How Do You Cope with Stress?

There was a go-team feeling of pleasant surprise when figures released earlier this summer by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed productivity in the non-farm sector up 5.7 percent in the second quarter of 2003. It felt like good news, like a two-run homer in a game with few hits.

But when the cheers subsided, that happy analogy faded. Productivity went up but with continued layoffs. The U.S. Department of Labor also reported that 372,426 workers were “separated from their jobs” in that same second quarter, making for over 705,000 layoffs in the first half of the year. People are working harder, or at least more hours in a day. Theyre desperate not to lose their jobs, or working extra to make up for a family member who already did. Theyre stressed out.

You may be one of those people. You surely manage some of them. In fact they may be moving onto your radar screen as a security concern themselves, since no place is immune from workplace violence or sabotage if certain conditions meet in a volatile mix.

And that only adds to the things you already worry aboutendless crops of worms and viruses, power outages and other threats to business continuity, identity theft within your supply chain, regulatory changes regarding privacy and white collar crime, asset management, background checks, the underlying angst of an unstable world and heavens knows what else.

The CSO title could stand for chief stress officer, with the lives of systems, businesses and even people in your hands. What causes you the greatest stress on the job? And how do you deal with it? Is there a larger, organizational (or even legislative) solution to fight the causes and not just the symptoms of stress? Tell us what you think.