Managers need to 'look out for rising stress levels' in staff
Staff who have survived redundancy should be monitored for rising stress levels, experts have warned.
According to Acas - which aims to improve employee relations, employers tend to focus on workers they are losing rather than those who survive the cuts, but managers must recognise and deal with the stress the remaining staff are under in order to maintain a happy and productive workforce.
Research published by Badenoch & Clark said that with the economy still suffering from the global financial crisis, employees' stress levels are being affected predominately by increased workloads, credit crunch worries and reduced headcount in their company.
The firm's latest employment study this week found that 91 per cent of employees are stressed at work.
Worryingly, 71 per cent of workers also said they felt unable to raise their concerns with managers, putting management skills under te microscope.
Gill Trevelyan, head of good practice services at Acas, said that many employees suffer from "guilt that others went while they stayed on and a fear of the future and more bad news".
Advising managers on how to handle employee stress, Ms Trevelyn said: "Establish if the stress is work related, if it is you have the ability to change things like job design to ensure demands on staff are reasonable or by providing additional training."
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Comments
As with other articles like this I think it's obvious that management should be looking out for their staff both those going and those staying. Heaven knows what stress levels were like in the Great Depression.
Managers need to be monitoring their own stress levels - managing in a downturn is highly stressful. If managers aren't looking after their own health and wellbeing then it's unlikley anyone else is.
Strikes me that the article is implying the stress is mainly arising from the worry of whether or not they will keep their job (and some guilt over still being there when colleagues have gone).
The likely outlook in these circumstances is more work not less to be shared around those left so not sure how firms could be expected to achieve job re-design to reduce stress?