Competition across all industries is growing. Plenty of organisations have failed in the past few years, or are potentially facing failure. This includes many large, once heavily protected and profitable organisations, such as Kodak, Blockbuster and Nokia.
Organisations are just beginning to realise how critical it is to remain open minded and abreast of competitive shifts in their industry. The regular SWOT update is essential. The capability to create and maintain an innovation pipeline is also becoming mandatory for maintaining growth.
So far, so good. Large organisations can surely manage strategy and innovation to retain competitiveness, right?(!) Difficulty, however, begins when simplification and cost reduction come under the microscope. Thats when perceived ‘non-essential’ spend, like that occasional team dinner, or the weekly bowl of fruit provided for staff, or the gym membership subsidies, disappear. Staff in support areas diminish, generally impacting on the services provided to other employees through administration, HR, internal communications and more. Workloads increase as employees are forced to work harder, with increasing numbers of legacy systems slowing processes down. Relationships strain, as people become more intolerant and competitive.
Overall, the stress from declining health, wellbeing and ability to manage change and relationships escalates rapidly, leading to a number of potentially substantial costs. Direct costs, with employees taking more time off work through sickness (or resigning altogether), lower productivity, disgruntled customers, bullying and harassment charges and more. Indirect costs to the mental health and wellbeing of family and friends, who are forced to endure lower levels of support and regular bad-tempers at home.
Organisations that have high levels of stress have low levels of employee and customer satisfaction. In todays’ increasingly competitive marketplace, that’s a recipe for disaster.
What can be done to try and keep stress at bay given the constraints? Here’s a few simple zero-cost tips:
1. Create some space for sleeping…that’s right, people get less sleep when they are stressed, which impacts on mental performance. So let staff nap for 20 minutes when they need to and see up to 27% increase in their productivity (1).
2. Leadership should host staff meetings at their home, if possible. Not only will this save on accommodation and meeting space, but employees will instantly feel more engaged to their leaders and more committed to go the extra mile.
3. Teams who socialise together tend to weather stress better, with an ability to better release tension through informal exchanges. Even better, combine socialising with exercising…create a running group that meets one lunchtime a week and watch productivity immediately improve after lunch.
There’s plenty more that can be done. For more low-cost solutions to stress, visit www.acoaffair.com.
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