This Stress Management Training is custom-designed for the need of education professionals and staff of the Saudi Arabia Education Ministry. Beset with various issues and concerns related to their work and profession, having to face the daily grind of educating children and managing classrooms, these education professionals have, for certain periods of time, showing signs and symptoms of being excessively stressed. Absenteeism or frequent tardiness due to stress-related illnesses like headaches, muscle pains or spasms, and fatigue among others and even decreasing creativity at work are only some of manifestations of stress among these education professionals and staff.
This training, therefore, aims mainly at building capacities among these education professionals and staff to manage stress at work, with measurable objectives of: (1) absenteeism due to stress-related illnesses is decreased by at least 75% after the training; (2) tardiness due to stress-related illnesses and reasons is decreased by 75% after the training; (3) increased productivity as indicated by increased students’ achievement by at least 60%. With the objectives of training achieved would be follow-through interventions – both in the personnel development aspect and in the organizational development aspect. Appropriate changes and improvements in the systems will be implemented to optimize results of the training.
Training Need
The main goal is mainly to build capacities among the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education professionals and staff to manage stress at work, with the measurable objectives of: (1) absenteeism due to stress-related illnesses is decreased by at least 75% after the training; (2) tardiness due to stress-related illnesses and reasons is decreased by 75% after the training; and, (3) increased productivity as indicated by increased students’ achievement by at least 60%.
This training will address particularly the personnel issues of absenteeism and tardiness that consequently affect productivity of the personnel, thus reducing the agency’s overall performance. In every level of the agency, there has been a felt need for productivity improvement remedies. Through personnel interviews, observations and other means of data-gathering, it has been established from the results that the personnel is facing stressful work conditions, which impact on their emotional and physical health. This is mainly due to the personnel’s lack of skills and competencies to cope with stressful work environment. By providing them with the basic skills of time management and tasks analysis, they will be able to minimize the impact of stress and even reduce stress in the workplace.
Needs Analysis
Education professionals and staff working for the Ministry of Education of Saudi Arabia are in constant stress in their daily jobs – most of them deal with young learners, their parents, the community, and other stakeholders. This unknowingly causes them stress that results to the illnesses making them be absent and tardy for work. To reduce stress, they need to learn how to manage their time, mainly through task analysis and estimating task time. By acquiring these skills, the participants will be able to effectively manage their tasks in an efficient manner, thereby increasing their productivity and lowering their stress levels.
As can be gleaned in the attached Appendix A, the Ministry of Education professionals and staff need to acquire basic skills in effective and efficient time management. Essential for time management is the ability to reduce tasks into smaller steps through task analysis. To be implemented in the instructor-led classroom training, this training will be conducted among a combined total of 100 employees, together with their supervisors and managers, following the mix ratio of roughly 25:5:1. This means that there will be no fewer than twelve (12) and no more than sixteen (16) participants to be trained as a group, to ensure that classroom sessions are within the manageable size at any given time.
Supporting Analysis
The training will be conducted in several batches of trainees. The first will be given to 100 chosen employees of the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education who are in the middle management level. This first batch of participants is mostly in the middle-level administrative positions with masteral and a few with doctorate degrees in education-related fields.
Since the majority of them is exposed to various local, national and even international trainings of high caliber, it is most effective to have highly reputable and well-known trainers, who will also be able to maximize and optimize the participants’ involvement and participation. This will also be consistent with the sponsoring agency’s expectations.
In terms of benefits to the agency, this training will save on time because by training employees towards improved efficiency and effectiveness, labor time is significantly saved. Other personnel issues and problems that would affect efficiency are also addressed through this training.
Scope of Work
The whole training program will be designed by the Training and Development Unit of the Education Ministry’s Human Resources Development Department. The said program, as developed through careful and extensive data gathering among the agency’s employees across departments and functions, will be passed to the top management of the agency for appropriate policy and financial support to get the training program going.
To implement the Training, the Human Resource Department of the Ministry of Education of Saudi Arabia will prepare the roster of participants, purchase the necessary materials, transact for the training venue, food and other logistical requirements, including financial requirements.
The trainers will prepare training modules, training handouts and evaluation materials, and shall provide a comprehensive training report including recommendations to follow through trainings and interventions.