BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
ecoming a manager with impact is the dream of many young students of management but, as providers of business education seek to support these aspirations, we can sometimes forget to teach them that being a manager also means being able to cope with stress. This is all the truer in today’s turbulent and uncertain world. Communication with, and responsibility towards, stakeholders, employees and the public, together B with day-to-day business tasks, development of strategies and the coaching of key people, can bring a great deal of inner satisfaction and self‑esteem. However, it is a demanding lifestyle much of the time and the ensuing pressures felt by leaders can lead to poor physical and mental health. This is a reality of contemporary business and it is therefore becoming increasingly important to ensure that the next generation of leaders are suitably prepared. As well as ever-changing market conditions and contexts, students need to be ready for the psychologically challenging situations they will have to face in their future careers. This entails developing strong, integrated, self-reflective, self‑confident and psychologically skilled people with deep psychological literacy. Yet many argue that the emerging generations of professionals currently have poor levels of resilience and stress management. Sceptics also say that younger managers tend to turn to sabbaticals too frequently as they seek to prevent potential
burnout, refusing deeper responsibility by opting to stop working when they feel like it as opposed to when situations allow. The need for a change in approach That’s why management education must be enriched with psychological education and training. This will provide emerging leaders with good levels of immunity to fragility and against any vulnerability to stress and the complex requirements of their roles. From my European perspective, the need to make changes in our approach to management education is even more acute because of recent research. A series of reports and projects on mental health in the region have demonstrated a significant increase of ‘psychosocial’ risks [that is, risks associated with one's psychological development in, and interaction with, a social environment] in the workplace over the past 15 years, such as the 2014 European Risk Observatory report, Calculating the cost of work-related stress and psychosocial risks . These reports have confirmed that impaired mental health or poor levels of coping with stress among managers and their key people can significantly influence team performance, results, income and KPIs. They also point to the existence of an alarming number of people who suffer from work-related mental health issues which impact the business and economy of companies and states negatively. It is worth noting here that it is common to find that indirect costs to businesses, such as loss of productivity, absenteeism, presenteeism, social benefit payments, early retirement, reorganisation of teams, slowdown of work productivity, staff turnover and so on are much higher than any direct costs. In fact, the effects and consequences of mental health problems among our “Impaired mental health or poor levels of coping with stress among managers and key people can significantly influence team performance, results, income and KPIs”
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