What can be done about rising workplace stress?

• 15 January 2018
• Jane Evans
• no comments

How are you?

Really…HOW ARE YOU?

As 2018 is well underway, I hope you are well and feeling ready for a great year ahead.

What is your focus of 2018? Your fitness, health, diet, to travel more, stress-less?

Mine is very much on share ways to boost everyone’s wellness and resilience. As, every time I speak or deliver training, I look into the faces of exhausted, stressed looking professionals.

Recent reports and articles are making it plain that workplace wellness, especially mental health, is at crisis point.  Most noticeably in the public sector services like teaching, social work, and healthcare. Recent figures gathered on ill-health amongst teachers are a real cause for concern.

“The figures show that in 2016/17, 3,750 teachers in England were signed off on long-term sick leave (i.e. for one month or more) because of work pressures, anxiety and mental illness – roughly one in 83 teachers. This is a 5 per cent increase on the previous year when 3,570 were on long-term sick leave.

However, the figures are likely to be higher given that 69 local authorities did not provide any data.”

Source: Nursery World, January 2018

Behind every statistic is an individual

Someone whose quality of life will be sinking as they wrestle to function at work and at home. Mental ill-health is so hard to explain and describe. It robs us of being present now and really enjoying daily living as everything is either dumbed down, distant and unattainable. Or, whizzed up, fast moving and full of false highs and lows which create many emotional and physical tensions and symptoms.

No one noticed

I’ve had clinical depression and anxiety, combined with an eating disorder. They are all different. I often was often in work. How present and effective I was, is a good question. One I can’t truly answer.

I suspect that at times I was NOT a good practitioner. I wouldn’t have been able to tune into other people’s emotional and physical energy which is always the best source of information about what people need and don’t need.

No one who supervised me picked up on this, which is truly alarming. In one job my manager used to repeatedly visit me at home and quiz me about what my anxiety was. I couldn’t tell her.

Presenteeism 

Neither you nor anyone else should be working somewhere that does not put mental wellness at the top of the agenda. It saves lives, money and keeps businesses afloat as people are more productive when they come to work and less likely to be off sick.

“The costs of mental health related presenteeism in the UK workplace is:

16.8bn-26.4bn

It shows that most employees struggle with concentration, whilst some are more likely to be agitated or confrontational. Almost 10% of the respondents said that they would rely on their colleagues to complete work.”

Source: Monitor Deloitte Mental health for employers: the case for investment, October 2017

What to do

Together we can make workplace wellness and resilience a core concern and commitment for 2018 and beyond. The solutions are simple ones:

• Accessible education for all
• Simple resources and practices
• Support to create lasting habits
• Champions to put it all into practice
• Wellness to be THE priority

Essential to better workplace mental and physical health is strong leadership and the creation of a baseline ethos of wellness first across the workplace for everyone.

Let’s create your bespoke 2018 Workplace Wellness and Resilience Boosting Workshop and give you the WHY-WHAT-HOW to reduce workplace stress and improve mental health.

Call: 0745218246 or Email: janeevans61@hotmail.co.uk