Page 1516 - Xmo Strata - Bulletin Archive

Health, Safety & Environmental Bulletin No 562

06 April 2017

Proactively Managing Stress

As part of our stress management policy, in 2011 we started a confidential Employee Assistance
Programme, available to all employees 24 hours a day to provide advice and / or counselling services on
any matter (business or personal), contact details are documented in the H&S manual (section D10.1.1)
and would remind all employees that it is available by way of this bulletin.

Stress is believed to be the UK’s number one cause of absence from work – but in addition to high
levels of absence it is also linked to high staff turnover and other indicators of organisational
underperformance.

If you look at it purely selfishly, from the viewpoint of the company and its customers, then stress is
about employees who are clinically sick underperforming and getting things wrong - that costs us all.

It is about the quality of the job, and about high levels of cost – which ultimately, of course, will be
passed on to customers in one way or another or the employer not surviving.

Enlightened companies – and we regard Xmo Strata as an enlightened company – also view the issue
from a more human perspective. And in that light, it is about taking corporate responsibility for
ensuring that the company does everything reasonably possible to ensure the wellbeing of its employees
and that benefits everyone.

We already do that – it’s why we’ve been so focused on health and safety since our inception.

Extending our health and safety policies to include a paid-for service, free to employees, is simply a
matter of encompassing modern thinking on this topic.

As a result, this service was introduced to employees with the objective of spotting signs of stress early,
and dealing with them, before harm comes to the individual and before it begins to affect the calibre and
quality of work.

Essentially, the service which the company is committed to provides free stress counselling and the
opportunity for individuals to talk to trained professionals about their work, and personal stress. The
service is provided by a third party and is totally confidential – there is no reporting back to the
company.

Professionals working in the field define stress as “the reaction some people have to situations where
the workload exceeds the person’s ability and capacity to cope.”

But this should not be a cause for judging individuals: we all experience stress, of different types, and
how it affects us can be influenced by a multitude of factors.