Time Management & Workplace Health

HealThySelfNow.com

Stress Management Course

Lesson 8

Time Management

To everything there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven...

Hebrew Bible

We need stress in our life but just the right amount. We never seem to have enough time, but it's usually not that we don't have enough...we just don't manage the time we do have effectively. An excellent step-by-step process for learning how to manage your time better for a less stressful life can be found at Time Management They also have useful resources for further exploration. Use this as your Time Management Homework.

Workplace Health

The trouble with the rat race is that, even if you win, you're still a rat.

Lily Tomlin

The proportion of workers who reported "feeling highly stressed" more than doubled from 1985 to 1990.

Job stress is estimated to cost U.S. Industry $300 billion annually, as assessed by absenteeism, diminished productivity, employee turnover, direct medical, legal and insurance fees, etc. 60-80% of industrial accidents are due to stress.

Workers' compensation awards for job stress, rare two decades ago, have skyrocketed and threaten to bankrupt the system in some states. California employers shelled out almost $1 billion for medical and legal fees alone. Nine out of ten job stress suits are successful, with an average payout more than four times that for regular injury claims.

Workplace violence is rampant. There are almost 2 million reported instances of homicide, aggravated assault, rape or sexual assaults. Homicide is the second leading cause of fatal occupational injury and the leading cause of death for working women. (Statistics courtesy of American Institute of Stress )

There are some excellent books by Dr. Beverly Potter: Overcoming Job Burnout: How to Transform Work Pressure into Productivity and Finding a Path with a Heart: How to Go From Burnout to Bliss . Her website has some excellent tools to help with this element of stress: Workplace Health

Use these two websites as your Workplace Health Homework.

An estimated 1 million workers are absent on an average workday because of stress related complaints. Stress is said to be responsible for more than half of the 550,000,000 workdays lost annually because of absenteeism.

A three-year study conducted by a large corporation showed that 60% of employee absences were due to psychological problems such as stress.

Nearly half of all American workers suffer from symptoms of burnout, a disabling reaction to stress on the job. (Statistics courtesy of American Institute of Stress )