The trouble with stress is that it is personal. What one person finds stressful another person may find exhilarating. But it’s more complicated even than that, because under another set of circumstances or another time, the first person may now feel excited and the second person fearful. Whilst stress itself may appear ambiguous, one thing is certain: stress-related illness is reckoned to cost British companies many millions a year.

Roy Bailey’s Stress Management Toolkit for Trainers and Counsellors provides a starting point to help you understand stress, identify solutions and compare their value for individuals, teams and the whole organization.

Part I of this manual contains a knowledge-base on stress that:

• introduces some of the most well-known models for understanding stress;
• explores the key causes of stress within organizations and how to identify them;
• evaluates a range of possible stress management solutions; and
• advocates an approach to managing stress in the workplace that is based on an understanding of stress, your workplace and the people within it.

The majority of the innovative interventions that make up Part II of this manual are suitable both for group work and one-to-one stress counselling. They offer a variety of ways for individuals and groups to understand stress, to change their perceptions and their behaviours and to support themselves and their colleagues in the workplace.

Any organization wishing to manage stress in the workplace will need a variety of strategies to:

• help prevent and avoid the situations that can generate stress;
• measure the ongoing stress of their people; and
• provide a range of supporting structures to help anyone who is suffering from the symptoms of stress.

The bad news is that those strategies, measures and structures will need to be as individual as the organization and the people within it; the good news is that this Toolkit is an excellent guide and coach to help you create and develop the stress management solutions your organization needs.