Managing Stress for Success

However, at the Carole Spiers Group we always suspected that workplace stress was at the heart of the growing problem of sickness absence.

Now the latest statistics appear to confirm this, showing an estimated eight million people of working age, in the UK, experience mental health problems at some stage, costing employers an estimated £26bn every year.

The UK's leading mental health charity MIND reveals that a quarter of people say they have quit a job because of an unsupportive manager, while 17% say it is because of excessive workloads. Significantly, many admit they gave excuses about why they felt ill - blaming a headache or a stomach-bug, rather than admit that they could not cope with excessive hours, work overload or workplace bullying. Clearly there is a stigma about the whole subject of workplace stress, and this needs to be brought into the open.

MIND has now launched a new five-year campaign to tackle inadequate support services in the workplace, and much of the attention will be focused on setting up a regular counselling service for affected employees.

Every likely stressor
That could be equally good news for management and employees, as our own experience of workplace counselling would confirm and this is why our Pay-as-you-Go stress counselling model reviews every likely stressor, from the obvious ones like breaking bad news or organizational to the ones you may not immediately think of - bereavement, substance addiction or traumatic incident flashbacks.

As well as improving the health and wellbeing of your employees, reducing absence and increasing retention of top talent, this branch of counselling can actively assist you in meeting your duty of care for your staff. We call it a 'solutions-focused' approach.

Organisations who commission workplace counselling services experience impressive benefits in the form of higher employee motivation and morale, decreased sickness absence, improved productivity and a reduced incidence of claims for negligence.

Workplace counselling - summary

• Stress accounts for much of industry's £26bn mental health bill
• New research shows that many sufferers feel that it carries a stigma
• UK's leading mental health charity is encouraging workplace counselling