The United Nations declares workplace stress to be a worldwide epidemic. In the United States alone, forty-six percent of workers report that their job is very stressful. This adds up to a million stress related workplace absences each day.

Individual stress control techniques are important. Meditation, soothing music, biofeedback, and other techniques work well to help people cope with the stress of our modern workplace.

The real solution, however, is to recognize that stress control is a leadership responsibility. Leaders and managers can do more to control stress than all of the individual stress relief techniques combined. Leaders who implement stress control strategies see the results in reduced absenteeism, medical costs, health care insurance expenses, workers comp payments, accidents, complaints, and so on.

The following 13 stress control strategies minimize costs such as these and productivity soars. The workplace is improved. Employees and their families are happier. Business owners make more money.

Management can control stress by:

++ Eliminating unreasonable expectations

++ Positioning people in jobs that use their

skills and abilities

++ Adjusting pay for the level of responsibility

assigned to individuals

++ Correcting vague and arbitrary promotion

policies

++ Including employee in making decisions that

affect their jobs

++ Avoiding excessive overtime, even if there is

additional compensation

++ Distributing unpleasant tasks fairly

++ Enforcing policies equally throughout the

organization, from top to bottom

++ Implementing problem-solving strategies and

acceptable mediation of conflicts

++ Using family stress control strategies to

minimize the impact of family separation

caused by travel or long office hours

++ Demonstrating concern for employee welfare

++ Eliminating or minimizing intolerable conditions

such as temperature, hazards, noise, light, and

odors

It is difficult to remove some of these stressors when the competition is attacking your company or when you are faced with unfavorable economic conditions, but this challenge is just as important as anything else facing those who wear the mantle of leadership. Making all of these changes can seem overwhelming. However, you can make an impact by selecting a single strategy and making a plan to improve it.

Just as corporate leaders are responsible for maximizing performance and increasing net profits, they are also responsible for controlling stressors that affect the bottom line.

To learn more about stress reducing strategies, send for f*ree auto responder about the top ten causes of workplace stress -- toptenstressors@couragebuilders.com

Dale Collie - professional speaker, former US Army Ranger, CEO, and a Fast Company top 50 innovative leader. Author of "Winning Under Fire." (McGraw-Hill) collie@couragebuilders.com