Stress Awareness Training

The general aim of our work is to help organisations to understand and minimise the stress that their staff experience while maximising their well-being and performance.

Individuals will derive considerable personal benefit in finding ways to manage the inevitable periods of excessive pressure we all tend to experience. The organisation will benefit by understanding what has to be done to reduce the likelihood of stressful situations occurring.

Issues raised during the programme are fed into management discussions around the issue of stress.

Objectives

By the end of the course participants will:

Have a clear understanding of what stress is and what their responsibility is in helping the organisation to combat the problem

Identify the precise causes of stress within their own life and develop strategies for reducing their impact

Recognise the symptoms of stress in themselves and their colleagues and understand how to play a management role in giving and getting support

Understand the four main strands for stress release and how to apply them in their situation and how to promote them organisationally

Suggest ideas and actions for the organisation to consider in order to reduce the causes of stress

2. Training Content and Methodology

Session One: What Is Stress?

Attitudes to stress
The facts and implications for organisations
Defining stress
The pressure curve

The programme starts by working from the knowledge and experience that participants already have in relation to the issue of stress.

We share the extent of the problem of stress using data from government, the health service and the CBI. We also give examples of the approaches being taken by some of Britain’s major companies and show how managers apply their responsibilities in practice.

By the end of the session we have defined what stress is quite clearly.

Session Two: What Causes Stress?

Setbacks, challenges and hassles
The stress audit for your workplace
Tackling the causes of stress
Styles of coping

We explain and divide the pressures we face into three categories - setbacks, challenges and hassles. Participants explore the particular balance of these pressures in their own workplace whilst taking account of the impact of personal pressures. In this way they are able to produce a highly customised ‘stress audit’ of their own which can act as a working document for tackling the issue.

We return to the issue of personal perception as a factor in stress. Why does any given pressure feel stressful for one person and not for another? We ask what we can do to promote a healthy mental style.

Managers will consider ways to promote a coping mental style in their staff and ways to encourage helpful positive thinking in their own teams and in the organisation.

Session Three: What Are The Symptoms Of Stress?

Identifying the four categories of symptoms
Why we get the symptoms of stress
The symptoms audit
How to recognise the symptoms

The symptoms of stress can be physiological, emotional, cognitive and behavioural. None of us are complete strangers to these symptoms but few of us understand why we get them. Participants will receive a fascinating psychological explanation of the workings of the brain and the way it has systems to override the frontal cortex. This will show how and why we produce the hormonal, muscular and emotional responses to stress and so will explain why we get the symptoms.

This session will also answer the crucial question, given that we are not doctors, how can we recognise that we are beginning to suffer from stress? Managers will learn how to ‘diagnose’ stress in themselves and their staff early. They will work on developing appropriate courses of action to support such staff. They will also consider what organisational actions might be helpful.

Session Four: What Will Reduce Stress?

Physical and mental well-being
Support networks
Encouraging assertiveness
The importance of relaxation

Using a range of activities we will explore the four main direct approaches to protecting yourself from stress.

It will be clear to participants by this stage that the effective management of stress is not simply a case of using these techniques at a crisis moment of need. A strategy also needs to encompass organisational actions, personal perception and mental approaches, management of relationships and an understanding of the nature of stress.

Managers will be asked to consider what they and the organisation can do to support the implementation of the four strands above and beyond what any given individual might do for themselves.

For further information please contact:

Jim Welch
Jim Welch Training & Development
88 Southgrove Road
Sheffield
S10 2NQ
Tel: 0114 258 8526
Mobile: 0790 302 8140

Email: jim.welch@corporatesoul.org.uk

Email: jim.welch@pcshopnet.net