Stress in the Workplace: What It Costs & What You Can Do. The Oxygen Plan Stress Test.

What is ?Stress?? First, ?stress? is NOT only something or someone ?out there.? ?Stress? is what we experience when demands placed upon us exceed our ability to cope.? Demands can be: internal vs. external or environmental, physical vs. emotional, self vs. other ? related, functional vs. dysfunctional and motivating vs. defeating. ?Coping? is our ability to tolerate ?stress? without developing symptoms. Conversely, the development of symptoms is what we experience when we are ?stressed.? The severity and/or persistence of symptoms leads to HEALTH RISK. Health risk in the workplace means loss of productivity in the workplace and increased health care costs to employees and employers alike. More on that in a moment, after a word or two about symptoms and health risk.

Symptoms and related health risk can develop in response to: Acute events (sudden or traumatic situations), chronic or persistent difficulties and/or accumulated impact of seemingly minor events over time. Symptoms can also develop in advance or in anticipation of something we see in our future but cannot avoid.

Health risk is determined by: personal medical & psychological histories, family medical & psychological histories, your own unique way of responding to stress and how often & how severe that response is. Stress, as defined, can mimic virtually any disease. Stress can: aggravate or exacerbate existing illnesses or risks and trigger earlier and/or more severe onset of illness.

Please note, however, that stress can be good! It can be motivational, productive and functional. BUT, when stress is sudden, severe, accumulates, produces effects over time, is chronic and/or produces symptoms, it produces personal health risk. In turn, personal health risk brings personal costs to not only to health but to home and work. Financially, the impact in the workplace ? be it a small family business or large corporation – is staggering. Consider the following:

Stress accounts for:

• 7.6% ($104B) of total direct US healthcare costs ($1.4T; 2001)
• 217 million work days lost costing $17B each year
• Indirect costs commonly exceeding direct costs (estimates exceed $105B 1990 dollars; behavioral health issues among workers ages 15-44 represent the 5th leading cause of short-term disability & the 3rd leading cause of long-term disability)

But there is good news in terms of personal health risk and cost and health care cost reduction in the workplace. Research clearly demonstrates that treatment works. Similarly, organizations can respond and significantly increase productivity & employee satisfaction while reducing health care costs.

Individuals and enterprises alike can adopt strategies for managing health risk and cost. The formula is simple: Stress management = health risk & cost reduction. Here is where The Oxygen Plan Stress Test and the Oxygen Plan come in.

First, The Oxygen Plan Stress Test https://my.theoxygenplan.com/stress-test. By taking the stress test, individuals can determine stress levels in their personal, social and work lives. Combining individual results across a group or an entire enterprise can assist that group or enterprise in assessing the aggregate stress levels across that group or enterprise ? the first step in determining the risk and cost of stress in the workplace. The results of the stress test alone give a clear indication of the health of the organization ? green, yellow or red. Combined with aggregate and confidential financial data, organizations can instantly see the potential for improving the health and financial performance of the organization. Adopting The Oxygen Plan provides the opportunity to realize that improved health and financial performance.

So, step up to the challenge of evaluating the health of your organization ? take The Oxygen Plan Stress Test – move your organization into the green!

Sources of Information

1. 1999 Surgeon General?s report on Mental Health
2. 2003 Presidents New Freedom Report on Mental Health
3. 2005 National Business Group on Health report on Behavioral Health Workplace Strategies
4. 2005 Institute of Medicine report on Improvement of Quality of Mental Health Care
   Scientific publications (references available)

Donald E. Williams, PhD, LP joined The Oxygen Plan in 2009 after serving on the professional staff of Mayo Clinic for 18 years and working in the private sector for four years. He is a licensed, board-certified clinical health psychologist (American Board of Professional Psychology) specializing is wellness, stress and stress related illnesses.

This entry was posted by Donald Williams on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 and is filed under Stress and Your Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.