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Free Guide on Managing Stress
 As an employer or employee, you are probably
aware of how stress can affect people in the
workplace. Yet despite its effects and
frequency, surprisingly little information
has traditionally been available to help
businesses deal with stress.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has now
published three free new guides to help you
deal with stress (whether your own or that
of a colleague or employee), in association
with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Ben Willmott, CIPD Employee Relations
Adviser, says: “Workplace stress is the most common cause of long-term
absence and also damages employee morale and
productivity and leads to high staff
turnover. Employers that fail to manage
stress are also vulnerable to litigation and
potentially high compensation payouts.
”Good people management can help to prevent
most of the problems causing stress at work,
such as lack of control over workload. If
managers set clear goals, communicate with
clarity, consult, provide feedback and
recognition and develop and coach their
teams, stress is much less likely to become
a problem.
”Managers also need to be able to recognise
when the people they manage are working
under excessive pressure so they can
intervene before individuals suffer from
stress-related ill health. It is important
for employees to have confidence in their
managers so that they can admit to
difficulties without fear of appearing weak
or incompetent.”
Key management behaviours include:
- Managing workload and resources:
this requires managers to monitor team
workload and refuse to take on additional
work when team is under pressure.
- Empowerment: this requires
managers to trust employees to do their work
and give employees responsibility.
- Accessible and visible: this
requires managers to make time to talk to
employees and avoid being constantly at
meetings.
- Expressing and managing own emotions:
this requires managers to have a positive
approach and avoid acting aggressively or
losing temper with employees.
- Communication: this requires
managers to communicate clear goals and
objectives and avoid holding meetings behind
closed doors.
You can download the
free guides from the CIPD here.
Visit our free article on
Managing Stress at Work here.
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