Seven steps to stress prevention

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Seven steps to stress prevention

1. Organizational effectiveness begins with personal effectiveness. Give people tools that help raise awareness of sources and sinks of their time so they can see how to manage it better.

2. Helping people take control of their time, especially when working outside traditional business hours, will help them to prevent stressful situations from arising.

3. The psychological contract may need to be re-assessed as virtual workingbecomes more the norm. Access to critical knowledge should not imposeunacceptable demands on people’s availability.

4. It’s better to prevent stress than to manage it. Thinking ahead andanticipating what time and knowledge will be needed by whom will make itmore likely that people will be able to cope with pressures when they arise.

5. Organizations must be dynamic and responsive – don’t rely on anend-of-year survey to tell you that things have gone wrong.

6. Different personality types may be stressed or engaged by differentbehaviors or requests. Coaching people to share and acquire knowledge moreeffectively will be a vital complement to any formal corporate rules andprocesses.

7. Build teams around knowledge competencies, not just formal qualificationsand previous roles held. Many people can benefit from having ready access tocolleagues who can find, synthesize, reframe and translate elements ofknowledge into a useful and usable language and format.

Source: "HR and the parameters of knowledge, stress and time," by KatrinaDelargy and Heather Chatten, Strategic HR Review Vol. 4, Issue 5, July/August 2005

Blogged on 1:31 AM by Upay

|

~~~