Create working environments where everyone can thrive
Minimise Stress and Control Anxiety
We are human, and from our earliest days, stress and anxiety have been fundamental to the fight, flight, and freeze mechanisms that have ensured our very survival.
Yes, stress and anxiety are a vital part of our make-up! So, it would be unrealistic to suggest that they can be completely eradicated. If they go unchecked, we can become inefficient, and potentially unable to carry out our tasks and job roles.
With too much stress, we can become irritable, angry or tearful. We can feel worried, anxious, hopeless, or scared. Eventually, we may struggle to make decisions, suffer racing thoughts and feel overwhelmed.
The effect of these symptoms may lead to absenteeism or in some cases, presenteeism. Both issues have a major effect on employee productivity and, therefore, on organisational outputs.
Poor mental well-being costs UK employers an estimated £42-45 billion annually through presenteeism, sickness, absence and staff turnover (Deloitte, 2020). Therefore, having a robust well-being policy with realistic and clearly defined actions is imperative for any organisation.
Fortunately, significant reduction of unwanted stress and anxiety is possible.
Prevention is always better than cure. A thorough stress-risk assessment will identify the individual and organisational triggers to stress and anxiety, and provide the empirical evidence needed to develop the correct interventions to deal with the root cause of stress and anxiety in the workplace, rather than focusing on the symptoms.
Interventions developed by Pensa Psychology have been adopted by large organisations, to help teams to decompress, recover from stressful situations, and develop resilience.
These interventions have helped individuals detach, relax, and recover, re-set their central nervous system, build psychological safety in teams, and develop better quality of life.
Of course, this all adds to the organisation’s overall efficiency.
Since the pandemic, there may be cases were individuals are struggling in isolation. We can help and with our thorough diagnostics and assessments, we can formulate a bespoke, personal solution for the individual so they are able to thrive in their role, both in the workplace and in working from home.
Develop a Resilient, Productive Workforce
Resilience
The American Psychological Association provides our favourite definition of Resilience, and we apply this in our approach to improving all aspects of the workplace.
Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.
Resilience is the ability to withstand adversity, and to bounce back and grow, despite the adversities faced.
And resilience is a key factor in the process of helping individuals, teams and organisations achieve productivity.
Well-being is a state of life satisfaction, where there is likely to be a relative dominance of positive emotions over negative emotions.
We recognise that work is a large and important aspect of life. Improved well-being at work means a better life for your people – in and outside of the workplace. You’ll enjoy sharing the very many benefits.
We cannot deny that life can be difficult at times…fact.
Is it not better to be able to negotiate the speed bumps of life as gentle undulations, rather allowing trials and tribulations to throw individuals and organisations into an uncontrollable tail-spin.
We are not talking about making employees bullet proof, rather developing the emotional resilience skills to negotiate difficult situations more effectively. Not only does resilience allow employees to handle work stress better, and develop protective factors against stress
In our experience, raising resilience levels in individuals contributes to:
greater job satisfaction
work happiness
organisational commitment
employee engagement
improved self-esteem
control over life events
sense of purpose
improved interpersonal relationships.
Resilience is underpinned by a number of factors. The Pensa approach is to identify the current strengths of individuals and teams, and use these to formulate strategies to allow all to perform to a high level, irrespective of the challenges that are faced. We achieve this with teams and individuals at any level. And, as always, interventions are based on the very latest psychological research, drawn from a wide variety of sources.
Productivity
Productivity is the measure of your ability to create and deliver outputs (your products and services), at quality and with speed.
Achieving high productivity requires the harnessing of both efficiency (doing things well) and effectiveness (doing the right things).
An efficient workforce may perform its allotted tasks both quickly and correctly. But if these tasks are the wrong tasks for meeting the organisation’s goals, then any degree of efficiency – even 100% - will fail to deliver the desired results.
An effective workforce knows what needs to be done, and does it.
It’s clear that both efficiency and effectiveness must combine, in order to maximise output, minimise costs and maximise profit.
By investing in your workforce and ensuring high levels of well-being and resilience, you can ensure improvements in both efficiency and effectiveness. And in doing so, become much more productive.
The Benefits of Working with Pensa
The ultimate benefit for you will vary, depending on what you define as your ultimate goal, and how you measure its achievement.
In our offering, we zoom in on well-being, resilience and productivity to capture and encapsulate multiple positive outcomes.
Productivity can be summed up in language that’s quickly and easily understood:
greater effectiveness and improved efficiency
leading to increased sales
lower costs
and greater profits.
Well-being and resilience are key factors in achieving productivity, and they deliver many additional tangible benefits.
We firmly believe that the key step to achieving your ultimate benefit – whether it’s productivity or some other key indicator - comes by improving the welfare of your workforce.
Our experience has confirmed to us - over and over - that there are true and significant primary benefits in making the workplace a better place for your people, and in helping your people on the journey to becoming the best they can be.
These are some of the benefits that we have delivered for clients. We can deliver them for you.
Increased efficiency, effectiveness and productivity
Better staff retention
More positive staff feedback
More open communication and mutual respect in the workplace
Increased creativity, problem solving and problem avoidance from individuals and teams
Greater staff happiness and fulfilment
You may define the benefits you seek in a different way, but however you define your goals, our approach will be to deliver and delight.