Corporate Vision March 2017

110 CORPORATE VISION / March 2017 , The Stress Management Society is the UK’s leading resource dedicated to helping individuals and companies to recognise and reduce stress. In this fascinating article, the firm’s Chief Marketing andMagic Officer Louisa Valvano reveals her thoughts inwinning Best Stress Management Specialists 2016, not tomention the firm’s proven track record on helping businesses manage workplace stress. A Culture of Wellbeing Since 2003 our mission is to create a happier, healthier and more resilient world. We pride ourselves on being the UK’s leading resource for advice, support and guidance for individual and corporate stress. We offer wellbeing advice, news, guidance as well as access to best practice strategies to support individuals and creating a culture of wellbeing within organisations. We also have a team of highly experienced consultants and trainers to support corporate wellbeing projects. Everything we deliver, we do in a clear and accessible way so that organisations and individuals can apply and benefit from our solutions and recommended interventions quickly and easily. Through our team of highly experienced consultants and trainers, we have a proven track record in helping private and public sector organisations manage workplace stress and create a culture of wellbeing. We have worked with many national and international companies including: Allianz, British Airways, the NHS, Mars, Sky TV, Shell, Standard Life and Crown Commercial Services. We find that we are able to attract talent through our strong ethos and vision and by standing behind and practising the principles that we embed in other organisations. We also strongly believe in creating a workplace culture that is enjoyable, happy and stress free for our staff. This goes all the way through the things that we provide such as flexible working, healthy snacks and drinks, meditation facilities and wellbeing schemes. We have just been awarded the Achievement Level of the London Healthy Workplace charter and are working towards the final stage of this (the excellence level). By achieving this we hope to show that we are embodying the principles, which we ask other organisations and individuals to embrace. We have extensive knowledge on the impact of stress and how to recognise the commercial and culture cost of it to your organisation. This knowledge has been harnessed to develop the UK’s foremost range of stress management training programmes to help both staff and managers recognise the signs and symptoms of stress, define it, and introduce personal resilience techniques to equip them with the tools to deal with the demands of the modern workplace. These training programmes are the only ones endorsed by the Institute of Leadership and Management. The UK corporate landscape and the wider UK corporate market According to the CIPD Absence Management Survey report in 2016 nearly a third of organisations reported an increase in stress-related absence over the past year and two-fifths a rise in reported mental health problems. With this in mind the increasing cost of workplace stress is impacting every organisation. 11.7 million working days were lost in 2016 due to stress (HSE 2015/2016), and with the average cost of a sick day coming in at £522 per day, workplace stress cost the UK economy a total of £6.1 billion in 2016. We are experiencing wider spread understanding of the importance of developing a culture of wellbeing in an organisation. Wellbeing is not a one-off activity so we see that corporate companies who have already put in place wellbeing schemes will now be looking to ensure that they are maintaining the level of organisational wellbeing. With an increase in worker flexibility, we foresee that organisations will be looking at how you manage issues such as remote worker wellbeing and managing technostress. More and more corporate organisations like Google and the NHS are also looking at mindfulness in the workplace as it is credited with helping people to be healthier, smarter, happier, more efficient, creative and resilient. We are delighted to have won this award and to be recognised after 13 years of passionately working to reduce workplace stress and improve lives. We would attribute our success to our team, who are committed and dedicated to leading effective universal change by maximising resilience, happiness, productivity and success. K Company: The Stress Management Society Name: Louisa Valvano Chief Marketing and Magic Officer Email: [email protected] Web Address: www.stress.org.uk Address: The Lighthouse, Suite S, Quay West, Salamander Quay, Harefield, Middlesex, UB9 6NZ UK Telephone: +44 (0) 20 3142 8654 UK160016