In the harsh realities of today's economy, employees are expected to do more with less. While controlling workloads may be beyond an HR/benefit manager's control, there are tools for helping employees cope with the increased stress that may result. However, experts disagree about which tactics to alleviate stress are most successful. Stress management programs, stress resilience programs and even performance programs all aim to turn negative employee stress into positive motivation, but each model features conflicting philosophies and tools.
No matter what you call or how you run your stress initiatives, employers need to realize that they can't make that stress disappear, especially in light of new workplace realities, such as longer hours and more work for fewer people.
"You can't manage stress any better than you can manage gravity," says Dr. Richard Citrin, president of Citrin Consulting, a company that coaches and consults with organizations around employee and executive performance.
Citrin explains that many employers avoid discussing stress in the workplace because they:
* Fear a conversation about stress will open gripe sessions about work policies, especially in organizations where working more with less is the new norm.
* Think it's a personal issue that borders on mental health, so they feel uncomfortable addressing it.
* Don't know how to deal with it effectively. Traditionally, managers just bolt stress conversations onto a discussion of another workplace issue, rather than have a separate conversation.
Still, many employers recognize they must do something for the sanity and productivity of their employees and the future success of their business, despite the taboos. According to Citrin, employers have shifted the way they address stress in the workplace.
"As a result of 9/11, there has been a shift in the way companies, organizations and governments operate in relation to difficult, stressful or traumatic events. They've moved away from a model of prevention and management to a model of resilience," he explains.
Citrin explains that stress management fails in the workplace because it focuses only on one person, while resiliency focuses on the team and the whole organization.
Resilience requires a different mindset, he says, "You're looking for a way to build stress into a normal life as opposed to keeping it away from the normal life."
Further, stress resilience is a temporal issue, while stress management is a singular event. This means that in the resilience model an individual anticipates stress - they know how to respond, which is calming, and they are able to mitigate the stress. On the other side, stress management is reactive to a situation.
With stress resilience you can use prepared tools instead of resorting to a fight-or-flight model. Stress management utilizes tactics such as yoga classes, but those aren't easily applied during the workday.
Citrin underlines that employers shouldn't assume they can get rid of employee stress. "Work is very stressful today, and you're better off not denying it," he says. Citrin recommends putting stress in some type of framework, such as an employer health and wellness framework.
He concludes that it's less about how to manage stress and more about how to build resilience around stress. That means managers should try to find out why the employee is stressed, and then they may find strategies to effectively combat the employee's stress.
Tony Schwartz, CEO and president of The Energy Project, a talent and training consultancy, agrees with Citrin in opposing stress management. However, Schwartz also believes specifically calling programs "stress resiliency initiatives" does more harm than good.
"We don't think that in the workplace, calling out stress or resilience and separating it from performance - which is what you do when you call it stress training or resilience training or wellness initiatives or work-life balance - [is a good thing]. They are then treated as 'nice to have' [programs] as opposed to 'need to have,'" he explains.
Instead, his organization helps employers renew and encourage high performance, which simultaneously helps employees funnel their stress into productivity.
"Stress management is a negative approach; it's all about reducing pressure, and stress is always going to be an issue in any challenging environment. There is nothing wrong with stress. Stress is the only means by which you expand your capacity," Schwartz says.
He compares this process to stretching a muscle. The only problem with stress is if there is no time for recovery. One balances stress and renewal to drive performance, not to reduce stress.
"Stress is not the enemy; the enemy is stress without intermittent recovery," he says.
Building capacity
Due to the recession, demand is exceeding capacity because a single person does several people's jobs in addition to his or her own. According to Schwartz, the question then becomes: How do we build and renew capacity?
"Building capacity is about managing energy rather than time," he answers. "Instead of reactively dropping into a stress-survival place, the antidote is to move into the renewal zone," Schwartz says.
This may be as simple in practical terms as taking 60 seconds to do a deep breathing exercise, take a walk outside, climb a flight of stairs, call a supporter or loved one, or take five minutes listening to exhilarating music.
These ideas are grounded in the science of high performance and that principle - the human need to funnel and renew energy; that we are not machines - is a human principle, universally applying to everyone, no matter their employment industry.
Citrin also believes America's orientation towards stress needs to change; we need to stop using stress management techniques and turn to stress resilience training, he says.
"First, recognize that you can prepare for stress and build hardiness in the face of stress," he urges. By being stronger and more physically fit, an employee can better deal with stress because they have more energy and strength. They also need to learn how to navigate day-to-day stress in real time. Finally, recovery and bounce back is necessary. Citrin recommends taking several minutes after a stressful call to recover before continuing work, for example.
"Stress resilience [or] stress management-it doesn't much matter what you call it, except to say there is not a great deal of it going on," laments Dr. Gerald Lewis, a clinical psychologist and consultant in Massachusetts. He explains that, ironically, these programs used to be more prevalent when the economy was solid.
In Lewis' mind, all the American workplace has done in the past three to four years "is just grind down on whatever resilience was there."
Frequent policy and personnel changes, punitive management, benefits and salary cuts, increased workloads, longer hours, layoffs, forced overtime and increased health insurance cost-sharing - all this wears on employee resilience.
It has gotten to be so bad that "to gain resilience during an economic crisis is like getting a football player to feel stronger while taking a pummeling during a game in a snowstorm," Lewis says.
Instead of a so-called stress resilience training program, Lewis recommends employers offer some type of voluntary flex time. For example, by allowing employees to work around core hours, parents can arrive a little late in order to bring their kids to school.
Ultimately, it's about making people think they have some control.
Frequent breaks during the day, especially for sedentary employees, are very important, according to Lewis. Taking 15 minute breaks in the morning and afternoon, along with a lunch break, should be standard for a productive day in the office. A quiet room is a great oasis for these short breaks.
Lewis also recommends having experts come into the office to teach meditation and relaxation exercises. An employer could also organize a walking group or bring yoga classes into the office during lunch even if there isn't a gym.
Little things go a long way as well. General acknowledgment, like celebrating birthdays, for example, help people feel valued and believe that what they do is worthwhile. Events like Bring Your Kids to Work day or baseball games are also great unity builders.
"We no longer see a work organization as a place that supports us, we see it as a place that grinds us - unless you work for Google," he says. Bottom line: Employers need to show they care.
"It's not rocket science, building resiliency. It's making sure your people know that your work organization cares about them," says Lewis. "This is the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression. ... [but] we're not really seeing work organizations acknowledge it, they're just expecting people to work harder and produce more."
Schwartz adds: "We need to transform the way we work, and any company that doesn't take on this challenge ... is going to be at a huge competitive disadvantage over the next 10 to 20 years."
