#18
Moscow Times
January 19, 2005
Business Owners Increasingly Stressed Out
By Lyuba Pronina
Staff Writer

Trying to make money is becoming more of a pain for the owners of small and medium-sized businesses -- but not just in Russia.

A "stress index" released Tuesday showed that aggravation levels for company managers around the world have risen by a third in just the past year.

More than half of the 265 Russian managers polled said they were significantly more frustrated in their business pursuits than a year ago, ranking Russia No. 8 in the world in terms of grief.

Leading Grant Thornton International's 24-nation stress test was Taiwan, where 69 percent of respondents said they were under significantly more strain last year than the year before.

Nearby Hong Kong, Turkey, and Mexico tied for second place with 54 percent. India and the Philippines were next at 53, followed by Russia and Japan at 51. As usual, the attitudes in northern countries were much cooler, with Sweden, the Netherlands and Canada ranking last.

The index, compiled for the third year, was based on a survey of 6,300 companies.

"Business by itself is already a considerable stress factor for people," said Sergei Aslibekyan, managing partner of Grant Thornton in Russia.

In the Russian portion of the survey, which included firms in 12 major cities, 61 percent of respondents said that by itself, running a business "has considerable influence" on their physical and mental health -- an opinion shared by 44 percent in the world, Aslibekyan said.

The report focused on companies with 50 to 250 employees and revenues between 240 million rubles and 7.3 billion rubles.

The most pressing for business all over the world was state regulation and bureaucracy -- a problem even more acute in Russia. While 40 percent of European companies said government regulations made them nervous, 60 percent of Russian companies said so.

The second most pressing issue in Russia was the overall economic climate, followed by increasing competition and longer working hours. Last for Russians was coping with a large volume of e-mails. Europeans put that particular problem at No. 8.

Nearly half of Russian respondents said terrorism and national security have a "considerable" impact on their business lives, which is more than three times the global average and five times the European average.

The poll was conducted after the September hostage crisis in Beslan, which capped a series of terrorist attacks in Russia.

Russians also seem to deal with their stress differently than others. For example, 30 percent of Mexicans seek medical help for stress, while just 16 percent of Russians do. The reason? Psychological therapy is still new to Russians and many prefer to turn to "the Church, vodka or casinos" for relief, said Vladislav Korochkin, vice president of Opora, an umbrella group for small businesses.

If so, the government is giving business owners plenty of reasons to pray, drink and gamble, Korochkin said. "If the level of state regulation we have here was transferred to Western countries, their stress level would surge 10 times."

"The number of administrative barriers is such that it is impossible to do business without violating some of them, which makes us all guilty of something," Korochkin said.