Stress Management For The Individual

The Health and Safety Executive defines work related stress as: “The adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them at work.” It goes on to say that stress is not an illness – it is a state. However, if stress is excessive and prolonged then it may lead to mental and physical illness.

This course is designed to help employers meet the needs of individual staff who feel that they are subject to stress in the course of their work. The aims of the course are to enable participants to:

• Recognise the effects of stress and develop techniques to reduce them.

• Deal with two specific stressors known to be especially important to staff in work situations – time management and problems with assertiveness.

The course falls into the following parts

• Highlighting the effects of stress; many people severely affected by stress are aware of physical, emotional and behavioural changes in their lives, but are under misapprehension that they are alone — that no-one else feels the way they do

• Examining factors inducing stress (stressors) in general life and those stressors arising from the work situation

• Helping participants identify their own level of ability to cope with stress and what they can do to improve it

• Helping participants develop techniques to deal with common major stressors

• Time management

• Assertiveness