Feature

Business impact of employee stress

Unmanaged stress has a debilitating impact on employee productivity. Sudipta Dev writes about this common syndrome.

The negative impact of employee stress on business is now an acknowledged factor. Studies in America have proved that the annual cost of employee stress in terms of loss to productivity is more than a staggering $300 billion. Unmanaged stress has a debilitating impact on the organisation, the consequences vary from loss of individual productivity to increased absenteeism to rise in employee attrition. Team morale and productivity is also adversely affected. But is it possible to create a stress-free workplace? Probably not, it is indeed an integral part of our personal and professional life, but the solution lies in creating an environment that reduces its impact.

The fact that employee stress is a subjective matter cannot be overlooked. What might appear as a stressful situation for one might be taken as a normal work routine by another. Monisha Advani, CEO, EmmayHR agrees that most organisations tend not to act at all or appropriately to prevent situations of unmanaged stress. “The unfortunate perception lies in assigning responsibility for stress. Is it the employee’s personal look out or is it the employer’s? Where does one draw the line? The definition of workplace stress can be easily misconstrued, as it varies from case to case.” Advani points out that drawing up policies to address workplace stress in a direct form can expose an organisation to red herring claims from employees. Hence, the tentativeness from employers to own up to the responsibility or demonstrate documented proactivity to control workplace stress.

Consequences of unmanaged stress

Stressful working conditions have a direct negative impact on the mental and physical well-being of the workforce. A disgruntled workforce obviously under-performs and under-delivers, leading to an impact on the bottomline. “In a more precautionary sense, unmanaged stress can be very infectious in large-sized organisations with workforces that are inhabited together. As a nation, we have spent the last two decades trying to eradicate cohesion of employees in a formal context (unions, associations) from the workplace. Unfortunately, such scenarios are completely fuelled by intangible conditions like unmanaged stress. In addition, a company can easily suffer external image damage from being perceived as a hotbed of a stressful work environment, limiting its talent acquisition strategies, among other things,” adds Advani.

Stress undermines an employee’s ability to think clearly, to work well with others and to perform his or her best. Seth Appel, Director, Talent Transformation Group, OfficeTiger, focusses on the obvious consequences: poor decision-making, absenteeism, burn-out, attrition, unnecessary and wasteful inter-personal conflict.

"The need of the hour is to help employees manage stress effectively and create a corporate ambience that puts everyone in a ‘can-do’ mood" - Madan Padaki Co-founder & Director Business Development MeriTrac Services	"Acknowledging that stress exists, is half the battle won. Attacking it, improves chances of the rest of the war to be won! " - Monisha Advani CEO EmmayHR	"A healthy dose of stress gets us into action. The challenge is the debilitating doses of stress that are more destructive than constructive" - Seth Appel Director Talent Transformation Group OfficeTiger

Measuring the business cost

Calculating the business cost of employee stress has led to many studies being conducted globally. Eileen Sweeney, Senior Vice-president, Global HR, Lionbridge Technologies, lists the key indicators:

• Absenteeism
• Health costs
• Attrition
• Lowered productivity and increased costs.

Appel advises that one way to measure the cost of stress is to make a measured judgement based on employee exit interviews and on the percentage of attrition due to stress. “When the cost to recruit, train and develop a new employee is accounted for, we can arrive at a general cost that the company is incurring due to stress. Unfortunately, it is difficult to measure the other less tangible by-products of stress. Managers who engage in needless bickering instead of working together, employees who return home and spend their free time worrying about work and return the following day tired instead of energised. Also the team members who are too anxious to speak openly at a meeting and therefore deprive the company of their good ideas. All of these are unwanted and wasteful by-products of stress that are hard to quantify.”

It can also be measured in terms of productivity gains or losses and the consequent revenues. “A correlation can be seen in the roles vis-a-vis stress, specially in the IT and BPO sectors where in typical measurements like line of code/day or average call handling time, number of calls taken, etc. have a direct bearing on the stress levels of employees,” says Madan Padaki, Co-founder and Director, Business Development, MeriTrac Services.

Tackling workplace stress the Lionbridge way

Eileen Sweeney Understanding the need to create a stress-free environment, Lionbridge Technologies has introduced several initiatives. One of the most significant being the Counselling Desk, where an in-house counsellor counsels employees on their career needs, problems in adjustment and guidance from a non-prejudicial point of view. “This is an innovative way to curb emotional stress at the workplace which also provides us with a further strengthening of a ‘high touch’ work environment. While we have provided some guidance to employees informally in the past, we now realise that such services are the very things that make a difference and therefore concluded the need to be addressed formally,” says Eileen Sweeney, Senior Vice-president, Global HR, Lionbridge Technologies. In addition, the company has organised a series of programmes to further address aspects of this issue. Sweeney informs that these are open programmes for all Lionbridge employees. “One of the objectives of ‘WeCare’ is to help employees strike a balance between the most central realms of life i.e. work and family. Achieving a balance in life is a challenge for busy people. As we get busier, our priorities get muddled, and we spend less time nourishing our inner selves. The objective of these programmes is to balance work and home, prioritise and deal effectively with time issues and learn mind/body relaxation techniques.” As part of the HR and Employee Welfare plans, the company has the following programmes in Mumbai with more to come in the future: 1) Eye Care and Eye Health 2) Healthy Mind through Nirvana 3) Healthy Body through Nirvana 4) Spiritual Quotient 5) Family Life 6) Career and 7) Social Life.

Preventing/managing stress

It is believed that one should work at preventing stress than managing it. Interestingly, most experts seem divided over the issue. Aiming to ‘prevent employee stress’ is not a realistic goal, asserts Appel, adding that it is also, arguably, not even a desired goal. He explains why, “Modern psychology often makes the mistake trying to create a stress- and worry-free world. This is a very misguided aim as stress and worry play very important functions in our day-to-day lives. Worry is a way our brain forces us to focus on important problems. A healthy dose of stress gets us out of our chairs and into action. The challenge is not stress, but the debilitating doses of stress that are more destructive than constructive. In other words, a little bit of stress can be a good thing.”

The pressures to perform at peak levels consistently is a set expectation from every employee, as a result stress cannot be avoided. Padaki however believes that the need of the hour is to help employees manage stress effectively and more importantly, create a corporate ambience that does not perpetrate any other internal strain in the organisation. “It is possible to create such an ambience which infuses a healthy, positive energy in the workplace and puts everyone in a ‘can-do’ mood.”

Advani agrees that a preventive approach is needed, particularly since formal remedial policies to manage existing stress can lead to an acknowledgement on the part of an employer, which in all likelihood, may be exploited by employees. “Ways to ensure this is to control extended working hours, improve the quality of workplace benefits such as meals, recreation, break-out areas, etc. Also punctuatedly engage employee families and sphere of external influencers through company events wherein they become more aware and therefore, more supportive and encouraging of an employee’s pressure, responsibilities and rewards,” she asserts.

Acknowledging that prevention is better than cure, Sweeney points out that companies need to consistently focus on taking measures to reduce stress. “One key aspect of stress reduction is ensuring that employees and managers are provided with the skills and tools needed to perform their roles successfully. Emphasis on skills such as time management, effective listening, handling the difficult discussion, putting the customer first and situational leadership equips employees with the confidence to maintain a positive work environment and to reduce anxiety in new and unfamiliar situations,” she adds.

Complete freedom from stress can never be a reality, whether in personal or professional life. “Perhaps a priest in a temple can aim for a stress-free workplace, but in the business sector stress is part of day’s work. An essential part of business always involves destroying current systems, connections, understandings, products and so on and re-creating them into something new. By definition, there is going to be some stress in this process. Again as a manager pushes a team to better the standards of performance, incorporate new technology and bring up innovative ideas, this process will inevitably cause stress. The goal is to find ways to manage this stress in a positive and constructive manner,” insists Appel.

While a stress-free workplace remains a Utopian situation, organisations can only make efforts to reduce its impact. As Monisha Advani aptly concludes, “Stress is inevitable... call it the bane of any life form. Acknowledging that it exists, is half the battle won. Attacking it, improves chances of the rest of the war to be won! And finally, preventing it means never being at war in the first place!”

sudipta@expresscomputeronline.com