lead to stress. When stress is experienced over a long period of time, it can lead to mental and physical ill health. Some symptoms of stress include:

• Indecisiveness
• Irritability
• Reduced performance
• Poor timekeeping
• Feeling overwhelmed
• Increased alcohol or tobacco consumption
• Headaches and back pain

Why it makes sense to tackle stress
Tackling work-related stress efficiently can result in significant benefits for organizations. By tackling stress you may in turn reduce sickness absence and staff turnover, increase staff productivity, reduce customer complaints and improve the working environment generally.

As an employer it is your duty to ensure that you are taking steps to prevent and control work-related stress. Employers not taking stress seriously may leave themselves open to costly compensation claims, particularly since the launch of the Health & Safety Executive Stress Management Standards in November 2004.

Solutions
Stress Management requires a broad toolkit of approaches. Stress Angels can provide you with a range of therapies, classes and workshops to help you tackle stress and fulfill your duty of care to your employees. We recommend:

• Massage and other complementary therapies - they can have an almost immediate effect in reducing stress, and are also extremely cost effective (a monthly 20 minute massage can cost from as little as £13.50 per employee).
• Yoga and pilates classes to aid relaxation and restore balance.