This series of workshops is designed to increase individuals’ resilience to stress and to reduce adverse effects of stress in the workplace. It is designed and facilitated by Clinical Psychologist Dr Ros Lethbridge who has extensive clinical and facilitation experience in this field.

Stress is experienced when external demands exceed an individual’s personal and social resources. These workshops teach participants to identify the warning signs of stress and build personal and social resources to cope with inevitable pressures of work and home.  The interactive and applied workshops provide practical ways employees can harness stress to work at their peak performance, rather than at the reduced levels of productivity caused by too little or too much stress.

Ros' workshops can be a component of larger workshops involving other members of the Positive Health team, or run as a consecutive series of programs (1 - 2 hours long). A suggested sequence is...

1. Introduction to stress management
2. Workplace stress 1
3. Workplace stress 2
4. Stress at home

Increase your understanding of stress and its impact on your health and wellbeing

Identify your own stress warning signs and build your own stress defenses

This workshop explores the key components of stress, the relationship between pressure and performance and the effect of stress on health.  It also examines different responses to stress and how to build stress resilience. 
 
This workshop is an important foundation for learning how best to respond to stress at work and home.  This highly interactive set of workshops includes a useful manual packed with stress notes, worksheets and questionnaires.

What makes a job stressful? What impact is this having on team morale?

How can you and your team work more productively?

This workshop explores the core sources of workplace stress, guided by participants’ experience and organisational research.  Areas of stress in everyday workplace operations are identified through light-hearted exercises.  Individuals gain insight about their own and teams’ perceptions of workplace demands, and learn how reframing a situation can help to relieve associated stress.

Could communication be improved in your workplace? Is there conflict in your team?

Do you know how to say no? Could you improve how you manage your workload?

This workshop builds on Workplace Stress 1 to explore how to create a work environment with greater morale. Emphasis is placed on areas over which employees have influence or control.  Participants explore the advantages and ‘how to’ of assertive communication in the workplace, and how to improve time management.

What are the sources of home stress, and how do they affect other parts of your life (including work)?

Do you have good support networks, and how might you improve them?

This workshop considers common sources of stress at home, through group and (private) individual exploration of ‘desperate households’.  The importance of good relationships as moderators of work stress is discussed, as well as how stress affects relationships. 

Simple, practical techniques are taught to improve communication at home and to build healthier relationships – at home, work and in the community.