Theme: Worklife Balance and Stress

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Theme Work-life Balance and Stress

• Content of work-life balance and stress policies
  and programmes
• Evaluation questions for work-life balance and
  stress interventions
• Multi-level objectives of work-life balance and
  stress policies and programmes

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Work-life Balance

• Work-life balance is about people having a
  measure of control over when, where and how they
  work.
• It is achieved when an individual's right to a
  fulfilled life inside and outside paid work is
  accepted and respected as the norm, to the mutual
  benefit of the individual, business and society.

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Business Benefits

• Increased productivity
• Improved recruitment and retention
• BT saved 3m in recruitment costs in the year to
  March 2003, since 98 of women returned after
  maternity leave
• Lower rates of absenteeism
• The London Borough of Camden experienced a 2.5
  reduction in the cost of sickness absence in the
  first year it introduced a work-life balance
  strategy

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• Reduced overheads
• BT saved 52m in overheads in the year to March
  2003 by increasing its number of home workers
  this also means an annual saving of 10m in fuel
  costs
• An improved customer experience
• A more motivated, satisfied and equitable
  workforce.

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Stress

• harmful physical and emotional responses that can
  happen when there is a conflict between job
  demands on the employee and the amount of control
  an employee has over meeting these demands
• In general, the combination of high demands in a
  job and a low amount of control over the
  situation can lead to stress.

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Endless list of stressors examples include

• Fear of job redundancy, layoffs due to an
  uncertain economy
• Increased demands for overtime due to staff
  cutbacks
• "pressure to perform
• Increasing effort to meet rising expectations
  with no increase in job satisfaction
• The relentless requirement to work at optimum
  performance

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Consequences

• Employee turnover, reduced efficiency, illness
  and even death.
• Absenteeism, illness, alcoholism, "petty internal
  politics", bad or snap decisions
• Indifference and apathy, lack of motivation or
  creativity

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Case Example

• In a study published this week in Hypertension,
  researchers tested the effects of a
  stress-reduction intervention programme in
  workers who faced layoffs - a significant
  stress-inducer.

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How the study was conducted

• The participants included 91 office workers at a
  DuPont subsidiary in Italy that was downsizing
  its workforce by 10 percent and a control group
  of 79 healthy volunteers who worked outside of
  the company and reported no work-related stress.

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• At the start of the study, the participants were
  assessed by a clinical psychologist and completed
  a self-administered questionnaire to assess their
  overall stress, fatigue and bodily stress-related
  symptoms. They also underwent a single lead
  electrocardiogram (ECG), which evaluates the
  autonomic nervous system (ANS), a system that
  adjusts and modifies bodily functions in response
  to stress.

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• The stressed workers had significantly higher
  stress and fatigue than the controls, and
  reported more stress-related symptoms such as
  difficult sleep, pounding of the heart, and
  gastrointestinal problems. In addition, the
  stressed workers' ECGs indicated that their heart
  rhythm was showing signs of stress.

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• "This is typical of the stressed individual -
  they are facing psychological pressure, but they
  don't want to hear about psychologists because
  they are feeling real, clinical symptoms," study
  senior author Massimo Pagani, a professor of
  medicine at the University of Milan in Italy,
  said in a prepared statement.

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• After the baseline assessment, the DuPont workers
  were invited to sign up for a weekly, one-hour
  stress management session that focused on
  relaxation and stress-related coping skills or a
  passive programme that offered articles and
  monthly e-mails on stress reduction techniques.
• Twenty-six employees signed up for the
  stress-management sessions, and 25 signed up for
  the passive programme.

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Clear benefits to programme

• Before the programmes began, the autonomic
  measures (ECG and arterial pressure) were similar
  in both intervention groups, but, after a year,
  the stress-management programme induced a
  significant, small reduction in arterial pressure
  and clear changes in ECG-derived stress
  indicators.

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• "Our study provides a potential model for the
  assessment of work-related stress at an
  individual level, and suggests that stress
  management programmes can be implemented at the
  worksite," Pagani said. (HealthDayNews)

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Organisational Wellness

• Defined as
• Comprehensive organisational practices and
  health enhancement initiatives designed to help
  employees achieve their highest potential for
  well being. Preventive and intervention programs
  that help identify workers health needs, boost
  functionality, reduce illness and injury and
  thereby increase productivity
• www.vitalhealth.ca/whatscorporatewellness.html

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Defining Employee Wellness

• Employees state of optimized social, physical
  and mental health and wellbeing. (Swanepoel et
  al 2003p.541)
• Holistic approach to looking after the physical,
  psychological and social wellbeing of employees
  in an organisation.
• Provide a working environment that complies with
  all legal requirements

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• Failure by organisations to adopt employee
  wellness into their culture will lead to
  deteriorating performance
• Basic wish is that both employee and employer
  come to an understanding that people are central
  to the success of the business
• Organisational strategy, culture and mission
  should reflect this fact