Having a certain amount of stress in our working lives is a good thing, it can make us feel energised and focused, and make our work feel effortless. This is called Eustress, or “good stress” and is very different from Distress or “bad stress”.

It is important that people are exposed to the right amount of stress in the workplace and that they are able to cope with it in an effective way.

If they don’t find their work challenging enough they could “rust-out” which could make them de-motivated and work at a slower pace because they are bored.

However, if an individual is exposed to more stress than they can cope with they could “burn-out”. Burn out is where someone has been exposed to more stress than their current resilience level allows them to cope with. This causes fatigue which can make employees more forgetful, impairing their concentration and attention. This can lead to anxiety and depression as well as other performance and health related issues that lead to lost productivity as well as increased absence and presenteeism.

If someone’s job involves work that is repetitive or doesn’t challenge them then you might want to consider using a technique such as job rotation to make work more interesting for them or reassigning them to tasks that will be more of a challenge to them.

Alternatively, if your employees are being exposed to more stress than they have the resilience to cope with then you might want to consider some resilience training. This could increase productivity and reduce absence and presenteeism without the need to redesign jobs or decrease workload. (Over 40% of sickness absence in 2011/2012 was caused by work-related stress)

Studies have found that resilient individuals use positive emotions to bounce back from stressful encounters by finding a positive meaning in negative circumstances, this allows their bodies to recover from stressful situations more quickly. Resilience workshops and resilience training can make a workforce more thick-skinned and not only allow them to bounce back, but reduce the effect that stress has on their wellbeing in the first place. Research by Robertson Cooper has found that resilient employees report being 19% more productive than their less resilient counterparts. To find out more about how you can improve resilience in your organisation take a look at our Resilience workshops.