Stress and your career

Stress. It can be as debilitating to your career as it is to your health.

Workplaces are often pressure cookers. Employee assistance plans - - where they exist -- have responded with programs designed to address the negative effects of stress. But, EAP or no EAP, it can be medically necessary for an employee to take a leave of absence to get himself back on the right track.

Having dealt with the effects of overwork and learned to appreciate the need to head off stress before it becomes a problem, an employee is hopefully ready to pick up where he left off and return to his past level of productivity. But is it really business as usual?

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The unfortunate truth is that stress leave is likely to be a careerlimiting move. In fact, employees are well aware admitting the need to recoup and regroup in the short term can cause longterm damage to one's status in an organization. That's why so many people choose to hide their problems.

More often than not this makes the problem worse. Pressure builds even further, leading to more serious consequences than would have been the case if there had been an early intervention.

It can be a difficult situation for an HR professional. Human resources is often the place a stressed worker will come for help. Knowing the person could benefit from some time away, do you counsel him to do so? Or is it better to try to provide some support while he stays on the job in an attempt to avoid superiors finding out and unfairly judging his ability to handle professionally challenging and financially rewarding responsibilities in the future?

As much as one wishes to believe organizations will welcome someone back with open arms, the reality can be quite different. And HR should not pretend otherwise. That would truly be doing a troubled employee a disservice. So, you try to walk the line: "If you're sure you need time away, then please take it." All the while hoping things have not reached a point where it's too late for the EAP, or HR intervention in the form of attention to workplace issues, to help avoid taking the leave-of-absence option.

The stigma attached to breakdowns or stress leaves isn't going to go away no matter how hard an enlightened HR professional works to educate an organization's employees and leaders about mental health issues. Such attitudes can't be overcome so easily.

Stress in your life.

So where does that leave an HR professional looking to make a difference? As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

HR can truly make a difference by working to a create workplace where healthy productive stress over the short term is not confused with longterm unsustainable workplace pressures. Where toxic bosses are dealt with before they sap the energy and productivity of others. An HR department that desires to play an effective role through organizational effectiveness realizes mentally healthy workplace goals are part of the equation.

Source: Copyright Carswell Publishing

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