HR Doctor - Stress is good?!?

HR Doctor Steve Cave takes the alternative view that stress can be good, helping to keep people motivated and focused, instead of enduring boring and repetitive tasks which cause the brain to wander.

I think that stress gets a bad press. It can really be very useful. Take myself for example. I have known that I have to write this article for several weeks but it is only a day or so before the deadline, and with my usual reminder from Sarah (the editor) that she needs the article; or to at least know what the article is about before I get the energy to write it. I have tried to do the right thing and plan it and then write the article several days ahead of the deadline but always fail miserably. I need the stress that a deadline creates and the rush that comes with it. For those of you who are familiar with Myers Briggs, you will recognise me. My motto is 'it will be alright, do not worry'. I am in Myers Briggs jargon: open ended, spontaneous, go with the flow, curious and like to explore.

I acknowledge that not all of these traits are good and I can cause stress for colleagues, in particular those that like order, planning and to leave some time spare in case something goes wrong. To all my colleagues like that I apologise. I do try and learn from experiences. I also have to point out that you can cause me stress with your obsession to plan every small detail and worry about things that will not happen. It is ok not to have all your tins in the kitchen cupboard organised in size and date order!!! You know who you are, and I accept that you prefer to behave in that way, just as I prefer to be open ended and spontaneous. When colleagues do not get on, it creates all sorts of problems, and all too often we assume that others are doing things just to annoy us. In fact, they are just being themselves.

What most organisations need is a good balance of people in a team, but what they normally get is a load of people in the image of the boss. I recently did some profiling of one organisation employing nearly 200 people (191 if you prefer), and of 16 basic personality profiles, they only employed 7 types.

One area of stress that does not get talked about much are jobs that lack stress. I have been lucky and not had too many jobs like this. Many of you will though have jobs in your organisations that are very, very boring. I once had a job in the Civil Service that involved checking forms, thousands of them day in and day out. I did not really know why or what happened to them once I had passed them on. It seems hard to believe now but no one thought to tell me what or why I was doing it, and to be fair I never thought to ask. I did volunteer to look after the stores which impressed my boss. The stores were in a small room which we quickly converted into a football pitch and set up a league. About 10 of us (9 to be precise) took part in one on one games throughout the day using a paper football. All of us realised that we could play football for two to three hours and still get through our work without any pressure. One day after a series of particularly loud games that must have been heard all over the building, I was called into the bosses office who proceeded to tell me that I had been promoted!! He never explained why and I never asked, but I suspect now that it was the easiest way of getting rid of me. I would be interested to know of any tips for removing the boredom from the day. Please email me and I will share the results in the next edition.

Some people may be adept at doing boring jobs day in and day out but I hope that those of you reading this will do your utmost to rid work of 'boring' and use the talents of your employees in a better way. The most boring jobs I have seen were in manufacturing. In a company that made televisions employees sat on long lines and put their part in the television as it went past for 8 hours a day. In a food manufacturing plant to aid efficiency each shift had to chop one vegetable until eventually some employees suffered from nightmares about carrots so the company decided that employees could chop one vegetable in the morning and a different one in the afternoon. The union immediately asked for a pay increase to reflect the new skill levels!!

Let me know 'what is the most boring job you have ever come across.' You can email me on steve@myhrpeople.com

Update on previous articles:

The Equality Act is now in place. The act replaces 9 major pieces of legislation so watch out for a politician claiming that they have reduced regulations.
The Act does mean that you can no longer ask questions about health before making a job offer. So you will need to take out the question on your application form that asks about 'attendance at work'.
As I suspected no suggestions were made for regulations that could be scrapped, so either all the regulations are necessary or you could not be bothered! Hopefully because you are all playing storeroom football.

Finished and 15 minutes before the deadline, easy peasy!