How to ease the strain of daily pressures on employees
We are expected to deal with stressful jobs, stressful marriages, stressful divorces, raise children, maintain the right work/life balance, move houses, care for elderly parents, and cope with the loss of loved ones.
But are we actually coping? And what is causing us to be overwhelmed? Is it the way we are parented or is it our lifestyle?
The impact of daily stresses
I see the results of ‘life stresses’ day in, day out at my occupational health clinic. What strikes me is that we appear to be unable to deal with the events that life throws at us.
What you would have considered in the past to be ‘normal life stresses’, such as taking a driving test, moving house, or coming to terms with bereavement, have now become overwhelming.
Society gives people three days bereavement leave, but I see lots of people in my clinic who are off for six weeks following the death of a loved one because they simply can’t cope with loss.
I believe we less able to cope because we have lost the intrinsic ‘locus of control’.
In other words, we are raised in a world where everything is perfect. Therefore, if something goes wrong, we are unable to cope.
It stems from the ‘helicopter’ parenting generation, whereby children are cocooned from many risks. Parents act as enablers; planning every facet of their child’s life to produce the ‘perfect’ environment. As a result, children can grow up without the necessary skills to cope with the everyday adversity of life.
Although our inability to manage life stresses can be attributed partly to changes in childhood development, this is not the only cause to blame.
Life is more demanding. Everyone is working harder; technology has created a 24/7 lifestyle. And it’s from this that the societal expectation has dramatically increased.
People are contactable all of the time and the ability to get away from work is sizeably less. Employees are issued with a laptop and a mobile, and emails are arriving in the middle of the night from America.
We are blurring our lives so much so that we are putting ourselves under catastrophic amounts of pressure.
Mitigating the strain
The result? Poor mental health, increased stress, and a lack of work/life balance. In some cases, it can lead to an increase in sickness absence, which in turn can lead to employees being signed off from work and sent to occupational health clinics around the UK.
But what can employers do to help ease the strain on their employees?
This is what I preach: early intervention strategies that enable the employer to act when the first signs are manifested, prevention initiatives to maintain or improve good mental health, and funding treatments because the NHS cannot provide these in an expeditious manner.
Employers must put in place these resources now, in order to try to manage these issues.
By introducing an early intervention strategy, the employer initiates a conversation around mental health. This is the first step towards creating an open culture, which is crucial to tackling poor mental health.
If employers act now, they can create the environment whereby action can be taken at the earliest stage, enabling individuals to be signposted to the correct treatment or care before it’s too late.
Read more about early intervention strategies on BHSF Occupational Health’s website.
The author is Dr Philip McCrea, leading consultant in occupational mental health and chief medical officer at BHSF.
This article was provided by BHSF.
Supplied by REBA Associate Member, BHSF
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