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What’s Your Stress Number?? The September Report on the New Health Metric by The Oxygen Plan

October 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment


Minneapolis, MN (Vocus) October 4, 2010

The Oxygen Plan Corporation reports the September findings of the new health metric – The Stress Number?, after 31,975 respondents have completed the 30 question The Oxygen Plan Stress Test. To assess individual stress, there were 10 questions for home, work and social. The scoring for each question ranged from 0 – 100, whereby a score of 0 means extreme stress (red), to 100, meaning stress free (green).

Key September Findings:

Things seem to be improving. “We see across the board improvements for home, work and social lives in September.” The work and social Stress Number?, were each +1.5 for September while home posted a positive gain of 1.0. ‘This was the best month of improvement since we have been conducting our research,’ says Dr. Donald E. Williams, board-certified clinical health psychologist (American Board of Professional Psychology/ABPP), and Chief Science Officer, The Oxygen Plan. ‘Although there was an improvement in the aggregate Stress Number? over August for home (48), work (52) and social (53), they trailed last year’s (54), (55), and (55) respectively.’

The Oxygen Plan Stress Test data show what many suspect ? there is a tremendous amount of stress in our society and in our relationships, taking a huge toll on health, relationships, and our economy. For individuals, the impact of stress at work takes a tremendous personal toll in terms of lost productivity, absenteeism and burnout. Stress disrupts home and social lives, leading to even more problems for individuals in the form of deteriorating social support and troubled relationships. In the work place, stress also manifests in group health, turnover and disability expenses. For employers, that translates to a cost of $ 4,888 per employee per year! The total annual economic impact of stress in the U.S. is $ 400 Billion.’

‘Never before has it been possible to measure, compute, report, trend or aggregate a stress metric as it relates to personal health or organizational cost,’ says Dr. Williams. Now, we are able to assess stress, calculate the Stress Number?, provide The Oxygen Plan program and re-measure stress for individuals or organizations. ‘The Stress Number? is a significant development in the field of health metrics.’ ‘We feel the Stress Number? should be used to help individuals and organizations manage health and health care costs ? just like blood pressure and cholesterol levels,” adds Eric Lucas, Founder and CEO of The Oxygen Plan. ‘Because stress in the home or social life impacts employees at work, and vice versa, it’s in employers’ best interest to know the aggregate Stress Number? for their employee populations. Now they can establish a baseline, implement programs toward improvement, and reassess their employees.’

The Oxygen Plan Corporation has a new patent-pending behavior change program designed to help people recognize and reduce stress, live healthier, happier lives while helping employers lower health care costs and improve productivity and employee engagement. The Oxygen Plan, co-developed by Eric Lucas and Dr. Williams, is the only stress reduction program to use a simple green, yellow, red color coding to easily facilitate stress recognition and behavior change for individuals and organizations. For more information visit http://www.theoxygenplan.com.

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Employers Can Now Learn their Organization’s Stress Number?

September 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment


Minneapolis, MN (PRWEB) April 5, 2011

Employee stress drains $ 400 billion a year from U.S. businesses–yet many organizations don’t fully understand the damage stress causes to their profit margins, employee productivity levels and employee health. A new white paper from The Oxygen Plan urges employers to learn their “Stress Number?” and develop an effective stress management program.

A “Stress Number?” is an aggregated measure of the stress affecting an organization’s workforce. Employers can obtain a copy of the free white paper, “Learn Your Organization’s Stress Number?,” by visiting http://www.theoxygenplan.com/employers/research-papers/.

A simple workforce survey can help companies collect the necessary information to learn employee stress levels and the root causes of their stress, including non-work related triggers. Gathering this information through surveys will give the most accurate picture of the impact of stress on individual workers and on business outcomes.

The white paper offers steps to take after surveying employees, as well as an overview of employers’ options and considerations when purchasing or updating stress management programs. It also underscores the importance of implementing a solution devoted exclusively to stress management.

The paper is co-authored by Dr. Donald E. Williams, chief science officer of The Oxygen Plan, and Eric Lucas, its founder. The Oxygen Plan is a behavior change program that helps organizations to reduce the costly and negative effects of stress in the workplace and at home.

“Many organizations invest in costly resources like EAPs, work-life programs, health and wellness programs, financial management programs, and flexible work arrangements,” said Dr. Williams. “But many employers are unaware of their employees’ actual stress levels, how much of their stress is job-related and the root causes of their stress.”

“Stress diminishes the engagement and effectiveness of a workforce, erodes workers’ physical and emotional health, and drives up medical and insurance costs,” said Lucas. “Determining your organization’s Stress Number? can reduce healthcare costs and insurance fees, curb absenteeism and turnover rates and boost employee productivity.”

Dr. Williams is a clinical and consulting psychologist with over 25 years of experience, specializing in assessing and treating stress and stress-related disorders. For nearly 18 years, Williams served on the staff of the Mayo Clinic as a Consultant in clinical health psychology and is certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP). Lucas is founder of The Oxygen Plan, a behavior change program that helps organizations reduce costly and negative effects of stress in the workplace and at home.

About The Oxygen Plan

The Oxygen Plan is an online behavior change program that helps organizations reduce the costly and negative effects of stress in the workplace and at home, including increased healthcare expenses, chronic medical conditions, mental health issues, absenteeism and productivity losses, and reduced employee engagement. The company’s patent-pending stress management system teaches individuals to recognize the sources and symptoms of stress and provides them with tools and information for effectively reducing and avoiding stress. For more information, visit http://www.theoxygenplan.com.

Media Contact:

Adriana Saldana

HRmarketer for The Oxygen Plan

asaldana(at)hrmarketer(dot)com

831.722.9910

This press release was distributed through PR Web by Human Resources Marketer (HR Marketer: http://www.HRmarketer.com) on behalf of the company listed above.

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Executives: Stress is Number One Productivity Issue

September 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Rochester, MI (PRWEB) March 18, 2006

Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a national business group with a focus on health, recently took a survey among 275 employers to find out the key issues affecting employee productivity.

Their findings show the stress was identified by 72% of the employers as a key issue relative to productivity.

Stress has been building in the workplace as employers find it increasingly necessary to have more work done by fewer employees. The result has been that employees have been asked to take on additional responsibilities, work longer hours, cross train with other departments, and do more multitasking.

After stress in the survey, 59% said a key issue affecting employee productivity were personal and family issues. Personal and family issues include such items as day care, family illnesses, marital stress, financial troubles, and other personal issues.

Following close behind in third place, 58% cited chronic medical conditions. This issue barely squeaked ahead of unscheduled absences.

Stress becomes an issue because so many people are unable to deal with stress. A certain amount of stress is necessary and an important part of daily life. However people often will ignore this routine stress until it amplifies and starts to take a toll on their life.

What you can do

As an employer, you are able to do many things to help reduce stress in the workplace. Here are just some suggestions:

increase the lighting, particularly natural lighting, it has many workplaces as possible

do not overcrowd your employees, provide as much space as possible spread live plants throughout the workplace as they create calmness

align an individual employees ability to handle stress with the normal stress of each position — the use of employee of assessments is vital in this endeavor

encourage employees to cut absenteeism through programs that reward attendance or unused sick pay provide stress management classes for your employees — companies like Max Impact offers viable stress management classes on-site or online

The bottom line with stress is that an employer can have a huge impact on the stress levels of the employees.

Through proper training and proper site management, stress can be significantly reduced.

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Back to School. Back to Stress? What’s Your Child’s Stress Number??

August 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment


Minneapolis, MN (Vocus) September 7, 2010

A patent-pending stress management program, The Oxygen Plan , is designed to help students improve their health, relationships and school performance.

According to Dr. Donald E. Williams, a licensed, board certified (ABPP) clinical health psychologist and Chief Science Officer for The Oxygen Plan, stress is what our children experience when the demands placed upon them exceed their abilities to cope. They experience symptoms when stress is serious, persistent or as it accumulates over time. Stress has negative impacts on our students? relationships at home and at school and it has been linked to a variety of health and behavioral problems in our children; problems such as declining grades to headaches to depression, contributing to frequent doctor visits and time away from school.

The Oxygen Plan Stress Test is a unique online stress measurement tool to provide clear and instant results that you and your student can see and understand. After answering 30 short questions, your output is in the form of a Stress Color and a Stress Number? for your student’s home, school and social lives. By using The Oxygen Plan system, students can go on to: (1) take inventory or identify stressors at school, at home and in social interactions; (2) categorize, by color, the degree of stress involved; (3) set life rules or implement new positive behaviors to deal with stress and (4) repeat the process as a life plan.

?Our Stress Test data show what many suspect ? there is a tremendous amount of stress in our society and in our relationships and it’s taking a huge toll on our health, relationships and on our children, says Dr. Williams. For our students, the impact of stress can take a tremendous toll on their health, relationships and school performance. The Oxygen Plan could be a solution for students, that helps them improve their ability to cope and manage their stress, and excel in school

“We recommend parents establish a stress baseline, for each of their children, at the beginning of the school year,” adds Eric Lucas, Founder. That way, over the course of the school year, if you think something has changed with your child, you can have a better line of sight on the source of the issue.

The Oxygen Plan is a new patent-pending program designed to help people recognize and reduce stress, live healthier, happier lives while helping employers lower health care costs and improve productivity and employee engagement. The Oxygen Plan, co-developed by Eric Lucas and Dr. Donald E. Williams, is the only stress reduction program to use a simple green, yellow, red color coding to easily facilitate stress recognition and behavior change for individuals and organizations.

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