Business Health Systems Reduces Job Stress.

SANTA ROSA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 8, 1998--Job burnout is reaching epidemic proportions in American organizations.

Workers' compensation records show that stress-related injuries on the job climbed from 5% of all occupational disease claims in 1980 to more than 15% in 1990. Job stress in the United States costs industry an estimated $200 billion annually.

"It is expensive for a company to have employees who are experiencing burnout, but we can do something effective to handle this problem in any company," said Tricia Day, president of Business Health Systems, a California-based company that specializes in helping organizations build a more productive workforce through effective injury prevention design, workers' compensation cost containment systems, and organizational management tools.

"Employees, who are experiencing symptoms of burnout, are not as productive, they tend to have higher absenteeism rate, an inferior quality in the work produced, and can begin to make costly mistakes. Job stress can manifest itself in physical symptoms. In extreme cases, employees may actually sabotage equipment or their work," said Day.

Employers can prevent the harmful consequences of job burnout by assessing the risk for burnout within their organization and can build productive engagement between people and their work. Business Health Systems (BHS) is now offering a new program to offset the devastating effects of job burnout. BHS works with organizations to develop a long-range plan to promote engagement in the workplace. The financial loss, the health problems, and the reduction in productivity are high prices most organizations cannot afford in today's competitive market.

Job burnout has three symptoms:

1) exhaustion and fatigue

2) cynicism and

3) sense of being ineffective

Business Health Systems steps in and helps a company conduct an internal assessment. "Individual stress management classes may address awareness, but what we're looking at accomplishing with our clients is building job engagement among workers," said Day. "Instead of trying to change the individual, our approach is to look at job stress and burnout from an organizational point of view and determine what factors are contributing negatively to burnout and what factors are positively influencing engagement. If we can identify those important factors then we are in a much more powerful position to actually do something about them."

Business Health Systems has offices in Santa Rosa and Camarillo, Calif. To contact Tricia Day, president of BHS, call 707/528-1830 or fax at 707/578-1292.