Taking the stress out of business!

• How much do you know about stress?

• Are you aware how much stress could be costing your business?

• Did you realise that it is now law to have a stress policy if you have

   more than 5 employees?

Stress related illness accounts for 13.8 million days of absence from work per year. This is a cost to your bottom line in terms of lost productivity, paying for temps during their absence and sickness benefit. It can cost you more if your employee cannot return quickly and if you have to replace them by recruiting someone else.

Sue Firth is a Business Psychologist with 19 years experience of stress and stress management. She has joined forces with Dr Les Smith, our Occupational Health and Well-being expert, to deliver an informative and valuable programme.

Our half day workshop will help your business. We believe that managers are ideally placed as the ‘first line of defence’ for companies. The workshop teaches managers how to detect the early signs and symptoms of stress so that they can pick up any individual who is experiencing difficulties at work before they go off sick. This is the preventative approach to stress that is needed if a company is to be truly protected from the threat of litigation for stress related illness.

The workshop teaches a series of tools for managers to help support an individual if they are experiencing stress; recommends how to approach someone they are concerned about; what a manager can help with and what to do when the issue exceeds their experience. In these circumstances the manager needs to refer their employee to someone inside or outside the business who has the expertise needed to help. We teach them how to do this too.

As a result of the half day workshop you will learn: -

     - What stress? Why it is not an illness. The positives of stress

     - How to recognise symptoms of stress that are acceptable and when they become a significant cause for concern

     - How to use a questionnaire on stress within your business to help individuals recognise their own symptoms

     - How to approach someone you are concerned maybe stressed; what to document and how to proceed

     - What people find stressful and why they find it so. Understand- ing the difference and what you can do to help

     - When do you ask for more help and how to refer someone

     - Sources of help inside and outside the business

     - Action planning for managers

By the end of the training your company will be able to develop a policy on stress that helps protect your business AND complies with the law.

Once the training is complete we send you a questionnaire which will help you to document how many cases of stress related illness you have seen; the advice you gave them and how much help you felt better equipped to give. After a month we check on your increase in skills by asking you to question your team and see how they think you have been and what has improved. We also analyse any counselling service you already offer to determine the type of cases they have seen and monitor how effective this service is for you and your business.

If you are interested, please contact suzanne@expressmedicals.co.uk for more information or telephone 020 7500 6913.

Stress factsheet

t:   020 7394 1788      e:   info@expressmedicals.co.uk