Stress control now a KRA for companies

Firms are now thinking out of the box to manage employee stress, lest it begins to hurt performance.

At Bausch & Lomb, managing employee stress is all about setting achievable sales targets and following a comprehensive annual KRA or goal setting exercise and twice-a-year performance appraisals. This ensures that there are no residual feelings leading to stress.

Says Uttam Ghosh, HR head at Bausch & Lomb: "Positive stress is an inevitable part of a challenging work scenario and it helps individuals to beat their limits of excellence. But we also take cognizance of the fact that there could be situations leading to negative stress."

Companies have started recognising stress at the workplace as a significant business concern and have been bringing proactive measures to provide a healthy environment. Kanoria Chemicals and Industries (KCI), for instance, believes in improving the time management skills of its staff to help them achieve work-life balance.

Elaborates Ghosh: "Critical activities, such as goal setting, target deployment communications, incentive clarity and performance feedback, if not done properly would lead to high stress levels. This could further be potential reason for quitting the organisation."

Mitigating negative stress is what companies focus on in their stress management programmes. Some follow Art of Living courses, others are enrolling employees in Yoga and health workshops. Some like Aricent Technologies have put de-stressing tips on their intranets.

Gauri Arora, a spokesperson for Aricent, explains, "Corporate communications along with the HR team organises monthly health and wellbeing lectures for employees."

The company even has a full-time physiotherapist on its rolls to take regular workshops in Aricent's three centres - Gurgaon, Bangalore and Chennai.

At Emami stress management is rooted in the HR mission and objective. Elaborates Ratna Sinha, HR head at the group: "The principle of spiritual discourse is part of the work life with us."

The group has spiritual discourses by well known spiritual leaders and through reputed organisations like Brahma Kumaris and Art of Living, yoga sessions at offsites and regular exercises at the office gym. "We even encourage employees to avail themselves of their annual leave."

At many companies, Art of Living is the preferred medium for stress busting. Aricent has been conducting these courses since 2001, and says that though it has made the course voluntary in the last two years, there has been no drop in participation. KCI follows the stress management programme not only ensure employee satisfaction but also reduce the probability of attrition.

At Infogain, stress management training comprises yoga classes, dance classes, aerobics and fun zones, which are short breaks from hectic schedules.

The thrice-a-week classes are held by experts and a panel of physicians is available for consultation in the office. Companies maintain that stress indicator awareness and knowledge of appropriate stress management techniques make a huge difference in the productivity of the employees.

Says Shantanu Banerjee, head of HR at Xansa Technologies: "We realized that if the employees' stress level is too high, their work may become impaired, and the hostility they posses would get reflected in the quality of their service. In such a scenario, employees who suffer the burden of having to perform can simply 'crack'. They may actually develop ailments like heart problems, high blood pressure and peptic ulcers. Therefore, we felt the need to incorporate certain tools as part of our HR programme to control and manage employee stress."

Xansa has an all-encompassing stress management programme that includes motivational talk sessions, pranic healing sessions, yoga classes, recreational activities like table tennis, carrom and chess, social get-togethers such as choreography, fashion shows, collage competitions and painting competitions and no 'graveyard' shifts. Day care centres and games on the intranet also help in beating stress.

Adds Banerjee: "To gauge the effectiveness of such de-stressing sessions, we use employee satisfaction surveys ." He says Xansa has seen a growth in employee satisfaction levels.

"Such de-stressing programmes have helped the organisation to find out the kinds of problems or issues being faced by employees at the workplace."