Are the employees in your workplace stressed out? There are ways to tell.
Kevin Sharpe, a stress management consultant and the director of The Center for Body-Mind Therapy in Augusta, introduced his company's instrument called The Bottom-Line Stress Assessment to the Augusta Area Chapter of the Society of Human Resource Management on Wednesday.
The online questionnaire compares an employee's anonymous responses to 72 multiple choice questions to a data pool of individuals who have reported high stress levels.
"Employees sign on and it takes about 9 minutes to complete," he said.
Six areas are assessed: physical well-being, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, obsessive-compulsive tendencies and hostility.
The tool also provides analysis of communications skill sets, job satisfaction and stress-to-productivity indexes.
Companies receive a report to help them make decisions to improve employee health, reduce costs and increase productivity, Mr. Sharpe said.
Mr. Sharpe defines stress as "life happening in any way other than the way you want it to happen or plan it to happen." He said stress and stress-related disorders cost American companies more than $150 billion a year.
Reach LaTina Emerson at (706) 823-3227 or latina.emerson@augustachronicle.com.
STRESS AND YOU
PHYSICAL EFFECTS: Heart disease, hypertension, migraines, dental problems, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, muscle, back and joint pain/injury, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and impairment of the immune system.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS: Anxiety, insomnia, anger and hostility, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, feelings of inadequacy, eating disorders, addictions and abuse.
CORPORATE IMPACT: Absenteeism, presenteeism (showing up physically at work, but not being there mentally), insurance claims, short and long-term disability claims, decrease in productivity, communication problems such as disputes, fights and sabotage, burnout, turnover rates and retraining costs.
- $300 billion is spent annually in the United States on these problems
- This averages about $7,500 per employee
- Stressed individuals have 50 percent higher direct medical expenses
Source: Kevin Sharpe, The Center for Body-Mind Therapy
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