VOLUME 66 ◆ NUMBER 11
Employee Benefit
Plan Review
ELECTRONICALLY REPRINTED FROM May 2012
■ Columns
■ Feature Articles
From
Feature
Behavior Change Through Brain Health:
Managing Stress and Building Resilience
Russell Phillips and Gregory A. Bayer
the
Editor
Steven A. Meyerowitz
Ask
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From the Courts
Norman L. Tolle
Regulatory Update
Richard J. Reibstein,
Lisa B. Petkun, and
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Thought Leaders
Focus On… What’s New
New Tax Guidance on Use of
Annuities in Retirement Plans
Joanna G. Myers, W. Mark Smith, and Carol A. Weiser
ew Life for Stock-Drop Lawsuits:
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Sixth Circuit Rejects Moench
Presumption at Pleading Stage
James P. McElligott Jr., Jeffrey R. Capwell, and Adam H. Garner
Global View of the Benefits
A
of Employee Financial Wellness
Michael Malouf
Victoria P. Spears
Industry Update
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■ Feature
Behavior Change Through Brain Health:
Managing Stress and Building Resilience
Russell Phillips and Gregory A. Bayer
R
ealizing that well-functioning,
healthy employees are an essential
part of a productive workforce,
many companies have put into
place measures to develop and maintain their
employees’ well-being. To date, corporate
wellness programs have focused on the main
factors of “heart-health”—exercise, nutrition,
sleep, stress management, and smoking cessation. These programs often take an educational
approach by evaluating employee health risks
and instructing employees on what needs to
change. Many such programs have suffered
from low engagement rates and lack of ability
to impact sustained changes in behavior.
Brain Health
With insights from neuroscience research
that the brain interprets any change as a threat
and that it is important to learn by “doing,” a
“brain health” complement to a wellness program can help facilitate a readiness for change.
By developing the core capacities that support
making healthy choices (e.g., the ability to
focus on tasks, learn from mistakes, overcome
impulses, tune into positives, manage stress,
and develop resilience) brain health can be
optimized.
Integrative neuroscience research has identified two modes of brain activity, nonconscious
and conscious, which support four core functions that are necessary to experience the
world: emotion, feeling, thinking, and selfregulation. Humans are arguably unique in
their capacity to integrate their nonconscious
and conscious functions in what often appears
to be a seamlessly coordinated set of behaviors.
This integration is supported by the interconnectivity of the brain’s circuitry, which allows
for the integration of different sources of sensory information; intuition, memory, and planning ahead in real time.
Employees with optimized brain connections, or better brain health, can increase their
capacity to evaluate threat, optimize responses
to physical or psychological stressors, and
move toward a position that maximizes
reward. Learning how to focus a­ ttention,
­concentration, and problem solving in response
to a psychological stressor increases the like-
lihood of a positive outcome much like the
instinctual stress response prepares us for
“fight or flight” from physical threat.
Good Stress and Bad Stress
Managing psychological stressors to optimize reward is good stress, the kind that
leads to peak performance, especially at the
workplace. Negative stress undermines brain
health by subjecting the individual to sustained
stress. Exposure to threat without sufficient
control over the stressors leads to debilitating
outcomes.
Stanford University professor Robert
Sapolsky, a stress expert and author of Why
Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, was asked to explain
the difference between positive and negative
aspects of stress. His response indicated how
stress is categorized really depends upon the
situation. “Do you think you are in control or
not? Is it a singular occurrence or an ongoing
situation?”
“When a zebra is sprinting away from a
lion, the stress-response saves its life. But when
we activate the stress-response two hours a day
during traffic jams, it eats away at our health
instead,” he explained. “For humans, psychological stressors have by and large replaced
physical stressors, so chronic, lifestyle-related
stress-responses are ultimately more damaging
than the stressors themselves.”
Stress, however, is not always a bad thing.
A little bit of stress is actually okay, even good
for performance. It is a normal, hard-wired,
emotional, and physiological response to events
perceived to be threatening, whether they actually are or not. It is the body’s way of protecting itself, helping to maintain focus and alertness. The physical response to stress can even
be a source of personal growth, pushing people
to reevaluate their circumstances, reframe an
experience, and adapt thinking to tackle those
obstacles that can be overcome with a certain
amount of focus.
The scientific evidence1 is clear that a positive outlook, “the hallmark of well-being,” may
actually result in success, rather than the other
way around—success producing happiness.
Positive thinking drives problem solving which
in turn, drives outcomes.
■ Feature
Shawn Achor, author of The
Happiness Advantage and the article
“Positive Intelligence” appearing in
the Harvard Business Review (which
devoted an entire section to the economics of well-being and the science
behind happiness research), says that
you can train your brain to be positive. His research suggests that people who receive support from their
coworkers—and more importantly,
are supportive of their coworkers—
think about stress in a positive way,
therefore increasing their happiness
and chances of success.
Stress in the Workplace
The results of the American
Psychological Association’s Stress
in America2 survey indicate that a
staggering 70 percent of those polled
said work was a significant stressor
in their lives. Money, at 75 percent,
was the only issue that rated higher
than work as a significant stressor.
With work ranking as a primary stressor among a majority of
Americans, it is crucial employers
provide alternatives that help staff
deal with stress, especially as it not
only relates to job performance, but
employee wellness overall. Research
has shown a strong and consistent
link between stress and overall
health. Too much stress or prolonged
periods of stress can be bad for
health. Many people who experience
too much stress can end up with
chronic illness such as depression,
obesity (leading to Type 2 diabetes),
and heart disease.
Chronic Illness Is Not
Only Debilitating, but
Also Expensive
It is estimated that workplace
stress costs the U.S. more than $300
billion3 each year in health care,
missed work, and stress reduction
efforts. Workers who report they are
stressed incur health care costs that
are 46 percent higher, or $600 more
per person, than other employees.
Negative stress is at epidemic levels
in the U.S. with all the attendant
consequences to public health.
For workers in high-stress jobs,
the number of visits to health care
professionals was up to 26 percent
higher than for workers in the lowstress job category, according to a
recent study.4 Stressed out workers
are increasingly turning to health
care professionals for physical,
mental, and emotional issues. The
authors of the study suggest that
educating and training workers on
stress-coping mechanisms may be
a better solution, and help reduce
health care costs, increase productivity among workers, and reduce
absenteeism and employee turnover.
Dealing with
Occupational Stress
Through Better Brain
Health
It is clear that in any workplace
environment, a certain amount of
stress is going to be inevitable. What
would be beneficial would be to find
a way to increase brain health and
optimize the positive aspects of stress
(being alert and focused) when dealing with controllable stressors, and
manage the more negative or uncontrollable types of stress in a more
effective way.
Companies are now expanding
their offerings to help employees deal
with negative stress by p
­ roviding
training and tools that teach employees how to “rewire” their negative
reactions to psychological stressors.
Brain training can lead to more
adaptive responses to stress, better
stress resilience, and enhanced wellbeing, despite the impact of day-today stressors.
What studies have discovered
through years of research is that
training the brain to have a positive
outlook helps people better deal with
stress, which can ultimately build
resilience. Resilience is not about
ignoring feelings, but rather having the ability to feel pain, anger, or
confront adversity without becoming
paralyzed by it. It won’t make the
problems go away, but it may give
people a chance to see past them.
Stressed employees can develop skills
to become more resilient by focusing
on the positive.
It is not that you either have it
or you don’t. Resilience involves
thoughts and actions that can be
learned and developed in anyone.
Research shows that resilience is the
result of being able to interact with
the environment using strategies that
promote well-being. And with help
from social policies, community,
friends and family, resilience is more
likely to occur.
Wellness programs would do
well to apply brain-based principles
for engaging employees in lifestyle
change. Nonthreatening brain training exercises targeted to promote
positivity and readiness for change,
for example, can kindle core capacities that support making healthy
choices.
Kathleen Herath, VP of Health
and Productivity at Nationwide
Insurance, discovered the value of
adding brain health components
to Nationwide’s corporate wellness program. In a presentation to
the National Business Group on
Health she noted, “We added all of
these things for our healthy, low-risk
population, but we hadn't added anything for the brain.” Herath added,
“Interestingly enough, the people
who were participating were among
our highest risk associates who had
not yet started costing us claims dollars, which made us ask: Who is the
population that you want to get a
hold of? Turns out, it was exactly
those folks…Standing on the edge of
a cliff waiting to fall off with huge
health issues. Well, now we’ve found
them, and we’ve found what appeals
to them.”
Conclusion
Training the brain to have a
positive outlook can help people deal
with stress more effectively, which
can build resilience and may also
lead to personal success. Although
many Americans recognize that stress
can have an impact on their health
and well-being, they don’t always
take action. With the appropriate
■ Feature
support at home and work, using
fun and engaging brain-training
tools to increase core brain capacities can boost personal stress management abilities, guarding against
overwhelming stress. Simple exercises
to express gratitude and develop
mindfulness are all relatively easy
to practice yet they can make a profound difference in an employee’s
brain health and the health of their
coworkers. b
notes
1.
“The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect:
Does Happiness Lead to Success?,” available
at http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~sonja/papers/
LKD2005.pdf.
2. “Stress in America™: Our Health at Risk,”
available at http://www.apa.org/news/press/
releases/stress/2011/final-2011.pdf.
3.“What is Stress?,” available at http://
americaninstituteofstress.org/what-is-stress/.
4. “Psychosocial working conditions and the
utilization of health care services,” available
at http://www.biomedcentral.com/14712458/11/642.
Russell Phillips, Ph.D., is the director
of research solutions at Brain Resource,
Inc. Gregory A. Bayer, Ph.D., is chief
executive officer of Brain Resource’s
U.S. operations. The authors may
be contacted at russell.phillips@
brainresource.com and gregory@
brainresource.com, respectively.
Posted from Employee Benefit Plan Review, May 2012, Volume 66, Number 11, pages 5 to 7 with permission from Aspen Publishers, Inc.,
Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, New York, NY, 1-800-638-8437, www.aspenpublishers.com
For more information on use of this content, contact Wright’s Media at 877-652-5295.
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