Although most leaders thrive on “stress”, many people (mostly at the lower levels of the organization) are adversely affected by it. Roughly a quarter of the working population in the West suffers enough from “stress” to warrant professional help over the course of the year. Another 25% of workers escape from stress by being alienated or just not caring enough about their work to get emotionally involved with it. As a result of these factors, it’s been shown that “stress” costs the average company about 10% of its payroll in the form of under-performance, health care costs, controllable absenteeism, overtime, turnover, early retirement, etc. (Most of those costs are recoverable with good stress management.)
At The Magi we believe that stress is the flip side of change. We look at it as neutral, taking on “good” or “bad” labels according to perceptions of the situation. Without some stress, there would be no motivation to perform. A certain level of stress is required for peak performance: above or below that level may cause problems.
We have the tools to help people deal with stress at both the individual and corporate levels.
At the individual level, we can provide clinical psychologists and counselors, if needed. However, we have a unique strategic approach to avoiding, preventing and dealing with stress based on industrial and organizational psychology.
Prolonged exposure to stressful situations (especially those dealing with people problems) can induce “burnout”. This can bring on chronic depression, greatly reducing personal performance and encouraging others to work around them. In many cases, we can help managers and professionals who have “burnt out” to recover full working capability and job satisfaction in many cases.
At the corporate level, if we know the patterns of stress within an organization, we can suggest the changes that would optimize performance. On the other hand, knowing what changes are anticipated for an organization, we can predict the types of stress they will induce to whom and, therefore, we can pre-manage those stresses and implement the changes quicker and more effectively.
