Stress Management and Personal Resilience at Work: Performing Under Pressure – Paris, 1–5 Feb 2027

Programme overview

Introduction:

Unmanaged work pressure shows up as errors, absence, short tempers, missed deadlines and people leaving, long before anyone names it as stress. Organisations that leave stress management to chance lose performance exactly when workloads peak or incidents strike. This Core Concept course gives staff and supervisors a practical, non-clinical method to recognise early signs of strain, apply coping and recovery techniques, set workable boundaries and stay effective under pressure. Participants work through pressure simulations and leave with a Personal Resilience and Pressure Management Plan for their own role.

Course Objectives:

• Identify the main sources of pressure in their own role and the early physical, emotional and behavioural signs of stress in themselves and colleagues
• Explain the stress response and the pressure-performance relationship in plain terms and use them to judge when pressure has become harmful
• Apply practical coping, calming and recovery techniques during and after demanding periods of work
• Negotiate workload, priorities and boundaries with managers and colleagues to keep demands within sustainable limits
• Maintain clear thinking and steady performance during peak workloads and incident conditions, and offer first-line support to colleagues under strain
• Produce a Personal Resilience and Pressure Management Plan with habits, triggers, support contacts and review points

Target Audience:

• Professional and administrative staff handling high volumes, tight deadlines or frequent interruptions
• First-line supervisors responsible for keeping a team productive through peak periods
• Customer-facing and service staff dealing with demanding members of the public or clients
• Operations, control room and shift personnel who work through incidents and unplanned events
• Project and coordination staff balancing competing requests from several stakeholders
• Staff returning to demanding roles who want a structured approach to sustaining their energy

Course Outline:

Day 1: Work Pressure, Stress Signals and Personal Baseline

• Pressure Versus Stress: Working Definitions and the Stress Continuum
• Sources of Work Pressure Mapped with the Job Demands-Resources Model
• Early Warning Signs Checklist: Physical, Emotional, Cognitive and Behavioural
• Personal Stress Bucket Exercise: Inflows, Capacity and Release Valves
• Pressure Baseline Self-Assessment and Personal Trigger Log

Day 2: Stress Response and Resilience Models

• The Stress Response in Plain Terms: Fight, Flight and Freeze
• Yerkes-Dodson Pressure-Performance Curve and the Stretch Zone
• Lazarus and Folkman Transactional Model: Appraisal and Coping Choices
• Psychosocial Risk Factors at Work in ISO 45003 and the WHO Guidelines on Mental Health at Work
• Resilience as a Learnable Capability: Protective Factors and Recovery Cycles

Day 3: Coping, Recovery and Boundary Skills

• In-the-Moment Calming Techniques: Paced Breathing and Grounding Routines
• Thought Reframing with a Coaching-Based Thought Record
• Microbreaks, Recovery Periods and the Energy Project Energy Dimensions
• Workload Conversation Script: Renegotiating Demands and Saying No Constructively
• Digital Boundaries: Notification Rules, After-Hours Contact and Switch-Off Rituals

Day 4: Sustaining Performance Under Sustained Pressure and Incidents

• Sleep, Nutrition and Movement Habits for Shift and Peak-Load Periods
• Staying Clear-Headed in Incidents: Tactical Pause and Priority Triage Card
• Support Network Mapping: Peers, Mentors and Professional Help Routes
• Supporting a Colleague Under Strain: Mental Health First Aid Style Listen-Support-Signpost Steps
• Recognising When Self-Help Is Not Enough and When to Refer

Day 5: Pressure Simulations and the Personal Resilience Plan

• Deadline Surge Simulation: Competing Requests with Shrinking Time
• Service Escalation Simulation: Handling a Demanding Client Under Scrutiny
• Operational Incident Simulation: Sustaining Focus Across a Long Shift
• Personal Resilience and Pressure Management Plan Drafting
• Resilience Buddy Review and Thirty-Day Habit Tracker Set-Up

Skills You Will Gain:

• Stress Signal Recognition
• Pressure Appraisal
• Calming and Recovery Techniques
• Cognitive Reframing
• Workload Boundary Negotiation
• Energy and Sleep Management
• Peer Support and Signposting
• Composure Under Pressure

Why Attend This Course:

• Leave with a Personal Resilience and Pressure Management Plan built around your own triggers, habits and support contacts
• Practise staying effective in realistic deadline, service and incident simulations before facing them at work
• Have ready-to-use wording for workload and boundary conversations with managers and colleagues
• Hear how staff from healthcare, energy, finance, public service and logistics sustain performance through peak periods

Conclusion:

Stress management at work is a set of practical skills that can be learned, rehearsed and sustained. This course moves from mapping the sources and early signs of pressure, through plain-language models of the stress response and resilience, to coping, recovery, boundary and support skills, and then to staying effective through sustained workloads and incidents. The final day applies those skills in pressure simulations and produces a Personal Resilience and Pressure Management Plan that participants review with a resilience buddy after returning to work.