'Blue Monday'

Producing a better workplace environment will increase productivity of employees. We've recently heard that workplace plants can ‘reduce depression, anxiety and overall stress’, as well as other suggestions like reducing the amount of the colour red within the workplace, and ensuring you sit so your back is not facing the entrance to your work.

These are all relatively minor suggestions to help employees/workers get over ‘Blue Monday’ - Monday 16^th January 2012 which apparently is the most depressing day of the year. After the highs of Christmas/New Year, people then tend to have a lull in emotions. Obviously this isn’t to be confused with depression.

Whether or not it will cost the UK economy £93 billion in lost productivity/absence is difficult to measure and imagine to be honest.

Having a physically better working environment as well as fostering a positive work ethic is naturally going to assist in the growth of a business and its’ personality too.

To give you food for thought, imagine if you worked here...

Health, happiness and prosperity for 2012 to all.

National Stress Awareness Day 2011

Today marks National Stress Awareness Day, with the theme this year being ‘Wellbeing and Resilience at Work’. With cut backs across the board, especially in small and medium sized businesses and ‘survivors’ of redundancies picking up the slack, we at The HR Dept are not surprised to hear that stress levels in the workplace have doubled in the last 4 years.

We always advise employers to have a proactive approach in HR, but particularly with issues related to stress. Kate Stuart, a massage therapist who works through one stress related knot at a time, has provided a great way for employers to spot the signs of stress in their workers:

S -houting

T - earfulness
R- eddening or blushing
E- xhaustion
S- leeplessness
S- ighing

It was recently revealed that stress was the main cause for long term absence, as demonstrated by António Horta-Osório, Chief Executive of Lloyds Banking Group who has taken temporary leave due to fatigue. Kate adds “where the responsibility of the level of care is falling on the shoulders of employers, offering well being services for employees could be a small investment”.

By identifying issues early, employers can prevent stress related absence and waning performance.

To find about more about National Stress Awareness Day, go to http://www.isma.org.uk/national-stress-awareness-day/