All of us can feel that our society is becoming strongly oriented on performance and achievements. We are required to be more competitive and be able to withstand everyday challenges not only in our work life, but also in the personal one. As one of the results, stress has become the symptom of our times and “I’m stressed,” is a line heard almost every day.
Before we label stress as an exclusively negative factor, it’s good to realize that by definition, stress is organism’s natural response to any pressure. At certain level, stress can work as a motivational factor and help people achieve better results.
However, disproportionate chronic stress is a big health risk. Professional publications are even introducing a theory that the so-called “stress epidemic” is a threat to our society. That’s because unresolved excessive stress causes anxiety, tension and irritability; moreover, unaddressed chronic stress can result in desperation and the cultivation of serious mental disorders. Naturally, stress can also affect people physically – it can damage immune, central nervous or gastrointestinal system.
How Much Does Stress Cost?
Stress affects professional life as well as the personal one. Data collected by international studies show a disturbing trend: across Europe, the treatment of mental health disorders annually costs 240 billion EUR. Less than 50% of this amount represents the direct costs of professional treatment, with remaining 136 billion EUR covering the loss of productivity including absences due to incapacity for work.
Stress is the second most cited work-related health issue in Europe. According to the same study, 50 – 60% of all absences can be attributed to stress. In Czech Republic, the situation doesn’t look any better. According to a study done by Department of Psychiatry at First Faculty of Medicine of Charles University and General University Hospital in Prague, 34 % people stated that they feel threatened by occupational burnout – a syndrome largely cultivated by stress.
Societal significance of the impacts of work-related stress is further demonstrated by the fact that the topic will be soon covered by the Czech legislation. According to the planned amendment to Act No. 262/2006 Coll. of the Labor Code, employers will be obligated to prevent the risks of work-related stress.
How to Prevent Stress?
It’s established that stress and its negative effects currently appear to be a big problem with reference to work effectiveness and maintaining organizational productivity. How can companies protect themselves? What tools have the responsible people (managers, HR) at their disposal to help them reduce work-related stress?
The amount of general advices and tools for dealing with this problem exceeds the scope of this article. However, the Employee Assisstance program can be named as one of the very effective ones. Not much known in Czech Republic, the program is widely used in USA with 90 % of the companies named in “Fortune Global 500” subscribed to it. Through the Employee Assisstance, companies provide their employees with a work benefit in the form of anonymous psychological, legal and economic consultancy free of charge. This service is proving to be effective tool for the prevention and reduction of stress and its undesirable effects.
As evidenced above, any responsible company will have to address this issue if it wants to both meet legislative requirements and work effectively with its employees. Although stress is becoming a societal issue, it can be also perceived as a challenge. We can choose to view stress as an incentive to think about the improvement of working conditions, company culture and employee satisfaction as a whole.
Mgr. Marek Řápek – Consultant and Employee Assistance Program Guarantor
For more information about Employee Assistance visit: https://cz.asystems.as/produkty/employee-assistance