Understanding Stress and a Prescription for Workplace Health: New Zealand Companies Have Work to Do to Become `Healthy' Employers. Too Many Managers Suffer the Ill-Effects of Workplace Stress and Other Unhealthy Work/lifestyle Habits. What Can Be Done to Curb the Epidemic of Work-Induced Ill-Health? (Executive Health)

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Goodhealth, someone to love and enjoying what you do are the three prerequisites for career success and fulfilment a Harvard Business School professor told last year's Deloitte/Management magazine Top 200 Executive of the Year John Goulter after he completed an advanced executive programme at the illustrious academic institution.

The feel-good advice is a far cry from the `work long, hard and tough' axioms for success and happiness that many subscribed to for much of the previous century. Yet the professor's wisdom was somewhat prophetic if you consider the emphasis now on work/life balance, life coaching, family-friendly workplace policies and other initiatives designed to maximise personal fulfilment.

For some New Zealand executives and their employees for whom years of stress has taken its toll on their health, work/life balance is a yet-to-be-realised ideal. Any work satisfaction they once experienced has waned through exhaustion, burnout and a general sense of having no control over their lives.

Internationally, this is a common scenario. The landscape of occupational health in the United States for instance--the economy from which New Zealand takes many leads--has deteriorated with worker stress reaching a critical point. American workers are now working longer and harder than at any other time in the past two decades just to maintain their standard of living. The …