How to increase happiness and decrease stress

In the midst of the financial doom and gloom that is dominating our news channels at the moment, it appears that few are taking time to consider personal health and well-being. This is a potentially dangerous ommision, and now more than ever we should do what is possible to focus on tackling our own personal causes of stress if we are to face the challenges.

Following on from a series of talks on health and well-being, docleaf CEO David Perl shares his advice on how to adopt an all-round healthy lifestyle, along with some simple tips to get started.

Click here to read David's article, and contact David here if you would like him to speak at your event.

Staff absence - what does it mean? what does it cost?

Absences from work cost UK industry around £13bn a year. And yet increasing evidence suggests that employers could take a number of steps to reduce this, and promote their employees' health and happiness in the process.

A report from Flexibility describes how absence is often mis- reported, and how the employees and employers view absence differently. Some of the examples listed might be a little close to home for some!

Read on here.

Work can seriously damage your mental health

We have featured an article on absenteeism above. It is phenomenom that we are all familiar with. But how many of us consider presenteeism - where an individual is at work, but not productive?

In a report from Foresight, Professor Cary Cooper suggests that presenteeism costs the UK around £900m a year, and long hours and stressful work conditions are seriously harming both employee and employer.

Read the BBC article here.

Best leaders in a crisis - 10 ways to spot them

We are seeing many of our leaders, both in politics and business, dealing with a world with which they have never faced. When faced with a crisis, what are the characteristics that define a great leader? This article from Advance explores the characteristics that make a great leader, and suggest how each of us can apply these personally.

Read the article here:

docleaf Briefs

A passenger on a French train had to be rescued by firemen after having his arm sucked down the on-board toilet.

The 26-year-old victim was trapped when he tried to fish out his mobile phone, which had fallen into the toilet bowl, and fell foul of the suction system. The high-speed TGV train had to stop for two hours while firemen cut through the train's pipework. The man was carried away by emergency services, with the toilet still attached to his arm.

"He came out on a stretcher, with his hand still jammed in the toilet bowl, which they had to saw clean off," said Benoit Gigou, a witness to the man's plight.

And finally... A Polish driver who was too sure of his GPS road navigation device ended up neck-deep in a lake after ignoring road signs warning of a dead-end ahead. (AFP)

"The man took a road that was closed a year ago when the area was flooded to make an artificial lake serving as a water reservoir -- he ignored three road signs warning of a dead-end," Piotr Smolen, police spokesman in Glubczyce, southern Poland, said.

"It was still night time and he didn't notice the road led into the lake. His GPS told him to drive straight ahead and he did," Smolen said, adding the driver had not been under the influence of alcohol.

The road ran straight downhill into the lake. The Mercedes mini-van was nearly entirely submerged and was unable to back out on its own after being inundated with water.

The driver and two passengers escaped unharmed from the submerged vehicle and waited on its roof for police and fire rescue crews.