Aim

In order for managers to stimulate a healthy, balanced and high-performing team/department, they need to be able to cope with both personal and employees’ stress responses and barriers to work-life balance. Correspondingly, this course incorporates two learning tracks, namely managers’ ability to optimise their personal work-life balance as well as managers’ ability to facilitate their employees’ personal work-life balance.

We present an integrative framework, which combines a stress management and work-life enrichment perspective (inspired by AI and positive psychology approach). The aim is to teach managers to focus on both potentials and barriers to a healthy work environment as a means for optimising business results. We will train managers to identify personal strategies to efficient stress management/prevention and to locate new ways of optimising work cultures and stimulating work-life synergies.

Scope

By combining a business strategic and psychological perspective, this course will train managers to feel mostly competent in securing a healthy and well-performing workforce. The course will contain the following themes:

Step 1: Work-related stress & work-life conflict– what and why?

What is stress, including physiological and psychological symptoms? What is the dividing line between  ‘positive’ (i.e. eustress) and ‘negative’ stress? What causes stress, including crucial stressors at work and beyond? How and why do employees react differently to stress (stress as an individual phenomenon)? How is stress conditioned by work-related issues, for example co-worker relationship, relationship to leader, organizational values and norms (stress as an organizational/social phenomenon)? How is your personal understanding and reaction to stress as a manager? How is this similar/different to your employees’ understanding and reactions? How do you manage to focus and merge these two parallel (and often overlapping) roles?

Step 2: Stress prevention & management I: How to apply the well-established tools in the this field

Short and long term stress – how is it different? What are the effective stress prevention and management tools, including efficient coping strategies? How do you focus on prevention and management in relation to yourself and in relation to your employees? How can you prevent and manage through your employees, e.g. via collegial support, co-worker to co-worker attention, finding an employee-representative (equal to health and safety committee representatives). What are your options if you cannot handle an employee’s stress-related problems, including the role of internal HR consultants?

Step 3: Stress prevention & management  II: Towards employee growth & work-life enrichment

Building on the two former steps, this module seeks to find facilitators/resources in your work context that can help prevent stress and foster work-life synergies. Here we will work with identifying different types of work-based resources, spotting possible unutilized resources, how these resources can be optimized, how focusing on employees’ boundary management may not only prevent stress and work-life conflict but also stimulate energy/growth, facilitating positive spillovers/transfer from work to life, and vice versa. What is your role as a manager in optimizing such processes?

Methods

As indicated in our didactical model, we seek to create “learning in action” across the modules.

Specific tools that may be included: Demonstrations by consultants on participant cases, role playing in groups, training in context (follow-up by consultants), “worst-case-scenarios” management and exercises on identifying and stimulating work resources, employee growth, executive interviews.

Specific tests that may be included: Stress diagnosis, work-life balance profile (i.e. WorkStyle), mapping employee typologies (H&P self-designed tool).