Stress is a fact of life. It is impossible to go through life and completely avoid it. Every company, no matter its size must deal with stress in their workplace.
The impact of stress on the working environment can impact the organisation in many different ways so learning to deal with it can be a valuable asset to any business.
Here are 5 ways you can reduce stress in your work environment:
Communicate well
Open communication is critical in helping keep stress to a minimum. It is important that employees are not left wondering about the future of the organisation and their job security. Make it a habit to share opening and honestly, whether it is good, bad or ugly.
Keeping employees up to date helps to reduces stress and anxiety. In addition, when you communicate openly it soon becomes a two way street. The more that you communicate with your employees, the more likely they are to share their thoughts, concerns and ideas which in turn helps to build a healthier working environment.
Get social
They say a workplace that plays together stays together!
Employees spend a lot of time with their colleagues so helping them get along is important when trying to reduce any stress. The more people enjoy coming to work, the better and healthier the culture will be.
Of course, you cannot force employees to socialise and spend time together but it is important to create environments that make it easy should they want to. Try organising team lunches, nights out or team away days and the big priority – make it fun!
Social activity is great for reducing stress whilst also building good team relationships.
Evaluate regularly
Employees like to know where they stand and how they are doing. As business owners or managers it is easy to get weighed down by to do lists and increasing workloads which means staff evaluations can sometimes take less of a priority.
Having frequent one on one sessions with staff helps employees get the feedback that they need but it also shows that you care about their progress. This is even more important if staff members are struggling with work pressure.
Often employees need to feel like they are being listened to and these sessions play a crucial part in this.
Set the tone
Employees often feed off the attitudes of the management. If you are tired, stressed and unhappy then this feeds down to your employees.
It is important that you try not to let your own personal stress show through; don’t let negativity or anger rub off on the people around you.
Ensure you do what you are encouraging others to do. Make sure you are filling your tank whether that is eating healthy, working out or doing activities that you enjoy. Make sure you take breaks and have a holiday too.
You set the tone for your team so looking after you is important to your workplace.
Control the pace
A fast-paced environment will more than likely cause stress for employees. In this sort of atmosphere, it can be a challenge to control that pace especially in busy periods. If your workplace is like this, then it is important to limit these periods and let staff know it is just a season.
If you are aware that the next month is going to be extra busy then make sure your team know this and give them time to catch their breath both before and after that period. It is important you learn to control the pace.
Here at Sunflower Training and Consultancy we run Stress Reduction & Building Resilience courses for both managers and teams. In these sessions, we teach what stress is, where it comes from and what your triggers are. We also help you to build and improve resilience. You can find out more about these courses here.