Reducing Work-Life Conflict

Hi there,

The interet is a wonderful place indeed. Earlier today I was reading Alive Magazine when I came across an interesting statistic about workplace stress:

“83% of Canadians report stress related to employment, including workload, wages, and job security.”

Being the curious person that I am I decided to do a Google search to see if I could find out more details, which led me to the Canadian Mental Health Association site.

This is a great site with lots of links to articles and reports.

One report which caught my eye was called, “Reducing Work-Life Conflict: What Works? What Doesn’t?” It was written by Dr. Chris Higgins, Dr. Linda Duxbury and Sean Lyons and funded by Health Canada.

The report was based on research involving 31, 000 employees across Canada.

According to Linda Duxbury, “More and more workers are finding it difficult to balance the roles of employee, parent, spouse, and eldercare giver.” This work-life conflict is taking its toll on workers, families and employers.

One thing that isn’t mentioned here is that many of these people also do community or service work and without them our communities would be in trouble.

The report looks at the roles and responsibilities of employees and employers and paints are rather negative picture of large employers in Canada.

“The majority of Canada’s largest employers cannot be considered to be best practice employers: Only about half of the employees who participated in this study were highly committed to their employer, satisfied with their job, and viewed their organization as an above average place to work. One in three rated high levels of stress and one in four were thinking of leaving their jobs.”

The report focused on four areas:

• organizational interventions
• individual coping strategies
• family coping straties

How are you coping with work and family demands? What, if anything, is your organization doing to help you?

Lesley

Stress Is An Organizational Problem

Good morning to you all!

I haven’t written about stress in the workplace for awhile.  This week a colleague emailed me an article from www.working.com about the effects of stress on bosses in the workplace. But first let me digress!

A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting and working with Marci Cohen. At that time Marci was a leader with the Hospital Employees Union in B.C. and Marci was on a mission. She had the goal of helping thousands of health care employees (front line) fight workplace stress.

When I first met Marci she had just finished putting the final touches on a program called The Anti Stress Initiative which involved education & training of union employees and health care leaders.

What was unique about The Anti Stress Initiative was its strong emphasis on the need for organizational change.

At the time that Marci began working on The Anti Stress Initiative there was a growing awareness, backed by research, that dealing with workplace stress was as much the responsibility of the organization as it was of the individual worker.

Prior to that time it was widely believed that individuals were responsible for dealing with stress on their own.  

“The only way to really reduce toxic stress is to change the work and change the workplace.”  … the Workplace Anti-stress Guide

The Whitehall Study, a famous research project, was cited in the Anti-stress Guide.

What made the Whitehall Study famous was that it established a clear link between social hierarchy, stress, and health in the workplace. It tracked 18,000 male English civil servants (now there’s term that could use some updating) for two decades. Secretaries, filing clerks, senior managers and everyone in between took part in this study.

The main findings of The Whitehall Study were that

“the lower a worker’s position in the hierarchy, the greater his or her likelihood of suffering from angina, chronic bronchitis, heart and circulatory problems, and other stress-related conditions.”

Employees were at risk if they had jobs with high demands but little control over their work.

This can be explained in another way:

People are under a lot of stress when they have a high-strain job. A high-strain job is one where you face many demands and have little control and support.

A low-strain job is one where you face demands and have a good measure of control and support.

Guess what? People in low-strain jobs are less likely to suffer from the negative effects of chronic stress.

The Whitehall Study put managers in the low-strain category.

However, recently researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered that “being the boss can take its toll on health”.

More about this in the next post! Enjoy your weekend!                                    Lesley

Emotional Vampires in the Workplace!

Hi! I first heard the term “emotional vampires” a few years ago. At that time I had one of these vampires in my own life!

Now Judith Orloff, M.D. has written a book on the subject. The book is called, “Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life” and it is a New York Times bestseller.

Emotional vampires can be family members, friends or co-workers. 

According to Dr. Orloff the best defense, as always, is a good offense. In order to rid yourself of these emotional vampires you first must learn how to recognize them. Only then can you decide how to stop them from “feeding off you”.

There are five types of emotional vampires that you need to guard against:

The Narcissist – this person needs you to fulfill their needs. They are completely self-centered and will find any excuse to talk about themselves, seek compliments etc.

The Victim – this person will wear you down with their “poor me” attitude. Believe me they can be extremely annoying and exhausting to be around. The victim won’t take responsibility (probably has no insight) for their behavior and believe that the world is against them. 

The Controller – this person will try to control you and tell you want to do and how to feel. They can dominate and suffocate you.

The Criticizer – this person will put themselves down and everyone else as well. Nothing is right with the world and they are happy to tell you about how awful everything is.

The Splitter – this vampire sees people in black and white. Unconsciously they turn people against each other.

Interestingly, according to Dr. Orloff we attract these lovely people into our lives when we are vulnerable and unhappy. AND the danger is that we can turn into vampires ourselves if we are not careful.

So, read the book and watch for the vampires in your workplace.                      Lesley