8600-313 Understanding Stress Management in the Workplace

Unit Overview

8600-313 Understanding Stress Management in the Workplace is a unit within the ILM Level 3 module that ensures the leaders within the organisation build the understanding of effective stress management. This involves understanding the work environment and the critical factors within this environment that could significantly affect the wellbeing of the individuals within the organisation. The workplace and organisational environment in the modern world is significantly stressful due to various factors.

This includes work-related factors, such as the difficulties and complexities of the tasks that should be completed within the workplace, the time spent within the workplace, and issues such as work-life balance.However, personal factors also contribute to the increase in the levels of stress among employees in the workplace. These factors include the tough cost of living experienced in the modern world and other personal-related factors. The leaders within the organisations must ensure they understand the different forms of stressors to the employees and set up effective strategies that can be implemented to effectively influence the process of managing stress within the organisations and teams that they lead.

The main purpose and aim of this unit are to build the knowledge and understanding of managing stress in self and among the individuals being led which is a critical responsibility of leaders, especially first-line managers. The unit, therefore, prepares practising or potential first-line managers for duties that involve being able to effectively serve the needs of the employees, which revolve around developing the desired levels of mental resilience by effectively managing stress. The unit is taught in 7 learning hours and contributes 1 credit value towards the completion of the ILM Level 3 module.

Suitability of the Unit

Stressors are a critical part of affecting the performance of employees in different organisational contexts. Ti involves being able to understand the causes of stressors within the workplace and put up effective strategies to support self and employees within the organisation in overcoming these stressors and being able to productively contribute to the accomplishment of the organisational goals and objectives. This process is critical as it ensures that the employees are in the right state of mind to contribute to organisational activities and hence in return, boost the performance of the organisation in achieving specific preset tasks and responsibilities.

As such, 8600-313 Understanding Stress Management in the Workplace us a unit that is designed to contribute to building the understanding and ability of first-line managers and team leaders with the relevant skills and information that they can effectively implement in achieving the desired goals and objectives in terms of being able to manage their personal stress and those of the people they lead.

The unit is, however, not limited to the first-line managers and team leaders. It is also significantly critical in improving the ability and knowledge of the executive managers and middle-level managers who have to set up the policies and principles sot follow when perusing specific tasks within the organisations. It is also applicable to external consultants responsible for providing support to the employees and leaders in ensuring they are able to achieve the desired levels of stress management. The team members and employees can use this course to achieve the desired levels of stress management and prepare them for leadership roles.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners are expected to be able to:

• Understand the causes and impact of stress within the organisation and their areas of responsibility

• Describe the various signs and symptoms of stress in self and in others within the areas fo responsibility

• Explain effective and practice stress management techniques

• Understand the roles, responsibilities and actions of managers in relation to work-related stress within the team or organisation

• Provide an explanation of the approaches and time to provide effective advice, mentoring and counselling to support individuals within the workplace to overcome their stress

Key Learning Areas

8600-313 Understanding Stress Management in the Workplace is designed to improve the performance of the leaders and employees towards stress management. Therefore most of the learning areas focus on providing guidance on understanding the causes and impacts of stress within the organisations and supporting the teams to overcome stress. Some of the main areas of focus within this unit include:

Diagnosing Stress and its Impacts

This area of learning focuses on identifying stressors and stressed individuals within the workplace to provide relevant support. The learners are taught to not only focus on others within the workplace but also consider their personal stress levels. They are guided in understanding the various causes of stress within t eh workplace and the symptoms of stress in self as well as in others.

This area of learning further helps to delve into practical and actionable stress management techniques while at eth same time providing effective sources of support for individuals suffering from stress. The learners are also introduced to action planning and review techniques in the process of effectively managing stress.

Stress Management

This area of learning focuses on providing the learners with the understanding of principles that they can put in place to support others in handling their stress as well as overcoming personal stress. The learners are introduced to understanding the concepts of counselling, advising and mentoring others when they need support, as well as the various techniques to provide this support.

They are also guided to understand the principles of counselling and the mentoring cycle within the organisation. Additionally, the learners are introduced to the ethical principles that are associated with supporting team members or employees going through significant challenges with stress, such as confidentiality and privacy.

Evaluation

In evaluating the accomplishment of the set learning goals and objectives in 8600-313 Understanding Stress Management in the Workplace, the learners are required to complete a written assessment as well as a supervised practice. These approaches are effective in determining the mastery of theory and practice as guided within the unit to ensure that the assessor is able to gauge the performance of the learners in relation to learned concepts within the unit hence determine areas of strength and weaknesses.