CGF ARTICLES, OPINIONS & EDITORIALS
Is your organisation practising safe stress? (2013-07-24)
February 20,
2015 3634 3634 
Once upon a time we created the factory, and in that factory we put some machines.
Very clever, intricate capital assets that speeded up throughput and improved quality. We treated these machines with care and wiped them down with an oily rag every day to keep them in pristine condition. Very soon we had developed measurement systems to check their performance; to tell us when we should shut things down so we could tighten nuts, and repair and replace worn components. We cared for these machines because we knew that our livelihood depended on them.
Machinery aids production and may even provide a competitive advantage - but only at a given point in time. It can’t dream up or design new products or services by itself (yet). Creativity, passion, vision and the dogged will to strive for more, for something ‘better’, comes only from the Human Capital we employ in our organisations. Employees are what it takes to give us the ability to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, and to delight our customers. Why then, over 200 hundred years after the Industrial Revolution, do so many organisations fail to understand the importance of looking after their Human Capital assets as well as they look after their inanimate ones? And surely if organisations claim to be practising good governance, this must include the manner in which the organisation’s leadership are safeguarding their Human Capital assets through their Group Wellness strategy.
Over a hundred years ago the psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson proved the relationship between human arousal (stress) and performance. They concluded that there was an optimum level of arousal where people performed at their best – this is known as ‘eustress’ and is the positive, motivating, exciting kind of stress we feel, say, at the beginning of a new project, or when asking someone out on a date. However, Western and Eastern medicine has also proved that repeated exposure to negative stress (distress, hyper-stress and hypo-stress) fundamentally effects our entire physiology and links to many illnesses which are rooted in ‘stress’.
A recent survey devised by doctors and business executives (see Figures 1 & 2) uncovered some startling facts about how excess negative stress is increasingly effecting employees in the workplace with downturned productivity and morale. The link between continued negative stress and illness is a known fact. Organisational leaders who knowingly allow such practices within the workplace are surely at odds with their claims of protecting the organisation’s assets. Informed shareholders (and other stakeholders) of the organisation will need to seriously consider exactly what messages are being provided to the broader stakeholder community in the Corporate Social Reporting found within the organisation’s annual Integrated Report. Whilst organisational leaders are held accountable and legally liable for any forms of financial misconduct, gross negligence or misrepresentation, there is clear evidence that any forms of abuse which may be caused either directly and or indirectly against the organisation’s employees, or where their personal well-being is violated by the organisation, may well become yet another factor to contend with. Understandably responsible leadership within organisations -- which is further supported by many tenants found within the King Report on Governance for South Africa 2009 (King III) -- extends well beyond the ‘hard’ numbers. Employees and the health of employees have become a major area of importance for an organisation and its leaders are expected to protect this asset as they strive toward becoming a more balanced, profitable and sustainable organisation.
