Workplaces and Stressors ......

The modern day workplace can be large, medium or small. Regardless of the size though, some things are common to every single facility. It's a place where people come together and interact in some way; it's a place where egos and personalities meet, albeit for only a small portion of the day or night. Add to this the pressures which naturally accompany today's 'need to produce' and we have a wonderful, but potentially destructive formula for individual psychological stress. Of course in each place the levels of stress vary; each place has different pressures, personnel and levels of management competency.

According to figures published by Australia's medical insurance company 'Medibank' in 2008, a staggering AU$14.81 billion a year is drained from the nation's economy purely by workplace related stress. The total cost to employers was an enormous AU$10.11 billion! Those figures are mind boggling. Stress directly related to the workplace is affecting the worth of our country in a more than miniscule way. I imagine that figures across the globe in other nations must be similar. A minimum of 3.2 days per employee are lost annually to stress.

You don't need to be A.Einstein to figure that in a workplace of, lets say 100 employees, working 12 hour shifts (common these days), that equates to a grand total of 3840 manhours of lost production every single year! Extrapolate this figure out to one of our larger employers of let's say 1000 personnel, and it's a huge 38400 manhours every single year. If your the unfortunate individual actually affected by the stress, you may well lose income, or at the extreme, your position, if the situation is not resolved.

It is also interesting to note that figures show that while compensation claims made by Australian employees fell significantly between 1996 and 2004, the number of stress related claims almost doubled. The reason for this is not totally clear, that great gap between physical injury claims and the rise in stress related claims. Whatever the reasons, it seems obvious that in order to improve their workplace morale, output and employee retention rate, employers have a need to address this stress phenomenon.

Hypnotherapy is possibly one of the finest modalities when it comes to stress management. Deep relaxation, and that gentle 'mind defragmentation' which takes place in the hypnotic state is indeed highly beneficial to the stressed individual.

My perspective on this is quite simple. I offer all of our local companies the opportunity to point their stressed employees in the direction of my therapy chair. In what I term "Stressbuster" sessions, I can offer sixty to ninety minutes of powerful stress relief; in these sessions, the clients can divest themselves of the pressures of life and work. They leave my rooms mellow, calm and mentally soothed. This is good! These sessions have given me great satisfaction over the years; it's quite amazing to watch people morph very quickly from a stressed, uptight, disturbed being, into one that's calm, collected and more able to cope with day to day pressures.

I may be contacted via my email of course, which is: hypnotherapy@iprimus.com.au, or, conversely by telephone at 0414 856 278.