Hansa Pankhania is the Director of AUM Consultancy, specialising in Corporate and Personal Stress Management and Author of ‘From Stress to Success’.
She is a Fellow of the International Stress Management Association and oversees a team of associates as part of AUM Consultancy.
Each day brings something different and exciting to work on. My work varies from seeing clients on a one to one basis, group training and presentations to developing programmes and projects with associates.
6.00- Wake up and shower. I aim to do 20 minutes yoga and 20 minutes meditation every morning if I am working locally at our base. Sometimes I have to leave early if travelling for offsite work around the UK.
Breakfast is usually muesli and tea.
Today, I have a client at nine. This is a senior manager who has been off sick with stress. We are working on his recovery, as well how he can apply his Legal Duty of Care to his staff and how his own manager should be supporting him with return to work. Under the Health and Safety Law 1974, employers have a legal duty of care towards their employees and should carry out a stress risk assessment to apply this duty where an employee is sick due to work related stress.
After this I catch up with my Business Development Manager on a few things.
One of my associates is working on delivering Resilience training to a large company in Wales. We discuss this project to ensure we are giving our best to our client. Resilience Training is one of our signature programmes and very popular with our clients. It ensures employees are able to cope with the current economic challenges and sustain maximum productivity and profits.
1.00pm- Lunch is a big bowl of steamed vegetables (I am a vegetarian) with a small portion of khitchadi (Indian Gujarati dish with rice and lentils). This ensures I have my 5 a day and protein intake. I eat to suit my body type according to the Eastern Ayurveda Health tradition.
This afternoon I have a meeting in Leicester with a prospective client who wants to run a programme of Stress and metal health awareness training for their staff. I am travelling with another of my associates who will be delivering the training.
6.00pm- I get home, go for a 20-minute walk and my usual 20 minute meditation before my evening routine. If it is raining I just do a short aerobic session indoors. I believe in simple, natural ways of de-stressing that can easily be integrated into a busy routine at no cost.
I chat to my husband about our day as we prepare dinner. He makes an Aubergine dish and salad as I make fresh chapattis. We eat and clear up together.
I have a few emails to respond to and a proposal to finalise now. I love what I do, so it does not feel like work. There is some spare time so I watch the news on TV for half an hour.
10.00pm-I always allow an hour for wind down before bed, so a warm herbal drink while listening to music and 20 minute meditation before bed.
Tomorrow I have no formal appointments. I am half way through writing my next book so have kept this time to continue work on this.
My passion is to pass on what helps me and my team to be stress free and healthy and I practice everything I preach. There is a structure and statutory requirements for organisational stress management, but a manager needs to model this first before she/he is able to support his/her employees.
I believe that if you look after your people then the business will take care of itself. So managers, the health and wealth of your company really is in your hands.
Hansa Pankhania is the Director of AUM Consultancy, specialising in Corporate and Personal Stress Management and Author of ‘From Stress to Success’.
She is a Fellow of the International Stress Management Association and oversees a team of associates as part of AUM Consultancy.