Organisational Behaviour For Dummies

Chapter 6

Reducing Stress, and Improving Health and Wellbeing

In This Chapter

Explaining stress and its causes

Looking at the cost of stress

Discovering and managing stress in an organisation

Tackling stress levels

The 1970s heralded major industrial relations problems, with many confrontations between unions and management. Then came the enterprise culture of the 1980s with major industrial and organisational change. The 1990s and early 2000s saw the Americanisation of most of the UK and Europe, with major restructurings, such as mergers/acquisitions, downsizings, outsourcing of functions, and the undermining of the concept of jobs for life. These activities transformed the UK economy, but at substantial personal cost for many individual employees. You can encapsulate this cost in a single word: stress. The problem, of course, has become much worse with the recession and post-recession period, with major job and resource cuts in the public and private sector, and more outsourcing of activities and functions now endemic to most workplaces.

Stress, then, has found as firm a place ...