Search Results for: stress

Importance of mental wellbeing underlined on national stress awareness day

Importance of mental wellbeing underlined on national stress awareness day

In the fourth of their series of wellbeing events leading flooring manufacturer Milliken invited Neil Shah (founder and Director or the Stress Management Society and best-selling author) to run an ‘excelling under pressure’ workshop. Interior designers and architects are known to be amongst the most stressed workers with tight deadlines, financial pressure and an ultra-competitive environment.

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Your relationship with your boss may be playing a role in your stress levels

Your relationship with your boss may be playing a role in your stress levels

Everybody knows how horrible it is to be stressed out at work. Sadly, across the world, employees are being subjected to increasing work demands and, as a result, work stress is on the rise. As we try to understand the root of the problem, we often end up blaming our boss. But is that really fair? Our new study, published in The Leadership Quarterly, suggests that your relationship with your boss does influence how you respond to stress.

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Employees call for radical new approach to address stress at work

Employees call for radical new approach to address stress at work

Employees call for radical new approach to address stress at work

Today marks the start of International Stress Awareness Week, 5th – 9th November 2018, and new research claims that two-thirds of employees (64 percent) have ‘poor’ or ‘below average’ mental wellbeing according to the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS). The research, conducted by The Stress Management Society and commissioned by workplace consultants, Peldon Rose found that over a third (36 percent) of people say their workplace stress has been on-going for the past five years.

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 Stressed UK bosses admit they put wellbeing behind demands of the job

 Stressed UK bosses admit they put wellbeing behind demands of the job

 Stressed UK bosses admit they put wellbeing behind demands of the jobAlmost half of UK bosses admit they’ve felt forced to compromise their own health and wellbeing as a result of pressure at work, new research from Vistage has claimed. According to the study, 40 percent of business leaders say the demands of work have caused stress in their personal lives, while nearly a third say they frequently have to work through illness rather than taking the time they need to recover. While a quarter of business leaders say they’ve sought outside help to strike a better balance between their work and personal life, many more are choosing to suffer on in silence while their health and relationships suffer. More →

Developing a resilient mindset to cope with stress

Developing a resilient mindset to cope with stress

Earlier this year, The New York times reported on a company in New Zealand that reduced its employee’s work time to four days a week whilst paying them for five. The idea came to the CEO after he read research that showed that employees generally only spend three hours a day on actual productive work. The change was highly successful, employees were as productive over the four days as they were over the five but the wellbeing of employees improved dramatically.

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Stressed, ignored and knackered – the lot of British workers in 2018

Stressed, ignored and knackered – the lot of British workers in 2018

Workers in Britain feel that they are working harder than ever before, new research reveals. The Skills and Employment Survey, a joint project between Cardiff University, University College London and the University of Oxford, has been researching the views of workers since the mid-1980s.

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Larger businesses far more stressful to work for than smaller firms

Larger businesses far more stressful to work for than smaller firms

Larger businesses far more stressful to work for than smaller firmsWe reported yesterday that younger job seekers who favour corporates could be missing out on greater opportunities within smaller organisations, and now new research suggests that despite margins often being tighter and tensions or losses often being felt more keenly in smaller businesses, the level of occupational stress workers feel directly correlates to the size of the company they are in. Micro businesses employing a maximum of four members of staff were less likely than those in businesses of any other size to feel work-related stress, with 45 percent of employees reporting this to the Perkbox 2018 UK Workplace Stress Report. This figure increases to 57 percent for small businesses (5 – 50 staff) and again to 62 percent for small to medium sized organisations (51 – 500 employees).  Finally, workers at larger sized businesses – those with more than 500 members of staff – report the greatest instances of staff experiencing workplace stress (65 percent).

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People working in fully open plan spaces are generally fitter and less stressed

People working in fully open plan spaces are generally fitter and less stressed

The open plan debate grinds on, and the latest grist to its mill is a study from researchers led by Esther Sternberg of the University of Arizona which suggests that it is those people who work in open plan spaces that are fitter and happier than their associate employee contemporaries in cubicles and private offices. The study, published in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine, used wearable sensors to study 231 US workers in four government office buildings. It’s worth noting that this is five times as many workers and twice as many offices as the much publicised recent study that we were told by various media outlets and commentators was the ‘final word’ on the subject.

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Financial stress can impair employee performance and attendance

Financial stress can impair employee performance and attendance

Financial stress can impair employee performance and attendance

Businesses that fail to tackle their employees’ financial stress are more likely to encounter poor work performance, lack of engagement, mental health issues and staff absenteeism, a new report from Neyber has claimed. Since last year, there has been a significant increase in the number of employees affected by financial worries; up from 58 percent to 63 percent, as well as those with less than one month’s savings; up from 24 percent to 32 percent. This stress on individuals is having a severe business impact. One in four employees said they had lost sleep over money troubles in the last year, one in ten said that they couldn’t focus on work and 6 percent said they had had to take time off work. All this adds up to a substantial cost for employers to bear. Neyber has calculated that the lost productivity and increased absence and employee turnover associated with financial stress costs UK companies in the region of £120.7 billion every year.

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Workplace stress and busy schedules are biggest barriers to a healthy lifestyle, claims report

Workplace stress and busy schedules are biggest barriers to a healthy lifestyle, claims report

New research from the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) claims that almost half (48 percent) of adults say that busy lives and stress play a large role in stopping them from eating healthily, with 40 percent of adults admitting that being too tired after work is their main reason for not being active. The survey, conducted as part of BNF Healthy Eating Week, questioned almost 500 adults across the UK, and also revealed a number of different factors that affect people’s food choices when at work or university. High workload makes it difficult for a third of adults to eat well, along with finding it difficult to take a proper lunch break. While at work a quarter say they do not have enough time to prepare healthy foods and 24 percent of respondents say there are limited healthy food and drink options available at work or close by; 28 percent say there are too many unhealthy snacks available in their work setting.

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British employees less confident and more stressed over last three years

British employees less confident and more stressed over last three years

UK employees could be heading for crisis, according to a three-year study by ADP, which has found that three key measures of employee wellbeing – optimism, stress and skills confidence – have taken a hit since 2015. The exact reason for the changes is unclear, however the timings suggest that Brexit may have played a part, along with the rise in new technologies entering the workplace.

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Presenteeism hits record high in UK organisations, linked with stress and depression

Presenteeism hits record high in UK organisations, linked with stress and depression

Presenteeism, defined as people coming into work when they are ill, has more than tripled since 2010, according to the latest CIPD / Simplyhealth Health and Wellbeing at Work report.  According to the study, 86 percent of over 1,000 respondents to the 2018 survey said they had observed presenteeism in their organisation over the last 12 months, compared with 72 percent in 2016 and just 26 percent in 2010. The survey also found that ‘leaveism’, such as people using annual leave to work, is also a growing problem. More than two-thirds of respondents (69 percent) reported that leaveism has occurred in their organisation over the last year.

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