BACKGROUND

Business owners bear the dual mission of development and stability. They face more confusion and greater pressure. Therefore, in today's society, an outstanding business owners should first be a successful "stress" manager.

    Business owners play an increasingly important role in the rapidly developing economy and society, and are full of competition and fast pace in their work or life, especially now, acting as party and government leaders, and employees. The requirements are getting higher and higher, there are more and more problems to be solved, the responsibilities they bear are getting heavier, the fields involved are getting wider and wider, and the decision-making is more and more difficult. There are more and more kinds of temptations, and the pressure is increasing.

    "Psychological stress is a psychological burden caused by external stimuli or internal psychological imbalances." Just business owners stress refers to the state of response of leaders to physical and mental discomfort or tension caused by internal and external needs or stimuli from specific events in the process of achieving leadership. Or it refers to the kind of state of tension and anxiety experienced by leaders when they are stimulated by various events and their demands are not satisfied.

Over half of business owners feeling increasingly stressed

More than half the leaders of privately held businesses globally feel their stress levels have increased over the last year. The research from the Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR) 2010 covers the opinions of over 7,400 business owners across 36 economies. Chinese mainland tops the league for the most stressed leaders, with 76% of business owners saying their stress levels have increased over the last year.

Other economies that were high in the stress league table were Mexico (74%), Turkey (72%), Vietnam (72%) and Greece (68%). At the opposite end Of the scale, business owners in Sweden (23%), Denmark (25%), Finland (33%) and Australia (35%) have the lowest stress levels in the world.

There appears to be a link between stress levels and GDP. Business owners in Chinese mainland, Vietnam, Mexico, India and Turkey are all high on the stress league table and are working in environments where high growth is expected. But it’s not just in countries expecting high growth that stress levels are high – at the opposite end of the growth scale, Ireland, Spain and Greece are all high on the league table. Said Alex MacBeath, Global Leader – Markets at Grant Thornton International, “We have businesses at both ends of the GDP growth scale experiencing high stress for very different reasons. In Chinese mainland, the pressure is on to keep up with the speed of expansion, while in Ireland, for example, the economy is shrinking, and business owners are worried about how they will keep their business alive.”

Business owners were asked about the major causes of workplace stress. Not surprisingly, the most common cause during 2009 was the economic climate, with 38% of respondents globally saying this was one of their major causes of stress. This was followed by pressure on cash flow (26%), competitor activities (21%) and heavy workload (19%). Alex MacBeath comments, “The causes of workplace stress can be put into three distinct groups – economic, business and personal. An employee may place more importance on personal elements such as their work-life balance. The business owner has additional pressures to consider.” 

The survey also found a link between stress levels and the number of days taken off by an individual in a year. Countries at the top of the stress league are those where business owners, on average, take fewer holidays each year.

 [WORDS & EXPRESSIONS]

respondent 

n. a person who replies to something such as a survey or set of questions 调查对象 

e.g. 60 percent of the respondents said they disapproved of the president's performance.

shrink 

v. to become smaller 收缩，（经济）萎缩 

e.g. Hungary may have to lower its hopes of shrinking its state sector. 

GDP

(gross domestic product) the total value of all the goods and services that a country produces or provides in a particular year, not including income from investments in other countries

league table

a list that shows how successful an organisation such as a sports team or a business is when it is compared to other similar organisations

BACKGROUND

Work stress refers to the pressure on people due to heavy work load. Work stress is a current global hot topic. Stress is not only a powerful driving force, but also a work-influencing factor. Negative factors of performance and occupational health. Stress is a dynamic situation. In this situation, the individual has to face the opportunities, limitations, and requirements related to his desired goal, and the results produced by this dynamic situation are considered important and uncertain.

 The impact of work stress is multi-faceted. When stress occurs, people are in a state of work stress. The nature of the impact of stress can be divided into positive and negative consequences. The areas affected by stress include personal health, job performance, and personal decision-making. 

 With the rapid development of science and technology and the gradual intensification of market competition, stress is slowly permeating every corner of our lives and work as a by-product of social development. Various problems caused by stress have gradually emerged. The loss of corporate productivity caused by frequent absenteeism, absent-mindedness, and decreased creativity caused by excessive pressure. Due to increasing pressure, employee absenteeism rates are also increasing, especially state-owned enterprises are higher than private enterprises.

Stress-related absence rises

Staff absence levels remain higher in the public sector than in the private sector, with stress levels likely to grow as the government’s spending cuts take effect, according to a report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). 

Its survey of 573 organisations with 1.5m employees found that the recession has had an effect on the whole economy, with a third of all employers reporting an increase in stress-related absence.

More than a third of employers noted an increase in mental health problems such as anxiety and depression – a big rise on last year’s survey, when one-fifth reported an increase. But only one-fifth of organisations had increased their focus on employee well-being and health promotion, suggesting that more could be done.

The survey found that average absence was three days higher in the public sector than in private sector services, at 9.6 days per employee per year compared with 6.6 days. Stress was the main cause of high levels of longterm public sector absence, with three-quarters of public sector organisations putting stress among the top five causes of absence. More than half of public sector employers rated organisational change and restructuring as one of the leading causes of work-related stress, compared with fewer than 40 per cent in other sectors.

Jill Miller of the CIPD said: “The survey shows why closing the gap between public and private sector absence has proved so difficult for all governments over the years. Compared to the private sector, more public sector employees are in challenging jobs such as social work, policing, teaching and nursing, where they often have to deal with people in emotionally difficult situations.”

[WORDS & EXPRESSIONS]

recession 

n. a period when the economy of a country is doing badly 经济衰退，不景气 

e.g. The recession caused sales to drop off.

well-being 

n. health and happiness 康乐，福利 

e.g. Singing can create a sense of wellbeing.

restructure 

v. to change an organisation or system the way it is organised, usually in order to make it work more effectively 重建，改建，重组 

e.g. He has a wide range of business experience and helped me with restructuring the company.

private sector 

the part of a country’s economy which consists of industries and commercial companies that are not owned or controlled by the government

public sector

the part of a country’s economy which is controlled or supported financially by the government