The most common symptoms of stress in the workplace are absenteeism, high staff turnover, poor time-keeping, aggressive communication and low levels of motivation. Do any of these symptoms apply to you or members of your staff?

Some stress, (known as eustress) is positive as it fuels ambition and generates satisfaction when challenging objectives are achieved. Negative stress occurs when the demands of a situation exceed your ability to cope with (or control) it. If stress persists and is not tackled, it frequently leads to mental and physical health problems.

So how do you know if stress is an issue for you or your workforce? The symptoms to look out for can be grouped into three headings; psychological, general health and behavioural. The psychological symptoms of stress include, problems sleeping, depression, difficulty concentrating, irritability, and poor family relationships. General health symptoms include issues like back/ shoulder pain, heart problems, peptic ulcers, hypertension and a depressed immune system. From a behavioural viewpoint, habits like tobacco/ alcohol/ drug abuse, using alcohol regularly to relax, bullying, harassment and anti-social behaviour are all symptoms of stress.

A worrying statistic released by the World Health Organisation predicts that by 2020, five of the top 10 medical problems worldwide will be stress related. The EU estimate that work related stress already costs member states €20 billion annually and this figure is growing.

To read the rest of this article and to discover the questions that will assist you in determining if stress is an issue in your company click here.

To learn about to how to manage stress more effectively contact us at (01) 6676147 or e-mail us.

In this month's edition our Business and Top Tips section looks at Presentation Skills, whilst our lead article revisits a topic that is always of interest, namely Stress Management.

I trust you will find it an enjoyable read.

James