A survey by PrintWeek’s sister publication Human Resources, in association with AXA PPP, finds that two-thirds of directors in the print industry consider stress to be more of a problem in their organisation than 12 months ago. A quarter believe line managers now spend between 3-10 hours a week dealing with stressed employees while one in 10 thinks that more than 25% of working time lost to sickness absence is stress related.

It is this latter point that should make business owners and directors sit up. Dealing with stress is not about altruism, although naturally, a less-stressed workforce will be a happier one. It is about productivity and money.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) defines stress as “the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demand placed on them”. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD), work-related stress costs UK industry £3.7bn a year and can lead to absenteeism, low morale and poor business performance. Over half a million people report experiencing work-related stress at a level that has made them ill. Research from Oxford Economics and risk provider Unum shows that 10m days were lost to stress, depression and anxiety last year.

Further CIPD research reveals that in the print and paper industry, the average number of days lost each year through absence per employee is 7.1, with the average cost of sickness absence per employee per year at £725. In a company of 100 employees, that equates to an annual bill of £72,500.

In the Human Resources survey, work overload, lack of control and badly managed organisational change were the main factors blamed for work-related stress. Overload was seen as a particular problem, with 85% of respondents citing this as a main cause of stress in their organisation.

Increasing pressure
“This doesn’t surprise me,” says BPIF corporate affairs director Andrew Brown, “considering the pace at which everything is moving. The industry is more fiercely competitive than ever before, there is over-capacity and companies are facing pressure from other media and international competition. No one can afford to stand still and this puts pressure on employees. Stress can be an invisible source of lost time.”

The pressure on margins, consolidation and consequent redundancies certainly appears to make stress a critical issue in the print industry. According to Human Resources, only the health and social care sector suffers more stress.

Tony Burke, assistant general secretary at Unite (formerly Amicus), puts the blame squarely at the feet of tighter deadlines and shift work. “There is more shift working in commercial print and packaging. Stress levels are bound to be higher. And shift patterns are not always family friendly; you get 12-hour shifts and then because the work is not finished, you work additional hours. Margins are very tight and there is pressure to deliver.”

Burke also points out that sickness and absence are not the only results of workplace stress. “While there is a notable increase in the number of people saying stress is the reason for sickness or absence, it is not always expressed through illness. It can lead to alcohol abuse, pressure at home or anxiety attacks. Also, pressure at the top translates downwards onto middle management, then team leaders and all the way down. This can lead to bullying and harassment.”

Given that there is no sign of a let-up in all this pressure, what can companies do to help alleviate employee stress? Well, there is no shortage of information out there. Indeed, when Hungarian Hans Selye coined the word stress to describe the condition as we know it back in 1936, he cannot have known what he had discovered. His magnum opus Stress, published in 1950, comprised 1,000 pages on the subject. Google the word today and you get 198m sites full of companies eager to help you deal with it.

Government guidance
Del Wallace, membership director of the BPIF, points to the HSE stress management standards as a good place to start (www.hse.gov.uk/stress/standards). “We have worked closely with the HSE, which has come up with guidance to help companies recognise stress. In order to prevent stress, it is best to start by risk-assessing it,” he says.

Unfortunately, the Human Resources survey shows that more than half of companies in the industry do not use HSE guidelines to assess stress levels. In fact, two-thirds of companies do not have any policy to manage stress, while 90% have never undertaken a stress audit. Of the 10% that have, 80% have not used it to develop practical policies.

Mark Simpson, managing director of AXA PPP Healthcare’s occupational health service, says this is alarming. “The fact that companies are not viewing stress from a scientific, strategic, preventative perspective is extremely worrying,” he says. “Companies need to have accurate means of monitoring this problem. As a baseline, it is useful to track and code absence relating to stress so that at least you can identify the problem and begin to calculate how much it is costing the organisation.”

Helen Crooks, HR consultant at Bristol employment consultancy PES, says it’s important organisations provide training to managers on how to recognise stress. “When an employee raises a stress-related issue, the manager should refer them to a stress procedure and encourage them to talk to the appropriate person outlined. That person should listen to the employee’s complaint and investigate. They should consider the employee’s workload and working hours; their training; relationships with colleagues and managers; work envi­ron­ment and their particular work situation at present,” she says.

CIPD research confirms the most effective support for stress comes from line managers. Employees who feel line managers support them suffer fewer negative effects of stress. According to Ben Willmott, CIPD’S employee relations adviser: “Managing stress at work is to a large extent simply about good people management. Line managers must set clear objectives for individuals in their team, communicate with clarity, consult and provide plenty of feedback about performance – including praise. They must also spend time coaching and developing members of their team.”

Spotting the signs
But as Crooks points out, it is not easy to spot the symptoms. “It helps if you know the individuals well so you are able to notice if their appearance or behaviour changes; for example if an employee withdraws from socialising, is more easily upset/excited, or loses or gains weight.”

Although there is no specific legislation covering stress, employers do have a duty of care towards their employees under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and, depending on the employee’s symptoms, under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

Of course, the workplace may not be the sole factor. Perso­nal circumstances may be the cause or a contributing factor. If this is the case, a good employer should still offer support.

One way of helping is to introduce an employee assistance programme (EAP). “These support employees by giving them telephone access to confidential advice as well as face-to-face counselling if necessary,” explains Ann Greenwood, BUPA’s director of business markets. BUPA has launched a website for all businesses keen to discover the extent of the financial headache they’re left nursing when employees fall ill. It enables companies to get an estimate based on the industry, postcode, number of employees and average employee salary (www.costofabsence.com).

Dealing with employee stress is not just a compassionate measure. There is a sound business case for introducing procedures to reduce stress-related absence and improve morale, performance and retention in the workplace. Ultimately it is all about the bottom line. And as the BPIF’s Wallace says, this issue is particularly pertinent in the print industry.

“The problem is that you get situations where the job has to be done by one o’clock, it is only two hours away and you know there is not a cat in hell’s chance of doing it. But there is no choice. The pressure is tremendous.”

Siân Harrington is editor of Human Resources magazine

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TOP TIPS: MANAGING STRESS
• Talk about it. All too frequently organisations adopt the ostrich approach, hoping that if they ignore it, it will disappear. Sadly the reverse is true
• Take a top down approach. Don’t saddle the most junior member of the team with a project to ‘do something about stress’ with a budget fractionally lower than that of the office party. Senior management needs to be involved and committed to planning a strategic approach
• Think strategically. Running a few stress awareness sessions at lunchtime is not going to make any real difference. In fact it may make matters worse by sending out the signal that that’s the most you’re prepared to offer. Take a carefully planned approach
• Do research. Do you really have a problem and if so on what scale? Absentee and turnover statistics are helpful but it may be more useful to carry out a wellbeing survey or stress audit to gain an objective insight
• Act on the data. A survey will create expectations. If you consign the results to the bottom of a filing cabinet, don’t be surprised if people react with cynicism in the future
• Examine your culture. A task-focused, long hours culture with low support is likely to be exacerbating the situation. Does your culture turn a blind eye to bullying under the euphemism of ‘strong management’?
• Provide a clear statement on stress with guidelines for managers on how to deal with it. This can be a separate policy or part of your overall health and safety policy
• Educate managers on the common causes of stress, how to prevent it and how to support those experiencing it. Management style is often a key component in determining whether people experience healthy pressure or unhealthy stress at work
• Provide the opportunity for employees to learn for themselves how to better manage pressure and prevent it turning into stress. Try training seminars or the company intranet for education
• Consider implementing an employee assistance programme (EAP). This can provide ways of enabling employees to deal with problems at an early stage before they turn to stress
Source ICAS