SuccessQuotient@Work for Managing Personal Stress and Wellness

Healthy and motivated employees are a company's biggest asset in today's highly competitive and fast moving environment. For many employees, work is stressful. A recent international poll conducted by Monsters (2014) found that 42% of employees quit their job because of a stressful work environment. Similarly, in Australia, nearly half (47%) of working Australians reported workplace issues as a source of stress.

In the past, attention to the health of employees has focused mainly on aggravating working conditions (e.g., long hard labour). But, we now know that psychological (e.g., stress or anxiety) and social experiences (e.g., exclusion from staff social gatherings) can also affect the health and well-being of employees. Perceived this way, well-being is a multidimensional process that consists of intellectual, social, and emotional health. This idea of health is also consistent with the World Health Organisation's definition wherein health is "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". This is an important definition because individuals who have a disease or disability can still consider themselves to be in good health provided they manage their health conditions so that it does not affect their overall quality of life. The key message here is not just about the prevention of ill health, it is also about being able to manage one's health conditions to achieve an overall sense of well-being.

Before we discuss strategies to manage personal stress and well-being, it is important that readers have some ideas about what stress is. This will be followed by a discussion on the consequences of work-related stress and the sources of some of these work-related stressors.