More attention to stress: good for employees and organizations

Amsterdam UMC and a large number of partners are launching an innovative approach to stress and building resilience within organizations. The goal is to promote well-being and resilience of both the employee and the organization. This pioneering 10.8 million initiative is funded by NWO within the National Science Agenda program. Project leader Christiaan Vinkers of Amsterdam UMC said, "At a time when stress levels are reaching unprecedented heights both on an individual and collective level, I am delighted to announce the launch of DESTRESS. This is much needed because 30% of employees who drop out due to long-term psychological absenteeism are caused by stress, and absenteeism costs due to stress cost employers more than 3 billion euros per year."

Stress poses a major threat to the health of individual employees and the overall health of organizations. Employee and organizational resilience are inextricably linked. An organization can only be resilient if its employees are too. The central question is: Can we effectively identify and address mounting stress and risks to individual and organizational resilience?

Lack of vision

The current approach to stress and resilience within companies often does not go well. This is because employee stress is seen too late but also because it is often not clear who within organizations should deal with it. Moreover, the question is where the stress comes from: private, work or both? Especially at an early stage, employer and individual have common interests in maintaining stress and resilience. DESTRESS aims to address these issues with a consistent approach that connects the perspective of individual and organization and ensures that responses to stress signals are sustainable and effective. Says Vinkers, "We need to move away from the current fragmentation, and toward an ecosystem with sufficient scientific basis to get ahead of the adverse effects of excessive stress."

What will DESTRESS do?

DESTRESS focuses on reducing stress and increasing resilience in both individual employees and organizations. The goal is to recognize stress early through stress signals from individuals and the environment that are responsibly brought together by artificial intelligence. As a result, we want employees and employers to work together to address stress. The project focuses on recognizing stress, turning the signals into action, and how this can be used flexibly in the workplace so that employee and employer both benefit.

Preventing dropouts

DESTRESS aims to proactively detect stress, creating a good and collaborative dialogue between employers and employees. Ultimately, this should ensure that fewer people drop out due to stress, and organizations are able to ensure at an early stage that their employees are doing well, and therefore their business. Says Vinkers, "With the launch of DESTRESS, we are taking an important step forward in addressing stress and promoting organizational and individual resilience. Things go wrong too often now, and stress is not seen or seen too late. High employee attrition rates and organizational problems result. We need to do something about that."

DESTRESS is a multidisciplinary consortium of experts and focused on early detection and early intervention to stress in individuals as well as organizations. The consortium represents a wide range of partners and universities, including Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit (VU), Radboud University and Radboud UMC, TNO, University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU), Hanze University Groningen and University of Groningen (RUG). In addition, partners from the field are providing optimal implementation, including HumanTotalCare (HTC), Nationale Nederlanden (NN), Movir, paraDIGMA groep (PDG), Healthy Chronos and UWV.