Personal Stress Solutions: Case Studies: Company D

Personal Stress Solutions: Case Studies: Company D

Personal products company struggles to maintain global market share, restructures product delivery protocol to increase health and productivity, and decrease costs

The Situation: The Situation: The most recent product development cycle of this global manufacturing company provides a prime example of how stress can cost even the most successful organizations.

In the rush to stay competitive, what had been a five-year development cycle was cut to three years. Because of the push to get the new product on the market, design and engineering specs were less firm than they should have been, and decision-makers continued to tinker with basic design after manufacturing machinery was under construction. The machinery had to be redesigned and rebuilt several times. Machinists were assigned back-breaking amounts of overtime to stay on schedule. The ripple effects of the overtime made the situation stressful for families as well as employees. With no time to rest, machinists made mistakes that had to be corrected, which called for more overtime. The entire development team felt tremendous stress and, sadly, three suicides occurred among them during a 13-month time period.

The Organization Stress Profile: The 850-member development team took the Stress Navigator Workshop either online or in the paper and pencil format in a corporate effort to address wellness issues and retain the entire corporation’s competitive market position. In the workshops, employees cited overwork as their number one stress concern.

The Resolution: The division head in charge of the development team implemented mandatory stress management programs and put a cap on overtime. In the end, the incidence of errors dropped significantly and employees were able to accomplish more work of higher quality in fewer hours.

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