The Office Jungle. Judi James

of the caller.

       Meetings Without Tears

      If informative meetings for staff are called do your best to attend them. If you can’t go because you have other commitments, ask someone who is going to take notes for you. Always show an interest – it encourages managers out of their little hidey-holes.

      Never view these get-togethers as an opportunity for a grumble, either. Bosses are like tortoises – the first whiff of aggro and they’ll retreat back into their shells. Many managers will actually avoid calling staff meetings because they tend to degenerate into unruly mud-slinging sessions.

      To give the right impression, it’s important that positive noises are made by staff at these meetings. Instead of arriving with a long list of grievances and complaints under your arm, try taking some positive ideas and suggestions along, too.

      If you are a manager never underestimate the power of effective communications within your own company. Staff will do a job just because they are told to, but they will do that job much better if they understand why they are doing it and what the overall objectives are.

       Making Yourself Visible

      Raising your profile within your company is essential for promotion. It’s easy for you to become faceless. Often when you deal with colleagues they’re just a voice on a phone. It’s human nature to distrust what you can’t see, so if they take a long time answering your query or don’t give priority to your requests you may begin to view them as deliberately obstructive.

      It is vital, then, that you make time to meet one another – especially if you work in a large firm. Encouraging all-staff seminars where a representative from each department explains their group’s job, objectives and problems, leads to more regular co-operation as well as a sense of unity. Otherwise, you wait till the office Christmas party and, upon seeing that ‘invisible’ colleague in a state of merry drunkenness, have your worst fears confirmed that they’re a wastrel and a layabout.

       Socialize

      Many firms use social events as useful team-building occasions. Whereas you would probably balk at the idea of attending a boringly presented company seminar outside office hours, you might be keener to join in organized sporting events or outings.

      Team sports against rival companies aren’t only a method of letting off steam, they are also a valuable way to get various departments galvanized into co-operative gangs. Seeing colleagues outside the office environment forces you to view them in a fresher, less stereotypical light, too.

       ACTION PLAN:

      1 Make time to find out more about the company you work for. Information-gather, attend meetings and read company literature.

      2 Plan ways to improve communications between colleagues and departments.

      3 Raise your profile within your company.

       8 Handling Stress

      In the fifties you’d have suffered with your nerves and got told to pull yourself together. In the sixties you’d have seen your doctor and been given Valium. In the seventies you were told you were uptight and the cure was to become more laid-back. In the eighties we were diagnosed as suffering from stress and executive burn-out and marinated in aromatherapy oils while we cogitated in our flotation tanks.

      Stress is still very much the buzzword of the nineties workplace. Its symptoms are so comfortingly diverse it lends itself to effortless self-diagnosis. You lose your temper? Stress. Forget to do something important? Stress. Have a headache? Stress. Hair-loss, over-eating, spots, gross stupidity, sweating, screaming, weeping or impotence can all nestle beneath the banner of stress-induced symptoms.

       Strung Up and Stressed Out

      If you think it’s your job causing the stress remember that unemployment is generally considered to be far more stressful. So is spending all that horrible money if you win the lottery. In fact, our brains seem capable of producing adequate stress secretions in virtually any situation.

      Holidays are great stress inducers – all that packing and planning combined with those delayed flights and hotels built around sewage farms. Alternatively, if you decide to stay at home and do nothing you can get hit by delayed stress. Haven’t you heard of people who only get ill at weekends or during the week’s holiday they took? Maybe they’d been managing their stress too well on a daily basis and it decided to go on a little holiday too.

       Triggers

      There is no one trigger for stress, just as there is no one cure.

      For really ideal stress-inducing conditions, though, look no further than the average office. The office is the perfect place to succumb to stress – and to moan about it, too. There’s the ‘too-much-work’ stress, the ‘boss-or-colleague-from-hell’ stress, the ‘juggling-home-and-business-life’ stress, and of course the general stress malaise of being cooped up in an unhealthy atmosphere with little in the way of exercise for long periods of time.

       Culture Vulture

      Are offices healthy places to work? Not particularly – but then, where is? Get a job in a gym and you’ll probably suffer sprains and strains from all the equipment, plus respiratory problems after years of breathing the exhaust fumes from too many pairs of sweaty trainers.

      Stress can also make you more susceptible to any illnesses that are doing the rounds. Feeling generally unwell can induce stress.

      Don’t despair, though – the good news is there’s a lot you can do to fight back. You can overcome this obstacle just like all the other problems of office life. All it needs is a little fine tuning and the same businesslike planning you apply to the rest of your job. For a start, look at the practical things that cause stress.

       Eight Top Tips for a Healthier Office

      Caroline Blaazer is a senior consultant at The Industrial Society, and an expert in health and safety at work. Here are her top tips for keeping your own work area as healthy as possible:

      1 Adjust the screen of your VDU. The angle and direction of your screen are important to good posture. Remember you should be looking slightly down on it.

      Also adjust the colour, definition and contrast. A screen that is too bright can be harsh on the eyes. Then use screen wipes to clean dust off your screen. Static on screens causes dust build-up.

      2 Adjust your chair. The right height of chair is also vital to your posture. Remember to move about after forty-five minutes or so, and avoid letting your feet dangle as it is bad for the circulation of the legs.

      3 Avoid Repetitive Strain Injury. Take the strain from your upper arms when you type and don’t rest your wrists on the desk. Caroline says the muscles in the upper arms are far better developed for coping with the strain of typing. Laptops are difficult, though, because it’s hard not to hunch over them.

      Take a break every forty-five minutes and have a coffee or a walk around. Caroline advises clenching your fists, rotating your shoulders and looking into the distance as a vital muscle-reliever. ‘The musculo-skeletal system is not designed to take static loading,’ according to Caroline, ‘and you need to avoid the chance of it seizing up.’

      A good tip would be to have a timer on your desk, set to bleep at each forty-five minute interval, in case you become too entrenched in your work.

      Managers should be grateful when staff take small breaks like this as working quickly without pause tends to make work less accurate.