Illumine Speed Reading Challenge
Could you treble your reading speed?
Find out with the UK’s first speed reading challenge.
Complete the test to find out how fast you really are and how you compare with others who
have taken the challenge.
How to take the test…
…all you need is a watch!
The test works best if you print this article out… check your watch and record your time:
START TIME=
:
:
FINISH TIME=
:
:
…read the text on the next page and go back
to our Speed Reading Challenge
www.illumine.co.uk/testmyreadingspeed
In the second shaded area on the page select
the Pdf “Managing Stress Makes Business
Sense” and hit the second ‘Test Me’ button to
take you to the comprehension test.
Learn how to speed read with Effective Speed
Reading™
This 1 day workshop is designed specifically for people who
want to dramatically increase their reading speed and absorb
information more effectively. Thousands of people have been
amazed by how simple it was to double or treble their
reading speed.
• Dramatically increase your reading speed.
• Improve your memory.
• Avoid information overload.
• Manage information effectively and remember more.
• Adopt different approaches for different reading
materials and objectives.
• Learn effectively.
Find out more www.illumine.co.uk/read
Illumine® Speed Reading Challenge
Managing Stress Makes Business Sense
Work related stress is on the increase and is costing companies money. It also causes ill-health and
unhappiness to the individuals concerned. DTI figures demonstrate that in the UK there are 500,000
instances each year of people being absent from work as a result of stress.
On average each stress related absence involves 29 working days lost. This adds up to a total of 13
million days and an estimated cost to UK employers of £3.7billion. Work-related stress is now the biggest
cause of working days lost. Stress in itself is not a disease but if it is allowed to build up it does
negatively impact a person’s health and nervous system and can eventually lead to serious illness.
Employers have a duty to ensure that risks arising from work activity are controlled. However, one
person’s stress is another person’s adrenalin kick. For this reason it can be difficult for a company fully
to protect its staff but in November 2004 the Health and Safety Executive published Management
Standards to help identify action areas for employers to address. The emphasis of this document is on
prevention and provides a framework that covers 6 key business areas that if not properly managed can
cause stress: Demands, Control, Support, Relationships, Role and Change.
A typical cause of stress is workload overload. For example forcing a person who prefers to work slowly
and systematically into a work culture and role where they have to produce results fast can cause stress.
In today’s world information overload contributes to people feeling out of control which is also a major
cause of stress. Continuous change and restructuring can lead to anxiety. This is particularly true where
there is not sufficient support provided by the organisation, line management and colleagues. Clear
communication and positive relationships can alleviate these situations and therefore help to prevent
stress in the workplace.
Illumine Training report that it is the shared responsibility of the individual and the organisation to
tackle these problems. There are some practical steps that the individual can take to protect
themselves. These include training to help them understand the causes of stress in their own life and
work out solutions to manage them. People also benefit from understanding the physical symptoms of
stress. Adrenalin, Noradrenalin and Cortisol are all released during the stress response and have an
immediate impact on the body that enable people to develop strength or speed - the ‘Fight or Flight’
response. Cortisol provides key benefits in the short-term but becomes a danger to health in the longterm, affecting cognitive function and potentially clogging up the arteries.
Illumine’s definition of stress is that “Stress occurs when perceived pressure on the individual exceeds
their ability to cope.” Therefore where one person being made redundant may perceive that they can
cope, another person may panic and feel that they do not have the skills or resources to cope, and the
result is stress.
Thoughts and expectations lie behind a person’s ability to cope. Emotions are frequently the first
symptom that a person experiences when they are stressed but driving that emotion is a thought or
expectation such as “this shouldn’t have happened” or “I can’t stand this”. When a person can change
their thought about a situation to be constructive and helpful such as “I would rather this situation had
not happened but I can manage it now it has” the thought itself immediately reduces their stress level.
This can be proven by bio-feedback which measures a person’s skin temperature to assess levels of
stress. The skin temperature of a stressed person is lower as the chemistry of stress routes energy to
muscles for the ‘fight or flight’ response. When someone is thinking ‘fearful’ thoughts their skin
temperature dips but when they transform those thoughts to be rational and constructive the biofeedback demonstrates that their skin temperature quickly returns to normal.
From the point of view of the organisation, they can take responsibility for protecting their staff by
carrying out a risk assessment to measure potential sources of stress for their employees. They can also
support staff by sending them on stress management training courses which provide practical models to
enable an employee to feel more confident about managing difficult situations in future.
www.illumine.co.uk
+44 (0)1753 866633
[email protected]