The Nature of Happiness - Managing Workplace stress and depression

One of the keynotes I deliver is a series of personal stories of journeys to happiness for the workplace. This keynote is inspirational and helps to destigmatise workplace stress and in its worst form depression. In fact there is a lot workplaces can do to improve the workplace environment for their staff simply by adding a touch of nature to the office. Experts often encourage people to simply get grounded in nature to manage stress, things like going for a walk, enjoying a beautiful landscape and so on.

Here are some facts about workplace stress and depression:

You can help by:

Building Positive awareness around Depression and encourage your employees to be resilient to workplace stress. Awareness helps to:
#increase knowledge
# decrease stigma
# improves attitudes
# increases confidence to assist someone to seek help.


FACTS

More than one million people in Australia experience depression, anxiety or related alcohol and drug problems

Depression is currently the leading cause of non-fatal disability in Australia, but only 3 per cent of the population identifies it as a major health problem

Each year, undiagnosed depression in the workplace costs $4.3 billion in lost productivity and this excludes Workcover/insurance claims, part-time or casual employees, retrenchment, recruitment and training problems each year.

On average, every full-time employee with untreated depression costs an organisation $9,665 per year

Each employee with depression will, on average, take three to four days off work per month which is equivalent to over six million days lost each year in Australia

In addition to absenteeism, depression accounts for more than 12 million days of reduced productivity each year.

Sixty-two per cent (62%) of people with depression don't get help for it

Research shows that implementation of early diagnosis and intervention programs can result in a five-fold return on investment as a result of increased employee productivity

Workplace stress is a significant risk factor for developing depression
Source - Beyond Blue
http://www.beyondblue.org.au/index.aspx?link_id=4.1028