{"id":291,"date":"2009-02-18T09:40:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-18T09:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.wpdude.com\/test\/?p=291"},"modified":"2009-02-18T09:40:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-18T09:40:00","slug":"how-managers-can-reduce-stress-among-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/02\/how-managers-can-reduce-stress-among-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"How Managers Can Reduce Stress Among Staff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_8vF1TTyV5ww\/SZvgA-FVkiI\/AAAAAAAABX4\/BA0A0Jddb7k\/s1600-h\/stress-ball-boss.jpg\"><img id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304079293428896290\" style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 344px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 343px; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_8vF1TTyV5ww\/SZvgA-FVkiI\/AAAAAAAABX4\/BA0A0Jddb7k\/s400\/stress-ball-boss.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div><strong><span style=\"font-size:130%;\">I&#8217;ve just read an article in<\/span><\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.peoplemanagement.co.uk\/pm\/\"><strong><span style=\"font-size:130%;\"> People Management Magazine <\/span><\/strong><\/a><strong><span style=\"font-size:130%;\">about how managers can reduce staff stress.<\/span><\/strong> <\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>It opens with some scary claims and facts for managers &#8211; staff stress is on the increase due to the recession, stress is the leading cause of white collar absenteeism, etc. It then goes on to discuss four management &#8220;competencies&#8221; identified by a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hse.gov.uk\/research\/rrhtm\/rr633.htm\">Chartered Institute of Personnel &amp; Development\/Health and Safety Executive study <\/a>as useful in regards to reducing staff stress: <\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>1. Respect and responsibility<\/div>\n<div>2. Managing and communicating future and existing work<\/div>\n<div>3. Managing the individual in the team<\/div>\n<div>4. Reasoning and managing difficult situations<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>Underneath the business jargon the article uses these all seem reasonable to me and basically amount to emotional and linguistic intelligence. Your mum might say, &#8220;be nice, be clear, be fair&#8221; and if we cut all the garbage the trick to reducing employee stress is &#8220;don&#8217;t be an arsehole&#8221; as one consultant I know who was paid large amounts of money to advise a failing and stressed managerial team recently recommended. <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Reading the staff stress article it occurred to me is that there wasn&#8217;t much advice on <em>how<\/em> to achieve the desired competencies. How exactly does one &#8220;manage emotions&#8221; or gain integrity for example? This is an omission I see in a lot of writing on leadership &#8211; lists of generalised &#8220;stuff to be good at&#8221; that don&#8217;t really get you anywhere. This to me is where is embodied work comes in addition to the study of language which is crucial for the workload management mentioned and having a vehicle such as<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nvc-resolutions.co.uk\/index.php\"> Non Violent Communication<\/a> for the development of emotional intelligence. <\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>If you&#8217;re a manager (or husband, mother or friend) looking to reduce the stress of those around you, great. My integral <a href=\"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/free_online_stress_resources.html\">list of things that will help with stress is here<\/a>, but ultimately it&#8217;s a much bigger task as it&#8217;s about human leadership, and that&#8217;s not reducible to bullet points. <\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;..<\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color:#ff0000;\"><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color:#ff0000;\">Business So What:<\/span> If you want to help employees reduce stress, be nice, be clear, be fair.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><em><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Stress Ball Boss Pictured &#8211; <\/span><\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stress-balls.com.au\/stress-ball-boss.html\"><em><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">available here.<\/span><\/em><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just read an article in People Management Magazine about how managers can reduce staff stress. It opens with some scary claims and facts for managers &#8211; staff stress is on the increase due to the recession, stress is the leading cause of white collar absenteeism, etc. It then goes on to discuss four management &#8220;competencies&#8221; identified by a Chartered Institute of Personnel &amp; Development\/Health and Safety Executive study as useful in regards to reducing staff stress: 1. Respect and responsibility 2. Managing and communicating future and existing work 3. Managing the individual in the team 4. Reasoning and managing <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9xvDN-4H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}