Stress at the Work Place
Today Mats meets with Katri Lampinen. She is working for SPP, a swedish provider of Pension and Insurance solutions and is an expert and has lot of interest in stress related questions.
Topics covered:
- The long term sickness leave in Sweden goes up after the holidays, why is that?
- 7 out of 10 managers are stressed according to a survey made in Sweden.
- What could be the underlying reason in a country like Sweden to see the stressrelated issues such as burnout rise so much
- Katri gives some tips on what you could do to manage stress in the new year.
Katri’s interest in stress related questions
Katri’s interest in stress related questions started early 2000 when she saw the number of burnouts and longterm sick leaves skyrocket in Sweden.
She wondered why in a country like Sweden where there is work, good houses to live, a large safety net and still people are not happy and don’t feel good.
She started to try to understand the reason behind and she says it could be that when you don’t really have to work to survive and everything is taken care of there could be a lack of inner connection with yourself and a difficulty to make sense of life.
Holiday Stress
In Sweden the number of long term sickness leaves increases after the holidays with about 50% in Sweden. Katri sees 4 main reasons:
- It is the darkest period of the year
- December is often the stressiest month of the year at work and Christmas is coming up causing additional stress
- People at work thinks everything has to be done before the end of the year
- High expectations for Christmas and New Year, everything has to be so perfect …
How to improve this at the workplace
- Must come from the top management
- Talk about it bidirectionally; as a manager talk to your employees and as an employee tell your boss there is too much on your plate
- Prioritise. What can wait till next year?
- Make a to do list.
7 out of 10 managers in Sweden are stressed shows a survey
A survey made this automn in the swedish magazine Chef shows that 7 out of 10 managers are stressed.
“It’s a horrible number, but I am not surprised”, says Katri.
Katri believes that as a manager you might thing that you have to be available all the time. You might want to be the subject matter expert and at the same time have a large team you have to take care of.
She also thinks that the requirement to constanly be online and read your emails in the evening and finish everything is taking a toll.
She thinks that is it important within an organization to talk about the managers role and what is the important things to do and focus on otherwise there is a risk that managers run after everything there is to do.
Katri emphasise that if you as a manager wants your staff to be having less stress you have to start with yourself:
- How am I as a manager?
- What kind of signals am I sending out?
- do I as a manager email in the middle of the night? Think of how that can be perceived.
Is there a difference how men and women percieve stress?
Mats is asking whether there is a difference in how women and men are perceiving stress and Katri thinks that in the society we lived in women are more affected by stress because they take more responsibility of what is happening with the family and a the majority of work at home, they can easily feel they are not enough either at work or at home and also women are in these workplaces that are more stressful like in daycare, hospitals etc and in Sweden women have more sickness leave then men.
Lack of control of our time
Mats believes that one of the main causes for stress is when you cannot control your time and own destiny and impact it.
Katri agrees and thinks it is the lack of control, the lack of knowledge of what is happening in the workplace or at the family level can cause stress.
Perfectionism can drive stress.
Katri says there is often an expectation you need to have this perfect home, perfect family, be perfect on social media and then you compare yourself to the others and you put a lot of pressure on yourself.
Excercise
Mats asks what role exercise could play and Katri explains it could be good but one should be careful of overdoing it.
“I know if you are very tired, exhausted and burned out maybe you shouldn’t do the toughest exercise. In Sweden we often see they have to run the marathon or do these extreme sports and that is maybe not healty for you” explains Katri and continues:
“Listen to your body and how do I feel and do the training after that”
What can a company do to reduce the stress for the people inside?
Mats is asking what an organization or company can do to help people being less stressed.
Katri thinks that the communication is key. Ask your staff how they feel.
“If you don’t understand your role in the organization and if you don’t feel your voice is heard of from your mangers then you do get a bit stressed”, says Katri.
Sometimes manager hesitate to ask questions to their employees becasue they don’t really want to hear the answer, maybe they have to do something!
4 tips from Katri for the New Year
- Learn to listen to your body’s signals
- how do I feel
- do I have pain in my body
- both your mind and your body is telling you how you are feeling
- Do a list where you priorize your tasks
- This is what I have to do this month, this week or today
- and then do a new list when this one is accomplished
- try to organize your hours at work in a good way
- say NO if it is too much
- HAVE FUN
- Whatever you do you shoulld enjoy it
Other interviews of Katri (Swedish only)
Find below some links to newspapers in Sweden who have interviewed Katri around stress related questions:
