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Stress in the Work Place

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Stress in the Workplace
What's Eating Your Company? | | |
In today's human-capital workplace, stress can be a company's greatest asset or worst liability. The right amount of stress can drive your staff to achieve at high levels. Excessive stress can hurt morale, slow productivity, and lead to a variety of maladies, from chronic absenteeism to workplace violence. In this article, we talk to Barbara Parton, a business consultant who specializes in increasing the value of a company's human capital, to learn more about workplace stress and find out what you can do to manage it.
Stress is "not a bad thing, but a necessary thing," according to Barbara Parton. Like a stringed instrument, people need a certain amount of tension in order to perform. Too little stress, and the instrument won't produce the right sound. Too much stress, and the string snaps. Companies need stress to drive production, however, stress can easily escalate, and left unchecked, it can have a negative effect on a company's bottom line. Research shows that the following costs can be directly attributed to excessive stress: * 21.5% of healthcare costs * 40% of turnover costs * 50% of presenteeism (low productivity) * 50% of unscheduled absences * 33% of disability and workers comp costs
Unlike cars or machinery, there is no ready gauge or monitor to diagnose human stress. As a result, companies often implement changes with little to no information about how their workers will be affected. There is no depth-finder that reveals how much more, or less, stress employees need to be productive. Moreover, the executive suite can have an isolating effect on leadership, impairing perceptions of the reality at lower levels. Executives also have more training and experience in handling stress, and are prone to overestimate what the average employee in accounting or operations, for

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