Are your staff stressed? It is important for you to learn and spot the signs of stress. Stress can show itself in many different ways: behavioural, physical, mental or emotional.
In terms of behaviour, an employee who is stressed could be suffering from insomnia, have changes in their eating habits or be smoking or drinking more. They may start avoiding friends and family or have sexual problems.
Physical symptoms might include tiredness, indigestion and nausea, headaches, aching muscles, palpitations, sweating or fainting.
Mentally, someone who is stressed may be more indecisive, find it hard to concentrate, have muddled thinking, loss of memory and feelings of inadequacy and low self esteem.
Emotionally they are likely to get irritable or angry, be anxious, feel numb, be hypersensitive and feel drained and listless.
Anyone can suffer from work-related stress - cleaners and chief executives, admin staff and clinical staff, office-based staff and community-based staff.
It is a mistake to think it only happens to 'wimps'.
Causes of stress
People suffer stress when the pressures put on them are greater than their ability to cope. This means stress happens when the demands made of individuals do not match the resources available to meet their needs and motivation.
Stress will be the result if the workload is too large for the potential number of workers and the time available.
A boring or repetitive task, which does not make good use of someone's skills or experience can also lead to stress.
There are six main risk factors that can lead to work-related stress:
- the demands of someone's job
- their control over their work
- the support they receive from managers and colleagues
- relationships at work
- the employee's role in the organisation
- change and how it's managed.
