Insidious Stress

As I've written before, a large volume of the output created by workplace wellbeing providers tends to be focussed on those in crisis. It's not very often we see wellbeing initiatives targeted as those who would describe themselves as "well" or "ok". Which is where I think we are missing a huge opportunity to not only improve employee wellbeing by some margin, but better protect organisations in the long run.

This month I wrote in HRZone about micro-stress; the small, daily stressors and frustrations that are compounding employees’ lives – with the potential to further exacerbate the problem of workplace mental health.?These daily occurrences have the potential to exacerbate over time and cause us some real problems. Even the World Economic Forum is warning about them. But how many of us as employer actually do something about them? How many wellbeing strategies are designed to improve an employees' experience at work in this way?

The way you type can indicate hidden stress

Many of our employees don’t even realise how much stress is affecting them until it’s too late. This makes it all the more important for employers to help people to identify stress as early as possible but also to give them stress management techniques before they start showing outward signs of stress.

I've always likened stress and mental health as being similar to being thirsty. The moment you feel thirst in your body, you are already dehydrated. I think the same is true of stress, by the time we realise it, its already causing damage.

The way people type and click on the computer is a better way to detect stress than heart rate, according to a study published in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics.

A team of researchers from Zurich is taking an important step to detect work-related stress. Using machine-learning tools, they developed a model that can identify stressed workers by how they type on the computer. “How we type on our keyboard and move our mouse seems to be a better predictor of how stressed we feel in an office environment than our heart rate,” explained study author Mara N?gelin, a mathematician who conducts research at the Chair of Technology Marketing and the Mobiliar Lab for Analytics at ETH Zurich. The team believes these findings could be used to detect stress early in the workplace.

But this study shows us that we aren't very good at identifying stress in our lives. Many of us will be stressed and not aware. Or worse, most of us live under the false idea that once this project is out of the way, or once my holiday starts it will get better. But it won't. We can rarely remove the stressor from our lives because life is stressful. If work is stressful for you, you can quit and then money becomes stressful for you. Stress is part of our lives, so in some ways we have to find better ways to deal with it, rather than just trying to get rid of it all the time.

We need more stillness in our working days

Notifications, emails, messages, calls are all ubiquitous in our daily lives. So much so it can feel odd to notice a sense of calm around us. Just last night I needed to grab something from Ikea straight after work. It was empty and they were playing bird song in the shop. I felt my body physically relax and immediately was taken by surprise. I felt calm and it was quiet. No one wanted anything from me. I honestly could have fallen asleep in there at that point.

We all need more of this. We need to force ourselves to sit quietly, meditate or just listen. Lots of new wellbeing trends are being designed around this kind of "stillness". Whether that is silent walking , napping in the day or meditation , stillness is probably what is missing from your day. A prolonged period of time where you aren't doing anything, other than just listening.

Moments of quiet reflection

A lot changed during the pandemic. Our attitudes, the balance of influence at work, our attitude to one another. I genuinely feel part of these changes were down to the opportunities we all had to just be still and quiet. Whether walking because there was not much else to do, having extra time in bed because a commute disappeared or just more time to be us, to be still.

This month I launched a new product called OneHub Wellbeing . A wellbeing platform by Benefex that is designed to bring more moments of stillness and quiet reflection into the lives of employees to buffer against the negative effects at stress. It's not a mental health platform, you don't have to be struggling to use it. We think every single employee will benefit from 5 mins using the app everyday.

When you look to design your wellbeing strategy, focus too on those who aren't struggling or aren't aware of the micro-stress building up inside them. Give them regular opportunities to see quiet reflection as part of their success. As I've said before, rest is not a reward. Our high performance requires us to keep on top of our wellbeing.

The workplace wellbeing industry has an engagement problem because it trying to replicate or replace real, tangible clinical intervention. I don't think that is the right approach. The things that worry us the most, the things that affect our wellbeing the most are stressors that no employer can stop; grief, loss, caring responsibilities, money worries etc. But every employer can help to buffer against the effects of those stressors. It's time to start helping people cope, rather than trying to fix them.

You can watch the launch of OneHub Wellbeing here and hear from the likes of Centrica , VFS Global and Circle K on ow their employees are coping better with and adapting to modern live with the help of Benefex.