How is Stress impacting your Workforce, your Business and Growth? How I can help with a simple Stress Reversing Technique

Performance Master Coach Lisa Bardell explains what employers can do to combat stress in the workplace.

Stress is an epidemic, which causes absenteeism, lack of engagement, high staff turnover and burn out. Since 2009 the number of working days lost to stress and anxiety has risen by 24% at a cost of £100billion, this is measurable. How else might stress be impacting the results and growth of your business through the effects it has on your workforce?

What is Stress?

Stress is caused by the activation of the Stress Response also known as the Fight or Flight Response, it can be thought of as a turbo boost of energy, like the body going into a different gear to prepare us to have the strength and energy to fight, or to flee from threat. Our ancestors would have used it to survive from predators or danger. It is a major physiological event for our bodies and is an evolutionary adaptation designed to help us respond to a clearly perceived present moment threat, to save our lives. 

So what has this got to do with your team’s efficiency, resilience and creativity and more importantly your bottom line?

As modern humans we are too ‘clever’ for our own good. Our cognitive function works against us. Our ability to think, to analyse, recall past events and ‘predict’ the future is what causes us to feel under threat, and activate our Stress Response in just the same way as if we were lost in the woods and met up with a hungry wild bear.

Our thoughts trigger stress ( some thoughts are conscious, some are unconscious ). Information and sensory overload, from today’s constant digital stream of information, serves to generate even more mental activity. Thoughts about work pressure, deadlines, feedback, appraisals, presentations, sales figures, job security etc., are all causing our stress in a way that is as real as if we were genuinely in danger. ( Not to mention other modern human stresses like family, fatigue, finances, childcare, relationships, health, comparing ourselves with others etc. )

This incessant activation of the Stress Response is a modern violation of the evolutionary model, where it was designed to come in short bursts. Today stress is chronic. The human body is simply not designed to deal with it. 

No matter how much your are investing in recruitment or training and development, the modern reality of stress gets in the way of your work force being productive, happy, successful and applying what you teach them because they are often in a totally unsuitable emotional state and physiological state to perform to their full potential, and your services and business suffer as a result. Stress impairs our ability to:

• Remember & recall

• Make decisions

• Think creatively

• Remain motivated

• Concentrate

• Stay calm

• Communicate effectively

• Build strong relationships

• Be productive

• Feel energized

• Lead inspirationally

Stress acts like a switch. It switches off our clever, resourceful and creative responses, and switches on our emotional and reactive responses. 

In the longer term, the medical term for the toll of stress is called the Allostatic Load – the heavy burden which chronic stress places on the organs and the immune system, which explains how poor performance and burn out creep in. Stress causes poor sleep, mood fluctuations, overwhelm, brain fog, fatigue, illness and eventually disease. 

So what can you realistically do, is there a tool you can add to your training and development toolkit for better performance and bigger results? 

Science now gives us hope, direction and a clear answer.

What science has now shown us, is that there is a reliable and easy way to switch off the Stress Response when it is not necessary. Meditation.

Modern meditation can reverse all of the effects of stress right through the body, at a cellular level, and throughout the brain as well. Modern styles of meditation, which require no lotus position or spiritual beliefs, are growing in popularity with CEO’s, creatives and entrepreneurs to help them perform to their full potential and get ahead in business.

MRI scanning has allowed scientific research to measure the brain, in a new way to discover how meditation changes it’s structure for emotional, psychological and physical benefit.

The amygdala is the part of the brain which produces the Stress Response. Recent research by neuroscientist Dr Sarah Lazar, Professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School, has shown that with regular meditation, the amygdala gets ‘turned down’ and shrinks. It simply triggers less ‘stress’ from external ‘stressors’. 

This research has motivated many to progressive organizations like Apple, KMPG, Astra Zeneca and Google, to harness the power of meditation, and to realize that for businesses, organizations and professional individuals, reducing stress in the workplace need not be solely about changing the whole environment, because it is possible to change your relationship to your environment to work more effectively, more happily and more sustainably.

There is plentiful neuroscience research nowadays into many other emotional and physical benefits of meditation. The ASAP Science channel on YouTube has a 3 minute video which summarizes the findings of the last 5 years. 

Modern meditation in the workplace.

America is leading the way with integrating meditation into the working day, even creating ‘Calm Spaces’ for meditation within the office environment. However UK pilot studies are catching on, and the credibility of modern meditation is pricking up the ears of influential policy makers.

On January 14th 2015, ‘The Guardian’ reported on an eight month inquiry by a cross-party group of MP’s and peers, which found that frontline public servants could be less likely to fall ill with stress, or quit altogether, if they engage in a modern meditation practice. Other pilots reported by the Department of Health, revealed that frontline health workers in Surrey showed a fall in sickness absence after being taught mindfulness meditation.

Several prisons are running pilots studies, as are a network of teachers in academy schools in the North West.

Chris Ruane MP, co-chair of the all-party group states that the current mindfulness meditation teaching “could be rolled out to GP’s and key professions where there is big burn out.”

Tracey Crouch MP and co-chair commented on the high costs of absenteeism in the public sector, and added that sixty MP’s and 55 peers have also had training. 

The inquiry report, based on mindfulness meditation represents the most significant pressure yet, to bring meditation into the mainstream, at a time when the interest of the general public has boomed over the last couple of years. 

Meditation courses for your business or for you.

After a successful sixteen year career in business, latterly at senior director level, I witnessed the effects of stress in the workplace on performance, longevity and health.

I re-designed my own life to return to my long held passion for Psychology. Already awarded a BSc (Hons) in Psychology from London University, I trained further in NLP Coaching, Clinical Hypnotherapy and Modern Meditation. I now work as a Performance Master Coach and Advanced Emotional Therapist in my private clinics in Central London and Cheshire.

I offer Corporate Coaching Packages for businesses, for whole teams or One to One with individuals, and Modern Meditation is one of the key ingredients to help businesses and professionals perform to their full potential.

I also collaborate with a business partner who designs ‘Calm Spaces’ within the workplace.

Join my Modern Meditation Workshop on Monday 9th March in Manchester City Centre from 5.30-8.30pm by booking on Eventbrite: https://modernmeditationmanchester.eventbrite.co.uk

If you would like to enquire on any of my services, contact me or read more via my website: www.LisaBardellCoaching.co.uk, browse my Corporate Coaching page: www.LisaBardellCoaching.co.uk/Corporate, or mail me directly on info@lisabardellcoaching.co.uk