www.eurohs.eu.com

www.eurohs.eu.comIs your organisational culture healthy? Do you get the behaviour you deserve from your staff. Read this interesting reasearch from EurOhs.

HR Tip: Is stress a disability? - 21 Jun 2005

HR Tip: Is stress a disability? - 21 Jun 2005: "Question: Is stress a disability?
HR Tip: Stress certainly is an illness and you should study carefully the guidance published by the Health and Safety Executive to determine how to minimise and deal with it in your workplace.
However it is a disability, giving the sufferer protection under the Disability Discrimination Act, only if it has a significant adverse impact on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day outside work activities, and has lasted or is likely to last for at least twelve months. An employee who claims to be, or clearly is, suffering from stress should be referred for medical examination while you yourself should examine the job and the employee�s interaction with it."

High hurdles to clear hinder stress-related injury claims

High hurdles to clear hinder stress-related injury claims

Latest developments in stress include the following …

Working mothers suffer record levels of sleep deprivation
New mothers now get two hours less sleep a night than their own parents did - and say that both their home life and careers are suffering as a result. Women with young babies are surviving on just three-and-a-half hours sleep in 24 - and are woken up at least three times during the night, according to a survey by Mother & Baby magazine. In contrast, their own mothers, who were raising babies in the ‘60s and ‘70s, had five hours sleep and just two interruptions a night, and took less time to settle children back to bed. And, while their own mothers may have been able to catch up on their sleep during the day, modern parents are left trying to juggle work with a new baby and no sleep. Eight out of 10 women in the survey had returned to work when their baby was an average of 22 weeks old. Half of working mothers said their bosses had shown little sympathy for their fatigue, while 77% said the lack of sleep affected their ability to do their job. Sleep starvation left two-thirds being irritable towards their partner, while 37% felt depressed and 61% were regularly reduced to tears. Three-quarters of mothers said they thought they had the work-life balance wrong, and almost half wanted to leave work and be a full-time parent.

Latest developments in stress include the following …

Alcohol 'harms women faster'
Excessive drinking causes brain damage in women more quickly than in men, according to scientists. The finding is especially worrying in the light of reports that binge drinking among women is soaring: The number of women drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week increased by 70% between 1988 and 2002, and women aged 16 to 24 are most prone to binge drinking, with 49% cramming their weekly consumption into one to three days.

Scientists at the University of Heidelberg in Germany took brain scans of 158 volunteers, 76 of whom were alcoholic men and women. They found they could use the brain scans to trace the progression of alcohol dependency in women, and the scans also revealed that alcohol-induced brain damage could be picked up much earlier in women than men. “The women developed equal brain-volume reductions as the men after a significantly shorter period of alcohol dependence,” said Karl Mann, who led the study.

Five million UK workers 'suffer extreme stress' at a cost of £1 billion
More than 5 million people complain of 'extreme' stress in their jobs which puts them at risk of a breakdown, and the pressures of the workplace are exacting a social and economic toll which can no longer be ignored, according to the leading mental health charity Mind. Stress costs the UK economy £1 in lost productivity for every £10 generated, yet less than 10% of companies have a policy to deal with it. Mind also said 12.8 million working days a year are now lost to work-related stress alone, with 58% of workers complaining of job stress, costing the UK economy £100bn a year..

The Mind survey found the most stressed workers were teachers, social workers, call centre workers, prison officers and the Police. Workers in the public sector suffered most stress and 'macho work environments' made it difficult for staff to admit to stress for fear of affecting their career prospects.

Mental illness is now Britain's biggest social problem, worse than unemployment and 'at least as important as poverty,' according to Lord Layard, a Labour peer. Almost a million people with mental health problems are on incapacity benefit, more than are receiving job-seeker's allowance. Only one in two people with depression receives any kind of treatment, yet it is of proven effectiveness, with a gain of £3,000 in productivity for every £1,000 spent, he said. And three in 10 people take sick leave in any one year with mental distress, yet fewer than one in 10 of these receives specialist treatment such as psychological counselling, according to the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

Robot kidney transplant
A woman has donated a kidney to her partner after undergoing Britain's first live transplant operation carried out with a robot. The £1 million machine at Guy's Hospital in London, one of only two in the UK, removed the organ from Pauline Payne's body using two mechanical arms. Conventional surgery was then used to implant it in her seriously ill partner, Raymond Jackson. The da Vinci robot has been used before in Britain to remove diseased organs and carry out simple reconstructive surgery, but this is the first time anything as critical and difficult as a live organ transplant has been attempted with the machine in the UK.

Latest developments in stress include the following …

9/11 babies face post-traumatic stress disorder
Pregnant women in or near the World Trade Centre during the September 11 terrorist attacks may have passed on future mental or physical illness to their unborn children. Researchers have found an important marker for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the saliva of babies less than one-year-old who were born after the attacks. The hormonal ripple effect was worst among children who were in the last three months of gestation. Researchers believe this is the strongest evidence yet for very early risk factors for the development of stress problems in adult life. Rachel Yehuda, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, the lead investigator, said the findings "suggest a larger role for very early environmental, genetic or genetic-environmental interactions than previously thought." The babies in the study will now be closely monitored for physical and mental health. Better understanding of how low levels of cortisol are linked to disorders might help to develop treatments.

Latest developments in stress include the following …

Four in 10 mothers 'need vitamin pills'
Four out of 10 women need to supplement their diets with vitamins if they plan to have a baby. Dr Andrew Shennan, professor of obstetrics at St Thomas's Hospital in London, says that the importance of good nutrition for mothers and its effect on their babies has been known for more than 60 years. “In an ideal world, a healthy balanced diet should provide pregnant women and their developing babies with all the nutrients required for optimum health,” he said. “But many mums-to-be who take care to eat healthily frequently fight sickness, nausea, heartburn and exhaustion, which reduces their appetite. Furthermore, we know that 40% of women have an unhealthy diet prior to pregnancy. It is clear that many women need to top up their essential nutrients.”

Opinion: Presenteeism and stress � the new epidemic? - 25 May 2005

Opinion: Presenteeism and stress � the new epidemic? - 25 May 2005

DeHavilland: political news feed, public and current affairs, news information service:dehavilland

DeHavilland: political news feed, public and current affairs, news information service:dehavilland

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online

Online Recruitment - The magazine for recruitment and HR professionals involved in internet recruitment

Online Recruitment - The magazine for recruitment and HR professionals involved in internet recruitment

GNN - Government News Network

GNN - Government News Network

More than half of workers feel burned out

More than half of workers feel burned out

Borehamwood Times: News: Health

Borehamwood Times: News: Health