Today is national stress awareness day. According to the HSE stress accounted for a massive 40 per cent of all work-related illnesses last year, which resulted in a loss of 10.4 million working days. As well as being a major contributor to long term physical illnesses, including obesity, stress also contributes to poor workplace performance caused by lack of concentration. The financial cost to the UK has been estimated at £60 billion or about £1,000 per man, woman and child. Yet according to the International Stress Management Association (ISMA) most organisations tackle stress at the wrong end. They wait until someone becomes ill, and then start to provide services to improve their health. This is too late. More →

Attitudes towards mental ill health are supposed to be more enlightened these days, but the fact that a large supermarket chain would sanction the sale of a “mental patient” Halloween outfit shows that in business, there is some way to go. The mental health charity Mind, which received an apology and a donation from Asda following the withdrawal of the offending outfit, has published new statistics today which reveals 42 per cent of employees believe that in their workplace, stress and mental ill health is regarded as a sign of weakness or that you can’t cope. 45 per cent of workers said that staff are expected to cope without mentioning stress at work and a third (31%) would not be able to talk openly to their line manager if they felt stressed. More →

The death last month of an intern at a major City bank drew attention to the ridiculously long hours worked by those attempting to carve out a career within the banking sector. Now a new report has confirmed that workers within the banking profession have the least amount of sleep across the UK, coping on average with just five hours and 50 minutes every night. But the annual sleep and professions report conducted by Travelodge reveals that British workers are surviving on just six hours and 27 minutes sleep every night – one hour and thirty three minutes below the recommend sleep quota of eight hours of sleep per night. Three out of ten workers have reported that they get less sleep now in comparison to a year ago, whilst a fifth of employees regard sleep a luxury.  More →

Work is the most stressful factor in people’s lives with one in three people (34 per cent) saying their work life was either very or quite stressful – and the top cause (32 per cent) is frustration with poor management. Research commissioned by Mind found work more stressful than debt or financial problems (30 per cent) or health (17 per cent).  However, employees don’t believe that managers are actively tackling causes of stress in the workplace, with only one in five people saying they felt their line manager took active steps to help staff manage stress (22%) or mental health conditions (19%).

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