Robert Phillips | ACT Author Insights - category / Series 1

Stress And Work

 31 Jul 2017    published by: Robert Phillips

People often comment on how stressful life has become, trying to balance work with home, family, social activities, sport and other recreation and possibly study.

It is therefore not surprising that mental stress has emerged as a major cause of Workers Compensation claims in recent years, having nearly doubled from 4500 to 8500 claims per year from 1996/7 to 2003/4, although it has since levelled out around 7000 per year

Two-fifths of the cases relate to overwork, more than one-fifth to harassment, and one-sixth due to exposure to violence. About 60% of claimants are women, at a claims rate more than twice as high per hours worked than for men. In 2004-05, in all working age groups, women had a greater susceptibility to, or greater willingness to claim for stress than men.

In the 15 to 24 age group, the female rate was one stress compensation claim for every three million hours worked, while for males it was one in eight million. For 25 to 44 year olds, rates had tripled to one claim in a million hours for women and one in two and a half million hours for men.

For 45 to 64 year olds, the rates increased slightly. For women it increased to one claim in 900,000 hours and for men to one in two million. In the 65+ age groups, the rates dropped threefold, back to around one in three million for women and one in six million for men.

Paradoxically, as a general rule, the industry sectors with the lowest fatality and physical injury rates tended to have the highest stress rates, particularly in the services sector.

Women most likely to make stress-related claims are:

• nurse managers at one claim per 100,000 working hours;
• policewomen (one in 110,000); and
• welfare associate professionals and social workers (one in 160,000).

These rates are ten to 30 times the overall stress claim rates for women, and work out at up to two per cent per year. Working for 25 years at 2000 hours annually in these occupations means up to a 50:50 chance of putting in a stress-related Workers Compensation claim.

The men most susceptible to stress are:

• train drivers & guards (one claim per 115,000 hours);
• prison officers (one in 190,000); and
• policemen and welfare associate professionals (one in 220,000).

Men who work in these occupations for 25 years at 2000 hours annually have about a 25–50% chance of putting in a stress-related claim, at about one or two per cent per year.

Major symptoms of stress-related conditions are anxiety and depression. Mental stress claims typically involve a person being off work for about ten weeks, and a cost of around $13,000. These are more than double the figures for most compensation claims, many of which (about 40%) relate to muscular stresses and strains. The mind, it seems, takes at least twice as long to heal as the body.

(Source: R. Phillips, A Risky Life, (Halstead Press) Sections 8.4 & 8.7)

Feline Tactics

 29 Jul 2017    published by: Robert Phillips

Cats may be smarter than people. (Well, mine has outsmarted me many times). They have many tactics to ensure they get what they want. Feline theology tells them that the great Mama Puss placed humans on Earth to be their servants. The world is their oyster: the mice and birds are intended as tasty snacks.

Two major preoccupations of cats are food and comfort.

To get food, my cat uses several tactics, on a graduated basis:

• The plaintive mew. ‘Please feed me. I’m a poor starving pussy cat that hasn’t been fed for at least half-an-hour’.
• The stare. Puss doesn’t say anything. He just stares at me as if to say, ‘you know what I want.’
• The persistent meow. ‘Feed me! Feed me’. I call puss my randomly-programmed mobile alarm clock: at any time of the day or night, he’s likely to wake me from my slumbers to stagger off to the kitchen and throw something in his bowl.
• Jumping up on one’s chest and demanding ‘FEED ME!’
• Being naughty. Getting my attention by jumping up on the table and attacking the Kleenex box or my papers.

Note that cats have built-in price detectors. They can tell when you’ve bought a less expensive brand of cat food, and will turn up their noses accordingly.

As far as comfort goes, humans are under the illusion that they own the furniture that they buy, like sofas and beds. In fact, they are merely keeping them warm until the pet arrives. We go out to work so they can live in comfort.

A favourite feline tactic is to wait until their human has been sitting on the sofa for a while, warming it up nicely. The cat then meows for food. The human gets up and goes to the kitchen, but the cat doesn’t follow them. When the human gets back, the cat has curled up in their nice warm place on the sofa.

As for bed, the favourite feline tactic is to curl up on one corner of the bed, as if to say, ‘I’m only going to take up a little bit of the bed, so you won’t even notice I’m here.’ But as the night goes on and they warm up, they spread out, always across the bed and never along it. They eventually block off at least half of it, usually in the middle, so one is forced to sleep in a narrow strip on the edge.

Another favourite feline tactic of course, is to be cute and cuddly. They can’t help being cute, and their cuddliness is more out of self-interest. They like curling up on a nice, warm human. They also like being patted and scratched behind the ears. Human enjoy patting and stroking them, because of the tactile sensations. So it’s a win:win situation.

There’s nothing quite like the sound of a contented cat purring. It’s probably a smug purr. The great Mama Puss designed humans to appreciate contented cats.