stress management

Once upon a time, managers had a dream. Marvellous computers would operate wonderful information systems, which would control magnificent operations automatically. With everyday burdens lifted from their shoulders, managers would have more time for thinking and planning strategy (which the computers would make surefire). The magic of electronics, moreover, would speed communications and reduce the need for face-to-face meetings. And leisure time - loads of leisure time - would be enjoyed in the sure knowledge that everything was under control back at the office.

In this dream world, the causes of executive stress would wither away. Gone would be overwork, uncertainty, insecurity and interruption - the Four Horsemen of the Executive Apocalypse. Well, the computers are indeed marvellous, the IT systems wonderful, the communications lightning-fast, the controls remarkable: in all these respects, reality has outdone the dream. But the dream has become a nightmare. Managers believe, rightly or wrongly, that their working lives have grown more stressful - and not only their working lives.

Nearly half the respondents to a recent survey reported that their companies interrupted holidays and sickness absence with questions relating to work. The wizard technology carries much of the blame. As Lucy Kellaway wrote in the Financial Times, 'Thanks to the fax and the mobile phone, no one is ever out of reach, even if they take their holidays on the top of a mountain.' She might also have mentioned the laptop computer. Not only can E-mail climb that mountain: portables bring the office into the vacation retreat.

The wonders of IT have made such interruptions more likely for another reason. As predicted, information systems have removed the need for much everyday work done by middle managers. But managers themselves have been removed in consequence. At a time when cutting overhead and reducing management layers are fashionable and also profitable (at least short-term), cutbacks in managerial numbers may well have been overdone. That is, the managers have gone, but their tasks haven't - with burdensome results for the remaining executives.

Moreover, the machines have magnified a monster: information overload. E-mail represents this phenomenon in a pernicious form. In the very same FT that carried Kellaway's lament for lost and spoiled holidays, Tim Jackson mentioned that 'many people inside US companies receive over 100' E-mail messages a day - many superfluous. Bill Gates, the warlord of Microsoft, famously replied to one reporter's questions by E-mail logged between midnight and 3pm. What does that imply for the message traffic, and the stress levels, of Microsoft managers?

According to Anthony Sampson's Company Man, their stress levels must be high anyway. Employees are rated twice yearly on a scale of one to five: score one, and you're out, period. The Microsoft campus may resemble university far more than factory, but the pressure for performance is of sweat-shop intensity. That's only typical of the high-tech world. Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel, has laid down his Law: 'Only the paranoid survive.' Paranoia is among the most stressful ailments of mankind. But Grove's Law only expresses in extreme form what all businesses have experienced: a sharp rise in competition and competitiveness.

It's coupled with an increase in complexity. Whether publishing magazines, selling soap or making jumbo-jets, all companies know that, compared to the multi-faceted present, the quite recent past seems an oasis of simplicity. Fewer managers are having to cope with more and more uncertain factors in circumstances where failure brings swift retribution. The consequences can easily be longer working hours, shorter holidays and greater stress: overwork, uncertainty, insecurity and interruption all increase - the Four Horsemen ride again.

Kellaway refers to 'the new workaholic, stressed-out culture of British business. Companies are more keen than ever to get their money's worth out of employees, who put up with it as they fear they may be out of a job any minute.' She makes the valid medical point that 'holidays are essential to our well-being, a much needed break to the grinding stress of work...And if holidays reduce stress levels, they may actually increase profits, too.' But that begs a question. Why should work be a matter of 'grinding stress'? Even in today's conditions, is that inevitable? Or is it bad management?

If you take the latter view, there's ample reinforcement from the survey mentioned above, conducted by the Institute of Personnel and Development. The picture is one of chronic under-resourcing, or poor organisation of work, or both. Nothing else can explain why 42% of senior managers and a third of middle managers are taking less than their holiday entitlement through pressure of work: or why 54% in a typical week have 'too much work' to do. It's a relief to find that taking work home is still a minority pursuit.

The pressures are apparently intensifying. Three-quarters of the sample believed that, over the past year, their workload had risen significantly. The IPD's Director General, Geoff Armstrong, is right to state that 'By analysing work processes, improving workflow and eliminating obsolete tasks, employers can do much to reduce excessive workloads, which are a key cause of stress-related illness.' However, in making this small telephone survey (407 people), the IPD had an axe to grind - the survey blazes the trail for its new Guide to Occupational Health and Organisational Effectiveness.

This observes that 'In the US, job stress has been estimated to cost industry around $140 billion annually, while in the UK inefficiencies arising from stress have been estimated to be costing up to 10% of the country's gross national product.' The Guide duly includes heart-warming stories of lower staff turnover, reduced absenteeism, lower accidents, better morale, lower personnel costs and better performance - all flowing from increased attention to 'wellness/ occupational health'. The key words, though, may be 'increased attention' - the famous Hawthorne Effect has never lost its power.

You wouldn't guess its potency from another survey, conducted by Gallup for the ICL subsidiary, Workplace Management. Everyone knows from the Hawthorne experiment that simply paying attention to workers and their well-being breeds improvement and higher morale: and 'Britain's bosses believe that happy employees mean bigger profits.' When asked, however, to state their most important future business strategies, 'motivating staff was mentioned by only 12%.' Just as bad, 'less than half bother to conduct surveys to find out if employees are satisfied with their jobs, and training is viewed as relatively unimportant.'

Perhaps the bosses themselves endure too much time stress to organise effective action on the right priorities. Pampered chief executives lolling around at leisure, cracking whips over groaning subordinates, are rare. The higher the post, the heavier the demands on time: and top managers are equally victims of the new technology that places the office at their fingertips. Time stress, though, doesn't equate with mental stress. High achievers may revel in high pressure, and their achievement may be fuelled by the high consumption of adrenalin.

That isn't true, however, of the over-promoted (and no doubt over-worked), who suffer only harmful stress: their numbers must surely have risen with delayering. But under-promotion is no answer, either. One large UK group found that it imposes as much strain as the opposite - which means that the most popular escape route for surplus managers may intensify their stress problems. Setting up as an independent consultant, even with your previous employer as key customer, removes the office family, takes away personal authority and disconnects the office life-support system. None of these losses increases mental comfort.

So is there no escape from the stress syndrome? Ironically, the most promising answers make even more demands on managers. Total Quality Management, for instance, aims to treat all employees in the round, changing the role of the manager to facilitation, and relying heavily on individuals at all levels to take initiatives and responsibility for their work. That demands many more meetings and massive training and can create major stress for managers as 'order- and-obey' methods are abandoned - like it or not.

Collaborative teamwork, with its personal reinforcements and relationships, is a proven antidote to stress; but creating a new, team-based kind of company isn't easy for anybody. At one leading UK insurer, people made responsible for entire transactions, instead of the usual single segment, reported heavier mental burdens: in the same breath, they rejected any return to the old days and ways. That's evidently a positive form of stress, an outcome of finding better ways that will generate better customer response. It's negative stress that leads to illness, inefficiency and breakdown.

Donald Norfolk, the author of Executive Stress, suggests that short-term stress, which (as in crash programmes) can be highly beneficial, shouldn't be confused with long-term stress - undeniably harmful to everybody, including the firm. Companies gain from ensuring that people have proper holidays and ample rest, exercise their full abilities, get excellent training, and work in true teams. The pressures palpably bearing on managers could be the death-throes of the old command-and-control culture as it cracks and creaks under strains that the team-based organisation will take in its winning stride.