THE ROLE OF TRAINING IN WORKPLACE STRESS MANAGEMENT The Health and Safety Executive (2005) defines stress as the

adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demand placed on them. Numerous scholars have conceptualised and advocated theories and approaches to stress. Although diverse opinions exist regarding the issue of stress, it has now been generally accepted that stress is the result of an imbalance between appraisals of environmental demands and individual resources (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; MacKay, Cousins, Kelly, Lee & Caig, 2004). Also, it has been suggested that stressors which are essentially environmental demands, should be distinguished from strains, which are the responses to these demands (Jones & Bright, 2001). Occupational stress, which is one of the most common problems faced by organisations, has been defined as an event or situation in which one or more job stressors interact with the worker and lead to an acute disruption of psychological or behavioural homeostasis. (Hurrell, 1989). Occupational stress has often been associated with jobs that place excessive demands on employees while allowing them little control over how the job is performed, work environments that are uncomfortable or unsafe and organizational practices that exclude employee participation or input (Pretrus & Kleiner, 2003). Research shows that personal variables also play a major role in the experience of stress. Vokic & Bogdanic (2007), categorise sources of occupational stress as job-related stressors that include environment specific, organisation specific and job specific stressors and individual level stressors that include individual characteristics and individual life circumstances. Occupational stress contributes to costs derived from low productivity, occupational injuries and illnesses, absenteeism, poor morale and high health care expenditures. Research reveals that investing in workplace stress reduction can lead to significant pay offs in the organisations productivity and competitiveness (Pretrus & Kleiner, 2003). It thus becomes necessary to identify causes of stress in the workplace and undertake adequate measures to prevent employees from falling victim to stress as well as helping them cope effectively with it, thereby enhancing the productivity of the organization. According to Winzelberg and Luskin, (1999), stress management programmes must focus on identifying and analysing problems related to stress and the application of therapeutic tools to alter the experience of stress, in order to be effective. The following essay discusses the need for stress intervention in the workplace, approaches to deal with occupational stress and the role of training in reduction of occupational stress. In recent years, rising costs due to work stress have been reported internationally. According to Cox, Leather, & Cox (1990), in the United Kingdom, the cost to industry associated with replacing staff underperforming due to stress is estimated to be around 3000 million pounds. For Australian government workers in the Commonwealth, claims for stress-related illness amounted to 3.9% of all worker's compensation claims and 13% of costs in 1989. By 1990-91, these figures had increased to 4.6% and 18%, respectively (Toohey, 1992).

However, despite the evident need for the management of occupational stress and its obvious relevance to public interest, a review of literature suggested that even though some attempts had been made by practitioners from various fields including epidemiology, public health, business and medicine, the contribution of psychology and psychologists had been insufficient in dealing with the issue, both in terms of research as well as practice. Another problem encountered was that even those areas of occupational stress that were explored, had not been well researched and required further investigation. Due to this, a need for improving traditional methods of stress reduction was experienced. Terborg (1988) urged psychologists to develop existing knowledge and to conduct extensive psychological research on occupational health issues. Keita and Jones (1990) supported this notion, arguing for an expanded role for psychologists, to apply their knowledge of research methods and treatments to occupational stress, for the benefit of the nationss workers and their families (p.1137). Interventions can generally be classified as individual level interventions or organisation level interventions. Traditional stress reduction approaches, including stress management training and employee assistance programmes (EAPs) have focused only on the individual and helping individuals to cope with stress and build resistance (Dollard and Winehouse, 1996). Stress management training programmes are often implemented as preventive strategies to groups of employees at the worksite and often include changing or enhancing coping resources and responses (Dewe, 1989), teaching arousal reduction techniques, via training in progressive muscle relaxation, biofeedback, meditation and breathing management and changing perceptions/appraisals of work stressors using cognitive restructuring (Michenbaum, 1977). Dewe (1989) claims that these strategies help develop a capacity to deal with and build resistance to the stress related situation and provide a sense of inner well-being. The effectiveness of individual coping efforts in dealing with organisational stressors is however, a matter of some concern. Reviews of worksite stress training evaluations indicate that some individual level interventions may temporarily help to reduce adverse responses to perceived stressors, but the long term benefits of such interventions are questionable (Dollard and Winehouse, 1996). Pearlin and Schooler (1978) have argued that individual coping efforts may be ineffective in dealing with chronic organisational stressors, because of workers lack of control over the stressors. This led some researchers to investigate organisational level interventions, in search of a possible solution. Burke (1993) reviewed seven organisational level interventions to reduce stress at work and concluded that these interventions were generally found to have positive effects and should be encouraged, especially given the limited success of individual level intervention. However, Brine and Reynolds (1999) argued that organisational level interventions have little or no effect in addressing the issue of occupational stress. In response, Kohler and Munz (2006) propose that there would be greater returns from a comprehensive stress management programme if it were delivered from an organizational development change perspective. Dollard and Winehouse, (1996) have shed light on the fact that although stress research can provide valuable information regarding intervention, implementation and evaluation of the intervention are required to determine if they actually work. In recent years, there has been an

increase in research conducted on workplace stress and its intervention, and recently a number of psychologists have attempted to advance in this direction. In trying to develop comprehensive strategies and interventions to combat stress, training in stress management has emerged as an effective method of dealing with stress in the workplace. According to Shuttleworth (2004) training is not only an excellent mechanism to proactively address workplace stress, but it also helps employees become more resilient towards stress, enabling them to tackle its root cause. However, merely having all employees attend a training event does not necessarily result into an improved workplace. Shuttleworth (2004) specifies certain guidelines to be followed, in order to ensure maximum utility of a training investment, the first of which is to establish a coherent framework in the form of a well-being policy outlining what the organisation intends to do to manage stress and promote well being. The policy should define stress, specify the organisations commitment towards managing it, highlight how this will be achieved and outline responsibilities throughout the organisation. The next step is to clarify what is to be achieved through the training. A stress audit can be used as an effective instrument in identifying areas in the organisation that may be experiencing stress, understanding its causes and providing useful information that the organisation can utilize to improve the well being of its employees, thus laying a foundation for the subsequent training programme (Shuttleworth, 2004). The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (1999) places a statutory duty on the employer to conduct risk assessments of the workplace, which includes assessing the psychological risks of the workplace and taking preventive steps where a risk is known, thus driving organisations to undertake stress audits or organisational stress risk assessments (Kinder, 2004). For this purpose, organisations make use of tools such as surveys and self report inventories. However, according to Kinder (2004) these methods are not completely reliable and a stress audit becomes more effective when quantitative as well as qualitative data is included. This kind of a holistic approach gives a clearer view of the key issues as well as some solutions to them. The quantitative information includes sickness absence statistics, productivity rates, accidents, staff turnover and staff surveys. The qualitative data on the other hand involves looking at focus groups with different employee groups to understand both the perceived causes of stress and their suggested solutions, walk-through assessments, where the organisations environment is observed for potential hazards, information from staff grievance or harassment complaints, details of return to work discussions following sick absence, feedback from trade unions, feedback from employee assistance programmes and counselling services and reasons for industrial action (Kinder, 2004). Shuttleworth (2004) further emphasizes the importance of the senior management supporting and being involved in the design and development of the initiative as well as attending the

training themselves, to benefit their own work lives as well as to demonstrate that they practice what they preach. It is also necessary to train managers, not only to deal with their own stress, but also to enable them to identify stress in staff and provide appropriate help. A crucial stage of the training process is ensuring the effective implementation of the training in the workplace. Managers can achieve this by scheduling regular review sessions with team members. The final stage is measuring the effectiveness of the training by defining an appropriate evaluation process. A feedback form or other tools that will evaluate the quality of the training should be used in order to assess the implementation of action plans, changes to individual and team behaviour and the subsequent impact on sickness, performance, absenteeism etc. (Shuttleworth, 2004). Recent research has shown that, stress inoculation training, which is actually a flexible, individually-tailored, multifaceted form of cognitive-behavioural therapy (Meichenbaum, 1996) has proven successful on a preventive basis, on various stressful occupational groups such as flight attendants, soldiers, police officers, fire fighters, nurses, teachers, oil rig workers and staff workers who work with individuals with disabilities. (Meichenbaum, 2003, p. 407) Another type of training, which is meditation training, has proved beneficial in managing stress among teachers, although it focuses on individual rather than organisational factors. Meditation is a mental tool, whose purpose is to strengthen the minds ability to sustain attention. It has proved operational in helping to reduce stress and managing a variety of chronic diseases (Goleman and Gurin, 1993). The basis of meditation practice is to focus on one object at a time and gently return the minds focus when distractions are noted (Benson, Goleman and Gurin, 1993). According to Winzelberg and Luskin (1999), the effectiveness of a meditation method relies on creating a link between the participants cognitive beliefs about stress management and the physiological response called the relaxation response. Hence, along with teaching the subjects meditation as a relaxation tool, it is necessary to help them understand stress and what they can expect from stress management training. Winzelberg and Luskin (1999) conducted a pilot study to test the effectiveness of meditation training for student teachers. They evaluated the effectiveness of the RISE program of meditation in training teachers to reduce their stress level. The RISE program has been developed by Eknath Easwaran, to put in book form the meditation practices taught by him (Easwaran, 1991; Flinders & Easwaran, 1993, p.35) and prescribes a formal meditation practice period. Subjects in the meditation training were taught the RISE response, which consists of a simple meditative practice, using sound as a focusing device and three corollary techniques that can be practised at any time to remind oneself to focus attention. Subjects who were assigned to the meditation group were found to significantly reduce their stress symptoms in the post-test treatment, as compared to the control group, with respect to emotional manifestations, gastronomic distress and behavioural manifestations. Winzelberg and Luskin (1999) therefore concluded that short-term meditation training was effective in reducing certain manifestations of stress in student teachers. They noted that this form of

intervention is cost effective and hence could be used in situations where there was a paucity of resources available. Also, it is easier to teach and available to individuals for use at any time and hence could be used with teachers since they generally work in isolation, are under significant time constraints and hence require stress reduction techniques that are easy to use. It may, therefore be concluded, that despite its effectiveness among teachers, further research would be required to generalise the use of such a training programme and to validate its effectiveness in different work settings. In an attempt to design a programme combining both individual level as well as organisation level intervention, Munz, Huelsman & Craft (1995) developed a comprehensive stress management programme (CSMP) derived from a workplace stress model that consisted of individual stress training and an organisational stressor reduction process. Since 1995, the CSMP has been expanded to include three major components; a stressor reduction component consisting of work redesign and outside of work interventions, a self management component consisting of skill training and coaching and a contextual support component consisting of employee assistance and organisational changes (Kohler & Munz, 2006). The CSMP has been found to have a positive effect on emotional well-being (Munz, & Kohler, 1997; Munz, Kohler & Greenberg, 2001, Wheeler & Munz, 1985), perceptions of work tasks (Scott & Munz, 1995) and objective measures of productivity and absenteeism (Munz, Kohler & Greenberg, 2001). These findings support the effectiveness of the CSMP. Because of its proven effectiveness, the CSMP will be elaborated further as an illustration of an approach integrating individual level and organisation level interventions. Kohler and Munz (2006) present the CSMP using an organisational development approach, which measures and improves processes within the total system from the individual to the organisational level. According to them, the CSMP is not a rigid application of prepackaged programmes but a research based process that allows the organisational members to take ownership and create tailored programmes. Their research suggests that although the primary objective is to make an organisation-wide commitment to alleviating workplace stress, the CSMP also enhances individual well being and improves organisational effectiveness. The programme makes use of a three-stage process model. The first stage entails preparing the organisation for the CSMP. A successful CSMP involves gaining the support of individuals at all levels of the organisation starting with the top management (James, 1999). It also involves appointing a crossfunctional design and implementation team consisting of managers and employees from various levels and functional units in the organisation to design the specifics of the stress management intervention. The next step of preparation is the organisational needs assessment and diagnosis, which involves collection, analysis and feedback of data regarding the current situation and desired future state of work place stress within the organisation. The objective of this step is to conduct a stress audit for programme design (Arroba & James, 1990; McHugh & Brennan, 1992) and to communicate need to organisational members. The assessment results are used to develop a range of customised programmes to fit the organisation, addressing the organisational needs at the individual, group and organisational

levels. A key element of this entire process is building awareness and creating a readiness for change and allowing ownership to the employees over the programme. The second stage entails implementation of the CSMP. The programme is not static, but evolves as the implementation progresses over time. The programme can be categorised into four general areas namely work-unit stressor reduction, self management training programmes individual coaching and family/friends programme. The work unit stressor reduction programme uses a bottom up approach for alleviating stressors in the work environment that negatively influence employee behaviour and well being and allows employees to identify stressful workplace conditions and take steps towards improving them. At the same time, the group is encouraged to participate in the self management training programme. The self management training programme is regularly updated to reflect current research and practice. The contents of the training are customized to fit the needs of each individual organisation. Programme supporters, crossfunctional team members and management are among the first who are encouraged to attend. Self management coaching is another CSMP option that can be implemented in conjunction with the self management training. The coaching programme works at the individual level with employees who are in need of such support. The sessions are designed to assess the individuals stressors and coping needs, create action plans and hold the individual accountable for carrying out those plans. Family/Friends programmes involve the employees external social support network to further the success of the CSMP (Beehr, 1995). The main objective of this programme is to create shared learning of healthy stress management at home and to alleviate spillover from work to home and vice versa. Kohler & Munz (2006) recommend that participation in the CSMP, regardless of its type and content, should be voluntary, not mandatory, whenever possible. Munz, Huelsman, and Craft (1995) and Munz and Kohler (1997) found that 60% of the workforce in the organisations they studied were interested in in-house stress management training. Another key factor is that the initial stages of implementation should focus on small wins, which can be achieved through slow implementation of the CSMP programmes, using key internal stakeholders who support the programme and are viewed as credible. These small wins must be communicated through the organisation. It is vital, throughout implementation that management and crossfunctional team members collectively and visibly show support for the CSMP and encourage employees to attend the programmes (Kohler and Munz, 2006). The third and final stage is institutionalising the interventions throughout the organisation. The long term success of a CSMP requires ongoing commitment from the organisation. For this, it is necessary to build the organisations capacity internally and to adapt the programme to the organisations changing needs. To achieve this, four strategies have been suggested. The first strategy involves providing employees post training booster mechanisms and self management training that reinforce the stress reduction process. The second strategy involves providing fair and valued recognition to individuals and work units who have made a commitment to the programme, in an attempt to enhance participation in the initial stages by providing extrinsic motivators. The third strategy is evaluating the data feedback. Process and programme improvements are facilitated by attaining data from multiple sources at the individual, work

group and organisational levels. Self report evaluations where participants critically evaluate themselves are an example of this kind of evaluation of data feedback. Research demonstrates that those who engage in these critical behaviours tend to be more highly impacted by self management training in the long term (Nemanick, Munz, & Jones, 1995). Once collected and analysed by the crossfunctional team, the results, positive and negative should be fed back to the organization and used for continuous improvement (McHugh & Brennan, 1992). The last and possibly, most vital step in institutionalizing the programme is to develop internal CSMP trainers who can carry on the stress management initiatives in the consultants absence. For the stress-unit stressor reduction programme, employees are designated as facilitators for their own or other units. The challenge is to identify and train employees who can truly act as objective process facilitators. Generally, it is not recommended that a manager serve as the facilitator for his or her work unit as a result of the bottom up nature of the stress reduction process. The critical components to a successful CSMP include stressor reduction, self management training and a contextual support mechanism. Future research efforts may be directed at understanding the individual contribution of particular programmes and measuring their impact in general and within different organisational and occupational contexts. (Kohler & Munz, 2006). To summarize, it is clear that stress management programmes in general and training in particular include significant implications for the management of occupational stress. However, it must be considered that not all organisations are prepared to, interested in, or have the resources to invest in stress management programmes (Kohler and Munz, 2006). Thus, future research should also aim at developing programmes that are cost effective and easily administered. As stated previously, programmes should be designed and undertaken in accordance with organisational and individual needs, keeping in mind the availability of resources as well potential problems and their possible solutions.