With work stress at an all-time high, according to Gallup, the ability to manage anxiety, pressure, and overwhelm is more important than ever. Our stress management training for employees gives your team tools to build mental health, resilience, and positive outlook by managing reactions and emotions that drive stress and burnout.
Stress in the workplace fuels anger, distraction, and bad decisions. Optimal Performance Strategies brings your team proven solutions to manage the default survival gear. Our Calm in the Storm stress management training, led by stress management leader Joe Robinson, author of Work Smarter, Live Better, gives your team a wide array of tools to manage stress and all that drives it in the workplace. Your team gets smarter-work strategies to handle any challenge.
Turn off the danger signal of the stress response, and the stress stops in three minutes. Your team learns how to turn it off and turn on performance and engagement. Clients say our neuroscience-based wellness tools are "life-changing" (Insuresoft) and "the best choice we could have made" (Nestle Global).
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“If you’re stressed out, you can blame your brain. Thanks to ancient programming, it thinks the year is 100,000 B.C. and you’re in mortal danger," says Joe Robinson, author of Work Smarter, Live Better: The Science-Based Work-Life Balance and Stress Management Toolkit." - Fast Company
“We searched long and hard to find the right trainer for our stress management event. We didn't want airy-fairy but something practical to help us with the uncertainties ahead. Joe Robinson was the best choice we could have made."
"We were searching for a keynote speaker to deliver an engaging session at our company’s annual Leadership Meeting. We wanted a speaker who could tailor their subject matter to fit our company culture and group dynamics, and Joe’s presentation did just that. He hit a home run with our team. I would highly recommend him for others seeking a down-to- earth, creative speaking professional who will leave you with tactics and strategies that can be implemented immediately."
“Thank you so much for this life-changing session. It was great! I took away so much and it left me wanting more. Employees are asking for more sessions."
“THANK YOU for your time and expertise! The team has raved about the sessions and, as a Business Management Team, we are actively working on adjustments to our business practices to try and operationalize some of the learnings! We REALLY enjoyed the time together and would highly recommend the sessions to other companies. Thank you for making the program available to companies of our size! It’s a difference-maker!"
“Joe presented at our annual conference, speaking to board members, senior leadership, and clinicians. Members are still talking about his presentation. Talk about speaking the truth. It was like being in church with all the 'Amen's' and 'YESes.' Joe is an inspiration, and we have all committed to making personal changes after his show!"
“Joe Robinson's training was extremely valuable to our supervisory staff. I'd recommend the training for any organization trying to find the right balance between high performance and employee engagement.”
“Joe was an inspiration! The sessions with Joe were fun and interactive. He gave us valuable tools to carry forward."
"Joe presented to our top sales group and our executive team on a recent awards trip. The presentation provided takeaways that the group put right to work. We had great feedback from the team. They thoroughly enjoyed his presentation. Do yourself a favor and check Joe out! It is well worth it!"
"Joe’s training for our leadership team
"Joe's training was ideal—and perfectly timed for our needs and workforce. The feedback from managers was universally positive!"
“Your talk included useful and important information presented clearly and cleverly, along with a nice touch of audience engagement. The audience learned something and enjoyed the experience. After almost 40 years of teaching and speaking at professional conferences I know very few people can do this effectively. You can and did!"
“Joe Robinson is a true inspiration."
“Thank you for spending the week with us and making an impact for our people and our company. I've heard nothing but very positive comments and feel that your message will make a difference in all our lives."
“This session came at a great time for our employees with so many feeling the burden of stress. Joe was engaging and gave great tips on reducing stress and taking control of the day."
“As co-chair of the Fall Conference, I was very nervous regarding how my peers would receive the information from the training. We all work in fast-paced stressful work settings. Everyone kept commenting on how wonderful the training was and how interactive it was. Some told me about which tips they were going to use right away. I felt the same and, on my drive home after the conference I was speaking to my daughter and shared a few tools she could use in her everyday life as a college student. I highly recommend this training for everyone."
“Joe Robinson provided a well-rounded and engaging workshop for our leadership team. Every participant walked away with new tools to improve mental balance at work and at home and a new motivation to work smarter and live better.”
“First and foremost, it was a pleasure working with Joe. Joe is one of those speakers who shows a deep understanding for his content. He is engaging with a unique presentation format. We were pleasantly surprised that we had more than half of our Associates show up for this early morning (voluntary) seminar. Not only did Joe keep the energy high, but he also provided real life examples and tools leaving the attendees motivated and recharged!"
“Joe's keynote was fantastic! Our team raved about the session, and folks are still chatting about it days later! So many attendees have said that Joe provided them with effective, tangible tools to combat stress. His anecdotes were engaging and helpful. We will be recommending Joe's work to everyone!"
The workplace has no shortage of stressors, from time pressure to message overload and overwhelm. When minds are distracted by stress, it's a lose-lose, for employee and organization. In an unbounded digital world, reducing workplace stress is an essential productivity and wellness strategy.
When stress is triggered, the threat signal bypasses the modern brain and goes directly to the ancient brain's hub of irrational emotion and fear. As a result, work stress undermines mental health and the faculties needed to get the job done: attention, decision-making, judgment, and impulse control (see our article, "How Stress Undermines Intellect, Decisions, and Judgment"). Studies show that chronic stress can lead to side effects such as mental lapses, mistakes, anger, and impaired cognition because of the impact of cortisol on executive attention function (Boschi, Trenoweth, Sheppard).
Stress guarantees that employees no longer have full attention on what they are doing. It constricts the brain to the perceived crisis, diverting attention to issues and tenses other than the one the employee is in. Stress management training is, in essence, attention training. The more attention employees have, the less stress. This makes managing demands and pressure a powerful productivity tool for the workplace. When employees have the skills of stress management, their health and job satisfaction improve dramatically, two more big pluses for the organization and your human resources.
Left unchallenged, job stress drives emotional reactions and fatigue, which means it takes more effort, and time, to get the job done. Our stress management training for employees helps teams return to their right minds and next tasks by teaching them how to shift from emotion-based reactions to solutions based on problem-solving.
The real danger of stress is when it’s chronic (see Joe Robinson's article, "The Most Dangerous Thing About Stress"). The stress response shuts down and alters critical systems in the body that aren't needed in a life-or-death moment. It suppresses the immune system and tissue repair system and turns off digestion. It also dramatically increases heart rate and blood pressure. That’s okay for a brief time, but when this goes on for days and months, it causes multiple side effects and major health damage.
The wear and tear on the body of being in a state of constant activation from chronic stress can cause major health problems—high blood pressure, heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, heart attacks, depression, rapid heart rate, back pain. These drive up medical costs and absenteeism and undermine talent. Our stress management programs provide the skills to change the behaviors that feed chronic stress in the workplace and build health and well-being.
The last stage of chronic stress is burnout. The body has been overactivated for so long it has drained all coping and energetic resources. What’s left is exhaustion — mental, physical, and emotional — which undercut productivity in a big way.
Burnout is a serious mental and physical health condition. The main domains of burnout — exhaustion and cynicism — are the opposite of employee engagement: energy and commitment. The symptoms of burnout (see "The 7 Signs of Burnout"), such as withdrawal from others, cynicism, low energy, loss of self-esteem and efficacy, and disengagement all reduce performance. On the health side, burnout can lead to serious mental health issues, such as depression, as well as debilitating physical repercussions such as high blood pressure, which drive more absenteeism (see Joe Robinson's article for Men's Journal, "How You Get Burnout, and How You Overcome It").
Our stress management training for employees identifies the triggers of chronic stress that drive burnout, teaches your team the essentials of stress management to control them, and maps out a path to rebuild energetic resources and prevent a return of burnout.
Job stress is triggered when a demand, or stressor, threatens to overwhelm capacity to cope with it. When the demands are not too high and the employee feels he or she has personal control over them, the pressure can be seen as a challenge or motivation—so-called “good stress.” “When demands are high and the individual has little control over them, the negative consequences of strain or stress develop,” explained the University of Massachusetts's Robert Karasek in an interview with Joe Robinson. Karasek’s Job Demands-Control Model is one of the most influential in occupational stress research.
The key to managing workplace stress is having strategies to increase perceived control over stressors, so strain and stress don’t develop. There are crucial levers of control in stress management that can give employees a sense they have the capacity to manage a particular demand. They can make adjustments to how they do their tasks to increase perception of self-control, and, importantly, change how they think about demands, crucial components of our stress management programs.
Stress management is, essentially, managing thoughts. We have to avoid the mind’s reflex leap into emotional overreactions from stress triggers. Our trainings show employees how to separate their thoughts from themselves and reframe the false stories of stress from worst-case scenarios to factual stories that are survivable and manageable, which brings stress levels down in minutes. Each person has the option to buy or not buy thoughts driving stress and choose how long they stay attached to the stressful event (see our article, “How to Turn Off Stress Instantly, and Be as Smart as Your Dog”) as well as to the ruminative track that leads to mental heath issues, something our stress management programs help your team avoid.
When looking for a stress management program, the goal, no doubt, is one that gets results and makes a real difference in stress levels. Researchers have weighed in with their assessment of what really works. One metastudy that analyzed 36 different studies that utilized 55 interventions (Richardson, Rothstein) found that by far the most effective approach to workplace stress management training were those programs that utilized cognitive-behavioral methods, training that changes the thinking behind stressful thoughts. It's what employees learn in our stress management programs.
They found that most stress management programs used relaxation techniques, but that the lasting effects came from psychological interventions to manage stress more than physiological ones. “Cognitive-behavioral interventions consistently produced larger effects than other types of interventions,”reported Richardson and Rothstein.
The researchers concluded that, although relaxation techniques “may reduce or eliminate troubling thoughts or feelings, they do not direct the individual to confront dysfunctional ideas, emotions, or behaviors. Thus, these are basically passive techniques. Cognitive-behavioral interventions, on the other hand, are more active. These interventions encourage individuals to take charge of their negative thoughts, feelings, and resulting behavior by changing their cognitions and emotions to more adaptive ones.”
Stress management is the ability to change, reframe, or shift a stressful thought to something controllable, allowing employees to manage the source of the stress and not just symptoms, and prevent the creation of chronic stress. Our comprehensive stress management programs offer the best cognitive-behavioral practices, as well as multiple relaxation techniques, from progressive relaxation to mindfulness, to bring skillful reaction-management to counter workplace stress.
Managing stress is often overlooked in the scheme of wellness in the workplace, yet it’s key to employee health and well-being. Since it suppresses the immune system, fuels high blood pressure and drives negative rumination, chronic stress is at the root of almost all the physical and mental health conditions that drive productivity, talent, and costs south—from heart disease to diabetes, depression, anxiety, hypertension, insomnia, high heart rate, fatigue, irritable bowel, and back pain.
Wellness starts at the top. It’s the mind that runs the stress show and its countless physical, mental, and social side-effects. When employees have strategies for stress management to reappraise the thoughts and reactions that lead to physical and mental health issues, it not only prevents those problems, it creates a receptivity to wellness behaviors the fatigue and negative mood of stress normally prevent.
The change in mental outlook is one of the best outcomes of a stress management program. Employees go from emotion-based reactivity to constructive thinking focused on problem-solving to manage stress. Stress burns up energetic resources needed for productivity and health. Relieve stress, and the body can refuel physical vitality and positive emotions, two crucial ingredients in productivity (Fredrickson). Managing workplace stress is the most direct route to lasting wellness.
Stress management is not just about what happens during working hours. The science of work recovery has shown that employees have to be able to turn off thoughts of work at home, or stress permeates their personal life, and they come back to the job the next day with the same stress level, negative affect, and mental fatigue. Building wellness is a holistic, work-home effort.
Employees need to be able to detach themselves after work from the pressures of the workday, so that the parasympathetic nervous system, the restorative counter to the activation of stress, can allow the “rest and digest” processes to replace resources burned up by work strain and recharge health and wellness. When employees relieve stress through recovery strategies, they return to work the next day with renewed attention, vitality and positive affect (see Joe Robinson’s article, The Science of Work Recovery), prolific researcher Sabine Sonnentag has reported in her work.
We help your team develop strategies after work, from relaxation to recreation and mastery activities, such as hobbies, to turn off the tensions of the day. Energizing the mind and body at home goes hand-in-hand with adjustments at work to energize health and wellness, provide ongoing stress relief, keep mental health issues at bay, and improve work-life balance (see Joe Robinson's article in Men's Journal, "How to Leave Work at Work").
Deadlines, bottlenecks, message overload, difficult clients and coworkers, and interruptions can all lead to an increased stress level. Stress management gives your team tools to handle the demands and determines how effective and productive your employees or organization can be.
Unfortunately, very few people know how to manage stress. Stress management is a skill the culture doesn’t teach, and, as a result, most employees and organizations are at the whim of emotional reactions set off by an ancient reflex. Tempers flare, errors are made.
Our stress management program gives your team tools to manage their survival equipment, which doesn’t know how to compute the modern world of social stress, the kind that leads to workplace stress. Employees learn how to manage the reactions and emotions at the heart of the stress-burnout cycle.
Here are some of the key components that should be a part of any program for reducing workplace stress:
• A way to assess stress levels and measure progress. Employee surveys and other testing help provide success metrics.
• An understanding of the ancient survival mechanism that turns on the fight-or-flight equipment and what kind of threats trigger it. Employees also need to know how stress alters key systems in the body, leading to high blood pressure, digestive problems, and insomnia with chronic stress.
• Tools that give your team multiple levers to increase perceived control over demands and pressures. When we adjust how we do our jobs and think about them, we are able to use what is known as cognitive appraisal to control the demands.
• The ability to manage catastrophic thoughts and “awfulizing,” patterns of self-talk triggered by stress reactions. The mind has a mind of its own, unless it's bolstered by stress management.
• Thorough training in a range of stress management techniques, so team members have a variety of ways to stop the stress in its tracks, and work recovery strategies when they get home from the office.
• The knowledge to prevent the emotional contagion of stress, which spreads across the workplace. Our stress management training shows how to resist the effects of secondhand stress.
• Skills to improve time management, deadline and time estimation, and information overload. All of these drive stress and aggravation, and all function more effectively with a mind focused by stress relief.
• A comprehensive training in resilience and how to bounce back quickly, stay out of the pessimistic bunker, and reframe events.
• Work recovery strategies from relaxation to mastery activities that allow the body and mind to recuperate, recharge, and tap into the proven stress relief provided by an engaged personal life.
Stress in the workplace is a such a counterproductive force that an organization or team with high levels of it is working with the equivalent of one hand behind the back and a brain divided against itself.
The statistics lay it out in black and white: Workplace stress costs American business $407 billion a year in everything from medical bills to absenteeism to recruiting and training costs, reports University of California Irvine researcher Peter Schnall, founder of Healthywork.org.
Stress drives disengagement, and that kills job satisfaction, which are two of the big reasons why leaders and human resources departments need to safeguard their talent by making sure staff has the tools to manage demands and pressure and keep stress levels down. Payoffs from our stress management program include:
1. Increased productivity. Stress constricts the brain to the perceived crisis of the moment, which takes attention away from the task. It requires more effort to do the job when you’re stressed, which results in it taking longer to finish the task. Stress management skills increase focus and performance.
2. Reduced medical costs due to stress-related illness and absenteeism. Our stress management training shows how the fight-or-flight response alters major systems in the body, which can lead to everything from heart disease to diabetes. Health problems from workplace stress and the depression it can lead to at its end stage, burnout, cost companies multiple times more to treat than the average workplace malady (Goetzel). Managing stress stops the absenteeism revolving door and dramatically increases health and well-being.
3. Increased engagement — and revenue as a result. Stress leads to negative emotions, cognitive exhaustion, and cynicism. All of them can lead to a disengaged workplace. Healthy, positive, focused minds result in engaged employees, which energizes output, attitudes, and revenue (up 23% in one study — Munz, Kohler).
4. Less conflict and emotional contagion. Stress activates the aggression hub in the brain, which adds to the “fight”-or-flight reaction. It makes us lash out at others, known as stress-induced displacement aggression, and we feel better afterwards. Stress relief helps people feel better so they don't need to lash out.
5. Increased attention and reduced distraction. Attention is the chief productivity tool. Research shows that the more attention you have, the less stress and vice-versa. A good employee training builds focus and concentration by arming staff with tools to keep the stress of distractors, such as information overload and social media, at bay.
6. Improved retention. High stress levels drive good employees to leave companies. Some 40% of employees who exit companies do so because of stress. This puts your top talent and bottom-line at risk. Employees who face mounting health problems as a result of stress quickly become disengaged and open to opportunities elsewhere. Give employees proven tools to relieve stress, and commitment grows.
7. Dramatically fewer mistakes and errors. Stress hijacks the modern, rational brain and puts an ancient part of the mind in charge. It results in System 1 thinking — impulsive, shallow, jump-off-the-cliff. Your team can make major mistakes when caught up in costly, knee-jerk, irrational emotions, reactions our stress management programs help them avoid. Stress relief makes sure your team is using their rational faculties.
8. Increased innovation. The distraction of stress shuts down creativity. It keeps the mind ruminating about a false belief, instead of having the calm space to imagine. The seeds of innovation come from allowing the mind to wander and play, which stress suppresses.
Our stress management training gives employees a thorough understanding of how the stress response activates under pressure and what they can do to manage it. We train your team how to control situational stress in the workplace, develop responses to frequent button-pushers, manage crises, and implement preventive solutions and the best stress management techniques.
The Calm in the Storm stress management program also provides tools to build lasting resilience and coping capacity by increasing mental toughness and cognitive agility. The leadership team and employees get evidence-based tools from researchers at the University of Nevada and the University of Pennsylvania to separate themselves from the thoughts that drive stress, escape thinking traps that trigger emotional reactions, and challenge autopilot catastrophic thoughts and worst-case scenarios that drive high stress levels.
They learn in our training sessions that one of the keys to stress management and resilience is the story they tell themselves about stressful events—a form of self-talk known as “explanatory style.” Depending on the style we use, optimistic or pessimistic, we either bounce back quickly or remain stuck in a bunker of counterproductive negative rumination. Through the inspiring science of optimism, your team gets tools to reduce stress, boost mental health and manage any challenge.
