The pressures of everyday life (not just work) can creep up on people, and good stress – the motivation to bring the best of ourselves to work – can easily become distress.
According to the HSE, stress is the biggest of all the twentieth century workplace demons with more than 105 million days lost to it each year. At PwC we know how this can prevent our people from performing well, diluting their contribution, and in some cases leading to loss of talent if people become too ill to work. So we believe it’s important to help people to look after themselves and therefore have an extensive range of benefits supporting wellbeing, guidance and tools to encourage and help our people stay fit and healthy.
Creating a culture based on people’s psychological and physical wellbeing makes sound commercial sense, given the positive correlation between engagement and business performance. Helping people build their resilience and ability to bounce back from setbacks, and deal with the pressures of work and life in general, enables them to stay mentally and physically well.
In challenging, fast-paced environments, taking a holistic wellbeing approach can help businesses to support the psychological health of their workforce while addressing ill health in an efficient, cost-effective and timely fashion.
Our research and experience tells us that our people’s ability to be resilient will vary over time and depend on what they have going on – in all aspects of their lives. So how can HR be proactive about stress management?
One approach follows the adage that ‘prevention is better than cure’. With a clear link between wellbeing, engagement, client service and productivity, resilience-themed workshops can be effective.
By instilling greater self-awareness around energy levels and how they relate to performance, workshops can help turnaround habits that undermine mental and physical wellbeing. They can also encourage strategies that can strengthen individual and team resilience.
But no intervention can be 100% successful. Clearly, HR needs to know precisely how to act when employees do fall foul of stress.
When employees are absent due to stress, a common management response is to give them time alone to cool off. It is, however, important to keep the lines of communication open if they are to feel supported as they return to the workplace. After all, it can be so easy to lose confidence in your capability to do a job and to wonder how your team will react when they do return. Early intervention is key before things become too overwhelming.
It’s important to try to understand what is causing the stress as it could be a combination of factors: personal, home, family, financial or work. As a result, actions ranging from decreased workloads or changing key working relationships to counselling or giving them time off to fix personal issues such as child or parental care could be suggested.
Other tips include inviting absentees in to the workplace for a coffee during their absence, helping reduce that fear of social alienation that could keep them away too long. It’s also a good idea to ensure line managers are present in any action planning, so any decisions relating to changes in working practices can’t be dismissed ‘as something HR told me to do.’
Managers and colleagues may also find the shadowy areas of issues such as stress and depression alienating, as “they don’t always know what to say”. For me, it’s about taking the lead from the individual. Some may not want to talk about what they’ve been through, but if they do, that’s fine too.
What they all want to hear, however, are the words “Welcome back, we missed you”. And that’s not hard to do, is it?
Erika Campbell, human resources director, PwC Aberdeen