It pays to be aware when the pressure is on
Managers need to take care of stressed staff — especially now, writes Jeremy Hazlehurst
When times are hard in the markets, it’s easy to forget sometimes that it’s not only the bottom line that suffers. Managers also ought to be aware that their human capital can feel the pinch as well.
As the FTSE has sunk lower, so has the mood of many of those whose livelihoods depend on its fortunes. Since the credit crunch hit, the number of people in the City feeling depressed has rocketed.
“There has definitely been a noticeable increase in people’s anxiety in the workplace over the past eight or nine months,” says Henrietta Bowden-Jones, a consultant psychiatrist at the Capio Nightingale Hospital, an independent psychiatric hospital in Central London.
Quality of Life
“People feel that there’s a perceived questioning of their abilities and dedication, so they want to seem keen, motivated and on top of the job. One of the things that we’ve noticed is that people are staying at work longer hours.”
This, of course, is not without its problems. It inevitably has a knock-on effect on personal relationships and general wellbeing. “People see their spouses and friends less, and start going to the gym less, and therefore the quality of life balance is lost,” says Bowden-Jones. “That has a direct impact on wellbeing and therefore mental health.”
While low levels of anxiety can be a positive thing that sparks hard work, if it continues for a long time or gets above a certain level, it can become destructive. Low mood is a natural progression from low-levels of anxiety. That is not only bad for people’s private lives, it can affect their effectiveness at work as well.
Knackered
“There are lots of people in the City who are knackered, at a time when we might need them to be problem solving and creative. They’re either not sleeping at night, or waking up very early,” says Averil Leimon, a psychiatrist whose work for management consultancy and executive coaching firm White Water Strategies brings her into contact with a lot of City high-fliers.
Among the effects are an increasing reliance on alcohol, or drugs. “As they get more stressed, people who drink after work end up drinking larger amounts, to numb the malaise or to self-medicate. This becomes a pattern and has a knock-on effect on their health, which can mean that they don’t eat.
“It indirectly affects their relationships and leads to them becoming even more socially isolated,” says Bowden-Jones. It is friends and family who provide people with their support network – when that goes, they can spiral lower. Cocaine, especially, is a growing problem, says Bowden-Jones, not so much during the working day, but to extend the day once people have stopped working.
What are the results of all this? As well as being miserable, employees who are stressed are more likely to underperform and make mistakes. That is the last thing that anybody – them included – needs at the moment. “Resilience is a big issue, because it looks like it’s going to be a long haul,” says Leimon. “If your staff are a few percentage points down from their peak performance, you are pouring money down the drain”. She adds that morale in the office can also be adversely affected when people are down.
Often, especially in an environment where weakness is frowned upon, it can be hard to recognise when somebody has a problem. People in the City are hardly queueing up to admit that they are feeling miserable. So how do you recognise when somebody is suffering?
One of the first signs of a serious problem can be loss of sleep. “Obviously, their employer’s not going to see employees at bed time, but you might hear then complaining about sleeplessness,” says Leimon. “Another sign is weight changes, and you might see people tucking into the doughnuts at every break,”
“People become withdrawn when they are anxious, somebody who used to spend their time chatting at the coffee machine is head-down at their desk all the time. Some people stop going to the canteen,” adds Bowden-Jones.
Communication
So what can you do to help people who are depressed? As so often, it’s all about communication. “The idea of being polite and not asking is not helpful to anyone,” says Bowden-Jones. “You can say, ‘I have noticed that you haven’t been yourself’ to somebody, and they can choose whether or not to pick up on that.”
Managers have a big role to play supporting their staff, says Leimon. “It is easy for staff to feel out of control, to start running around like a headless chicken changing tack all the time.
People who feel out of control are not well-equipped and feel uncomfortable. It is as important to be professional in managing people and leading as it is to be technically good. You have a responsibility to keep people’s resilience high.”
People who feel out of control are not well-equipped and feel uncomfortable. It is as important to be professional in managing people and leading as it is to be technically good. You have a responsibility to keep people’s resilience high.”
Regular Meetings
It is vitally important to make sure that you have regular supervision meetings with staff. It’s easy for managers and staff not to prioritise those meetings, and assume that everything is hunky-dory unless a problem is flagged up, says Bowden-Jones. But it is important that everybody has a chance to say that things are not okay. And people are unlikely to go to their manager if they are under pressure: one of the symptoms when you’re depressed is that you think nobody cares about you.
The other key is to make sure that managers are informed in terms of mental health, and what a diagnosis means. “It’s no good having somebody go to their manager and say that they are clinically depressed, if the manager doesn’t know what the symptoms are,” says Bowden-Jones.
Thank You
Sometimes, the solution can be relatively straightforward. Saying thank you, for instance. “We did a survey and people react very positively about being thanked.
Money is significant, but not as much as people think,” says Leimon. “Being singled out, if your boss says quietly to you that you did a good job, that you are really good at something, can have people walking on air.
“We are very simple creatures, and are not told often enough how brilliant we are. People call these things soft skills, but they are actually very hard skills.” Now might be as good a time as any to develop them.
