Today is National Stress Awareness Day in the UK and the word from Aon, a leading global risk management and insurance consulting organisation, is that companies need to invest more in training their HR teams and line managers to help them identify signs of stress in employees. Christine Oosthuizen, Business unit head for Aon South Africa’s Enterprise Health Risk Management division, says this will both promote wellness and productivity across the firm by helping staff return to work and cut healthcare costs through early intervention.
“We’re beginning to see companies take a more pro-active, self-help approach to managing stress by using employee assistance programmes for lifestyle advice and counselling.” More training and workshops for managers means they can learn to identify stress during the early stages which can prevent conditions becoming chronic and avoid drastic measures such as long term psychological or psychiatric help.
“In turn this helps to reduce claims for private medical insurance and group income protection plans, while most importantly helping the employee to return to work. This needs to form part of a company’s overall wellness strategy, taking into account the objectives of the organisation and its ability to measure ROI,” she says.
Oosthuizen says stress management programmes are in their infancy. As a bare minimum, companies must have a policy to identify the symptoms with a clear stepped response to create a stress-aware culture. “Stress can be caused by a variety of triggers and not necessarily stemming from work but showing you have stress management plans in place will help protect your employees and could help you defend a costly employers’ liability insurance claim,” concludes Oosthuizen.
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