April is stress awareness month. Work-related stress and poor mental health accounts for over half of work absences – and costs British businesses up to £45 billion every year in 2020 according to Deloitte . It’s a big issue and has a big impact. We’re going to take this month to look at the different sides of workplace stress, specifically what stress is, how it can be useful and practical ways to manage it.
Everyone can feel it and we all have similar reactions to it, however what triggers stress in each person and the levels that we can cope with vary enormously. This can leave a stressed person to feel very isolated and alone.
Stress can go from an occasional annoyance that pops onto your radar to a debilitating physical reaction that appears to change your personality completely and every level in between. It’s a term that is thrown around a great deal and can feel quite vague, so I’m going be delving into some of the detail.
I’m approaching it from a work perspective and from the point of view of many of my mentees, which is of those in the early stages of their career or those who are going through a transition stage in their career; either changing career or moving up to a more senior level.
I’ll be referring to great resources like those found on the Stress.org.uk website and sharing information on what stress is physically, how it can show in a person and how we can manage it and use it to our advantage.
Please follow the #stressawarenessmonth posts and our own #healthycareer posts to see the content and share with your networks to help us shine a light on this topic.
You may also like to read…
Sink or Swim… or why not float?
It occurred to me while I was teaching my daughter to swim the other day that the phrase ‘to sink or swim’ in a situation is inaccurate. What happened to floating as an option?! We often don’t give our subconscious brains enough credit for the nuggets of gold they hold, if we’d only be still…
A New Kind of Success
Old, narrow stereotypes of how to achieve business success and what success looks like are still quoted in our society, but slowly their dominance is starting to fade as authenticity and variety start to show their power, to the benefit of us all.
When Stopping is the Next Best Step
Racing through our career at high speed may feel exhilarating and rewarding for a while, but how does it affect us and what happens if it all just ‘stops’?