Stress is a word that is bandied about a lot and many people don’t understand what it actually means!  It can range from being ‘stressed’ about a pimple on your chin, feeling ‘stressed’ because you’ve broken a nail, to honest to goodness real STRESS, like having to juggle work, home schooling looking after a home and family and everything else life throws at you!

Here are five things you should know about stress

1. Stress is a biological reaction that naturally occurs in humans and animals when they perceive a threat or a demand.
2. The hypothalamus in the brain sends a message to the pituitary gland, and then to the adrenals, then adrenalin and cortisol is released in the body, and that provides us with an extra boost of energy to the right places, to help enable us to fight or run away like blazes!
3. When the threat has been neutralised or the demand has been met, the parasympathetic nervous system brings everything back to normal, if all is well.
4. Exactly the same biological reaction happens if you are in a traffic jam and feeling anxious and frustrated or if you are being chased down the street by an axe murderer. And therein lies the problem.
5. Everyone reacts differently when exposed to the stress response, there is no ‘one size fits all’.

 

So, it’s fair to say, managing stress at work is a challenge, but it is a challenge we need to meet if we are going to keep people psychologically safe at work.  According to statistics approximately 1.4 million working people suffered from a work-related illness in 2019, and 54% of those were due to stress, depression or anxiety so that is 602,000 reasons why we need to come to grips with understanding and managing work related stress.  Stress can be a good thing, chronic stress can be a bad thing, and the outcomes of chronic stress can be downright ugly. Let’s see how that plays out.

The good…

1. It’s the reason why we are here today, if it wasn’t for the stress response our early ancestors would have become extinct.  The world used to be a much more physically dangerous place where you might have encountered a sabre tooth tiger on your way for a stroll.  The stress response provided you with the capacity to act fast by either fighting it off or running like mad to get away. Without the stress response this might not have been possible and you would have made a tasty lunch for the tiger!
2. Stress can motivate you to give tasks and demands your best shot.  E.g., you are given a task to complete, you get a burst of adrenalin, meet the demands of the task and feel great.  Motivation at its best!
3. Stress improves cognitive function – potentially the pressure and nervousness you feel when the stress response kicks in can make your brain perform better.
4. Moderate stress stimulates the production of a chemical called interleukins and gives the immune system a quick boost to protect against illnesses. (But watch out for its evil twin in the next section)!
5. Stress can help you become a stronger person over the years by building resiliency. It’s like putting your hand in the fire, even though you hand is burned you have learned a valuable lesson and won’t do that again!

The bad…

1. 21st century ‘stressors’ are rarely physical.  We get the same stress response sitting in a traffic jam as we would if we were running away from an axe murderer.  However, the fight or flight response is no good to us at all in the traffic jam scenario, but crucial with that axe murderer!  Depending on our response to being delayed in traffic, the stress response can have a negative effect and result in feelings of anxiety and nervousness.
2. Our perception that we might not be able to meet demands can lead to anxiety and a prolonged stress reaction. We have become a more sedentary nation, with labour saving devices in the home and at work reducing our need to MOVE. Thus, we don’t burn off the stress response as we should and return to normal, this can lead to the road to chronic stress. 
3. Chronic stress can make us FAT!   When we are stressed, we release cortisol into our bodies, and if this is happening too often for too long, then the cortisol is stored in the fat cells, many of which are situated on the tummy area.  
4. Chronic stress can result in mental health problems such as anxiety or depression. This vicious circle adds more and more stress and if not addressed has serious implications.
5. Being chronically stressed has been clinically proven to greatly lower our immunity (the evil twin) and to exacerbate existing illnesses or conditions such as asthma, back pain, mental illness.

I know what you are thinking!  ‘I can’t wait to see what could be worse than the bad’!!  Read on…

The ugly…

I am only going to list five risks, however there are many, many more…

1. Chronic stress is clinically proven to increase your risk of contracting Type 2 diabetes.
2. Chronic stress increases your risk of heart disease and stroke.
3. Chronic stress increases your risk of some cancers. 
4. Chronic stress increases your risk of suffering from mental illness such as anxiety and depression.
5. Those suffering from chronic stress have an increased risk of suicide.

 

There is good news 

Work related stress can be managed efficiently in the workplace (and outside of it) if everyone has an understanding of; what stress is, how it can harm, how we can reduce the risk of chronic stress occurring, how to ask for and provide support for early intervention and what we can all do, as individuals to reduce the harmful affects of stress by adopting positive healthy lifestyle choices.

Advice for organisations:

1. Find out how stressed your workforce are by getting everyone to complete the anonymous HSE stress management questionnaire.   The analysis of this will be your base line and you will be able to see strengths and weaknesses within your organisation. Keep an open mind, there will be surprises in the results.
2. Revisit your health and safety policy and see how you can improve the management of stress at work. 
3. Plan what you need to do to make improvements and how they will be measured.
4. Train all of your employees – I recommend – IOSH Working Safely for the workforce. IOSH Managing Safely for Managers and Supervisors.  Plus, a bespoke stress workshop that educates everyone to understand stress. (This should be a collaboration between your senior management, managers, line managers, supervisors and representatives of the workforce and your training provider) NPTNI will be delighted to provide you with advice and guidance.
5. INVOLVE EVERYONE in the organisation.

 

When you have done all of that – DO IT AGAIN - from start to finish

A good health and safety management plan is driven by continual improvement. Remember 54% of people who are ill from work are suffering from the harmful effects of stress.  I would be delighted to help you reduce that number, all you have to do is ask.