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Stress Costs!

Stress Costs!

Employees feeling overly stressed take a toll on a company’s bottom line. According to the annual 2004 “Attitudes in the American Workplace” Gallup Poll stress is also very costly with the price tag for US. industry estimated at over $300 billion annually. An estimated 45% of job turnover is due to stress.

The same poll also showed that:

  • 80% of workers feel stress on the job, nearly half say they need help in learning how to manage stress and 42% say their coworkers need such help.
  • 25% have felt like screaming or shouting because of job stress, 10% are concerned about an individual at work they fear could become violent.
  • 62% routinely find that they end the day with work-related neck pain, 44% reported stressed-out eyes, 38% complained of hurting hands and 34% reported difficulty in sleeping because they were too stressed-out.
  • According to a survey of 800,000 workers in over 300 companies the number of employees calling in sick because of stress tripled from 2000 to 2003. A three year study conducted by one large corporation found that 60% of employee absences could be traced to psychological problems that were due to job stress.

When we experience stress, our body goes into the fight-flight response which causes hormones to be released into the blood stream.  These hormones increase blood pressure, heart rate and muscle tension and over time can lead to a myriad of serious medical problems.

What’s so interesting about stress, however, is that most people do not recognize the source of their stress. If asked, many will reply with such answers as “deadlines,” “too much work to do,” “irritating coworkers,,” “not being appreciated,” “balancing work and family,” “not enough money,” and “not enough time.” Yet, the reality is that what causes us stress is not so much the circumstances we are in, but what we tell ourselves about our circumstances. And that’s the lesson that employers need to help their employees understand.

Each of us perceives the experiences of our day through our particular lens. What worries or frightens one person, may not even register as a concern for the next. The difference in our perceptions comes from our own personal history, what our past experiences have taught us to expect and the responses we’ve developed over the years. 

For example, imagine walking in a park with a friend when you see a large dog, apparently unattended, approaching. If as a child your friend had a terrible experience with a large dog, then when she sees a large dog approaching her body begins to experience stress. The approaching dog may well be the most gentle and loving creature on earth, but past experience and fears trigger a stressful response.  At the same time, if you’ve grown up with a large dog as your best friend, the approaching dog brings back pleasurable memories and you welcome the chance to interact with this one.  Same dog approaching, two different responses.  The stress, or lack thereof, comes not from the particular circumstance, but from what each of us is telling ourselves inside our head.

As an employer, you can provide specific tools that can help your employees learn how to become more aware of their stress triggers and how to disconnect from them  One of the easiest and most effective ways is by providing meditation training in the workplace.

In a recent US News and World Report article 50 Ways to Fix Your Life, “learn to meditate” was #2.  While practitioners of these techniques have known this for centuries, more and more scientific studies are being done to help us understand how meditation works and why it is so effective.

By giving your employees the information they need to 1) understand the dangers of stress, 2) discover that it is an internal reaction to life which they can control, and 3) utilize effective tools to counter stress, you are empowering them to be more effective and productive in the workplace.  By helping your employees learn to manage their stress, you are helping them to cope with uncertainty and change, increase job satisfaction and maximize employee retention, create a more positive atmosphere, develop greater creativity and team building and encourage more effective interactions between employees, departments and customers.

Stress costs! It is well worth the investment to help your employees learn how to more effectively deal with it.

© Jan Cloninger, The More Productive Workplace.  Jan uses meditation training and more to help people enhance their performance! She can be reached at (314)965-0143 or jan@themoreproductiveworkplace.com.

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