Enhancing organizational safety through stress management: participating on a corporate safety committee has enabled an EAP to help develop organizational initiatives, including a stress management program.

Lawrence Livermore Nation Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California, has an on-site, internal employee assistance program situated within the Health Services Department (HSD). The EAP provides short-term counseling to LLNL employees and their dependents with personal, family, and work problems.

LLNL's employee assistance professionals are positioned within the laboratory to provide educational outreach and organizational consultation to entire work groups. Our philosophy is that by providing consultation in this manner, we can have a greater impact on the laboratory by reaching a greater proportion of employees. The EAP has developed partnerships with laboratory offices like the Environmental Protection Department (EPD), where organizational support and consultation are provided as part of a long-term plan to achieve organizational initiatives.

The EPD has a Safety Advisory Committee (SAC), whose mission is to serve as a conduit to connect safety awareness, knowledge, and resources with safe work practices. Committee representatives include staff from the EPD department office, each of the three EPD divisions, external work groups that work closely with EPD, and the Health Services Department, including the EAP.

GRASS ROOTS INITIATIVE

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, and in response to budgetary concerns, shift in work priorities, and the recent deaths of some employees and family members, the Environmental Protection Department assigned the SAC to develop a department-wide campaign to examine change and stress in the department. The committee developed four questions to brainstorm the issues involved:

1. How is stress introduced?

2. What kinds of stress does the workplace environment create?

3. How can we provide input to, and control, workplace stress?

4. What strategies, plans, or solutions can we develop to help employees reduce and cope with workplace stress?

After discussing these questions, the committee agreed on the need for a stress awareness campaign to teach EPD employees and managers to recognize the various types and symptoms of stress, both within themselves and in other employees. This education would include the identification of internal organizational stressors as well as personal stressors outside of work. The committee formed a Stress Awareness Subcommittee and charged it with developing and launching the campaign.

The campaign officially began in April 2002 as a grass roots initiative aimed at creating greater awareness and sensitivity to individual and organizational stress. The objectives were to build general awareness about job stress, secure top management commitment and support for the program, and solicit employee input and involvement in all phases of the program. The following programmatic goals were established:

* To impart a greater awareness to the client organization (in this case, the EPD) of how stress affects the lives of employees;

* To assist employees in identifying signs and symptoms of stress in themselves;

* To teach multiple individual and organizational strategies on how to reduce stress; and

* To acquaint EPD employees with resources such as the EAP.

In May 2002, EAP staff presented an overview of preventive stress management to SAC leaders. The presentation included a description of available LLNL resources, including the EAP, but focused primarily on helping employees recognize the physical and emotional signs of stress as well as internal, external, and organizational stressors.

Preventive stress management emphasizes individual and organizational prevention methods designed to enhance health, safety, and job performance (Quick, Quick, Nelson, and Hurrel 1997) It teaches employees about the nature and sources of stress, the effects of stress on health, and personal skills to reduce stress. In addition, it helps build a culture of safety awareness in which the organization benefits from improved employee job performance along with a reduction in errors, mistakes, and industrial accidents.

Preventive stress management techniques can be categorized as primary, secondary, or tertiary Primary prevention utilizes organizational interventions to modify stressors in the work environment, while secondary prevention aims to change how individuals and organizations respond to job demands. EA professionals traditionally provide tertiary approaches, in which the goal is to treat the individual, the group, and/or the organization. EAP staff are providing all three types of prevention as part of this outreach campaign.

RELAXATION TECHNIQUES 

After presenting the campaign overview, EAP staff distributed a needs assessment survey to EPD employees asking them which stress management training they were most interested in taking. The survey answers helped determine the training topics presented during the campaign. The first training, titled "Preventive Stress Management: Changing Your Thinking," built on the introduction and began the process of getting employees to recognize how their thinking has a direct effect on how they feel and behave.

Current stress management trainings are encouraging employees to relax by looking at the various methods proven to induce a relaxation response. Future stress management trainings will address how to change stressful situations, especially through the use of better time management and communication. The stress management trainings will conclude by encouraging employees to look at changing their lifestyle habits.

The stress awareness campaign has also included a monthly campaign toolbox that features videos, brochures, and other resources available to employees. In addition, subcommittee members developed a stress presentation skit that was informative and to which employees could easily relate.

As the organization's stress management consultant, I wrote articles throughout the first year of the campaign for the EPD safety newsletter. The articles announced the stress awareness campaign as an organizational initiative for the EPD, provided tips on how to cope with the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, and invited all EPD employees to receive stress management training on how to change their thinking in order to better manage their stress.

Recently, I wrote a newsletter article summarizing the first year of the campaign and describing the current phase, in which focus groups are being held with EPD employees across divisions and work groups to better understand the unique challenges they face at work. The article concluded with a description of the next series of trainings, which will include relaxation techniques so employees can learn how to relax and better cope with stress.

In June, the Safety Advisory Committee held a "No Stress Fest Kick Off' luncheon for EPD employees to provide information on stress management techniques and introduce employees to relaxation techniques and other healthy lifestyle habits. More than 200 EPD employees attended the luncheon. Flyers distributed at the event described the stress awareness initiative and outlined the next phase of the program. Social events such as this continue to raise awareness of the initiative.

MANAGEMENT COMMITMENT

In the months to come, an organizational stress survey will be selected to guide EPD in determining which organizational interventions are necessary to reduce overall job stress in the EPD. The focus groups currently being conducted with employees will assist in selecting the organizational stress survey.

Worksite visits conducted prior to convening the focus groups enabled EAP staff to become more familiar with the range of job functions that various EPD work groups perform. They also contributed to our acceptance as focus group facilitators, as employees realized that management has made the commitment to look seriously at organizational job stress.

We feel the focus groups will assist employees in increasing their awareness of individual and organizational stress. Our belief is that employees who take ownership of these issues can play an important role in the solution.

The organizational stress survey that will be circulated to all EPD employees will provide a wider sweep of the organization and assist in validating the focus group findings. The survey will help the SAC develop recommendations to present to management about training needs and ways to improve employees' working conditions.

DRIVING GOAL

Approximately 18 months into the campaign, feedback from employees has been positive. Focus group findings have been communicated to EPD managers and supervisors with recommendations for possible changes in the manner in which business is conducted. These changes should lead to a reduction in accidents and injuries in the EPD by reducing and/or eliminating workplace practices that contribute to stress in the workplace.

For example, management styles at LLNL tend to be top-down, but recently there have been efforts to move toward a participative decision-making model. Communication channels are being improved to increase social interaction and improve morale. Flexible work schedules are already in place to assist employees with attaining better work-family balance.

We are working on keeping the campaign vibrant and interesting for all employees. We continue to communicate to employees that stress can be identified and managed using multiple strategies. The key is for employees to become more proactive by increasing their stress awareness and to recognize the early signs of stress before it becomes difficult to manage. Prevention, after all, is the driving goal behind the stress awareness campaign.

References

Quick, J.C., J.D. Quick, D.L. Nelson, and J.J. Hurrel. 1997. Preventive Stress Management in Organizations. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Chris Recupero is a psychologist in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's EAP and is a member of the Environmental Protection Department's Safely Advisory Committee. The work described in this article was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, under Contract W-7405-Eng-48.