HeartMath Decodes Stress -- The Last Taboo in Business

Harvard Business Review Tells Why and How to Control Stress, Reduce Hypertension

Boulder Creek, California July 9, 2003 --(Business Wire) -- Emotional stress is one of the last taboos in business. It costs businesses far more than they realize and is only starting to be quantified. Yet the effects of emotional stress can be seen in soaring health care costs, increased absenteeism, slowed productivity, missed goals, poor product quality and customer complaints. For more than a decade, HeartMath, the only scientifically validated system of stress interventions (http://www.heartmath.com), has studied and decoded the underlying mechanics of stress. In this month's Harvard Business Review (HBR) HeartMath is featured for its dramatic ability to boost organisational health and performance.

If there is any question whether stress is really affecting organisational performance, staggering statistics can help paint a picture. The American Institute of Stress (http://www.stress.org) estimates 1 million workers are absent daily due to stress. The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work reports that over half of the 550 million working days lost annually in the U.S. from absenteeism are stress related and that one in five of all last minute no-shows are due to job stress. Unanticipated absenteeism is estimated to cost American companies $602.00 per worker per year, and the price tag for large employers could approach $3.5 million annually.

More than 50,000 executives, managers and workers in more than 100 organisations are using HeartMath programs to control the stress in their lives and in their jobs. In the newly released Best Practices Publication titled, The Change Champion's Fieldguide, HeartMath founder Doc Childre authors a chapter on how to get exceptional business performance results through managing organisational and emotional business chaos. He says, "organisations that seek to build and sustain high performance will diligently address its prime disabler: emotional stress."

Managed Stress Improves Health and Performance

The June 2003 issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine publishes a research study describing how a global IT company utilised the HeartMath "Inner Quality Management" (IQM) program to determine the impact of the program in a group of hypertensive individuals. Psychological and work performance-related parameters were assessed concurrently with BP changes to determine the overall impact of the program on employees' emotional health and workplace effectiveness. The study determined reductions in blood pressure of 10.6 points for systolic and 6.3 points for diastolic.

The subjects in this study not only gained the physiological and risk-reduction benefits of lowered blood pressure, but also demonstrated improvements in their emotional health, stress symptoms, depression, and global psychological distress along with significant increases in peacefulness and positive outlook. The study also showed a clear benefit to the company: the trained employees demonstrated significant increases in the work-related scales of workplace satisfaction and value of contribution.

Getting a Handle on Stress

An engineering executive, Nigel, from a global oil company is featured in the Harvard Business Review article. At first Nigel is skeptical about reducing his stress: he doubts that there is any lasting solution even though his physician said he must reduce his stress to improve his health. But he soon learns that negative stressors set off a physiological and emotional chain reaction that produces what is called "fight or flight" response. In calmer times, his body could recuperate between crises from the cascade of hormonal, neurological and electromagnetic messages. But today's hectic pace and conflicting demands keep him in a constant state of hyper-stress.

The "binge and purge" approach to stress doesn't work. Like Nigel, many of us think taking a few days off -- if we even have the time to take -- will allow us to rebound, but instead we're so exhausted we can become sick or spend the whole time worrying about what we'll come back to and never rejuvenate at all.

Bruce Cryer, President and CEO of HeartMath, and co-author of the Harvard article, says, "Executives can no longer afford to perceive stress reduction as merely a soft skill. It has become a critical business issue if companies – and leaders -- are to remain viable and productive during a time of unprecedented change, uncertainty and transformation." The good news, Cryer adds, is that, "stress can be reduced while performance is enhanced. Targeting this source of soaring health care and human costs is an intelligent strategy."

HeartMath LLC is recognised internationally as one of the most effective and fastest growing organisational transformation systems in the world today. Case studies document their success in North America, Europe, and Asia. To find out more about their organisational programs, contact HeartMath at http://www.heartmath.com.

For Information
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