TASK: Recognise your Stress Areas
Need: Pen and Paper
Time: 15 minutes
The British Health and Safety Executive, the Government body responsible for ensuring high standards of health and safety at work, has issued guidelines to help employers to minimise the stress they cause to employees.
The broad headings that employers are asked to focus on are all things that the psychological contract between employer and employee is built upon.
These are:
- Demands
- Control
- Support
- Role
- Relationships
- Change
Note: There is often crossover between the areas.
TASK
Working through the 6 stress areas, think how each of these manifest themselves in your life.
- Demands (e.g. targets, financial responsibilities)
- Control (e.g. health issues, new structure)
- Support (e.g. unreliable staff, technology issues)
- Role (e.g. not understanding duties, moral dilemmas)
- Relationships (e.g. domestic issues, challenging staff)
- Change (e.g. redundancy, change in legislation, recession).
Don’t forget – sometimes these areas overlap – don’t worry if that happens.