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A 2024 Gallup Report found that 49% of employees in Canada and the U.S. are stressed out. It also found that 41% of employees experienced high levels of stress the previous day, which is higher than the pre-pandemic average.
For many people, work sits close to the top of their list of stressors. As employees navigate work meetings, daily tasks, work updates, and report submissions, their stress could be quietly simmering underneath the calm facade. But organisational leaders may not notice it as they often get caught up in running the show, worrying about the company’s market share and profit margins, and neglecting their people – one of their greatest assets.
As a leader, you can play a crucial role in your employees’ stress management by reducing work-related stressors as much as possible and providing a healthy work environment.
Here are five actionable strategies leaders can use to help stressed-out employees:
1. Run a Stress Audit
The first step is to identify the stressors (sources of stress) in your company. Using one-on-one interviews or anonymous surveys, you can run a stress audit within your company to collect data that will help you spot the key stressors. You could even hold open forums with your team members to understand the stressors.
Common stressors at work may include interpersonal relationships, job demands like tight or unreasonable deadlines, lack of resources, false assumptions, lack of clarity regarding work, and work-life imbalance. Since there are almost endless possibilities of stressors, identifying what causes them and understanding stress patterns can help you develop targeted strategies to alleviate them.
To address stress at the workplace effectively, identifying the root cause is essential, which is where a stress audit can help. For instance, employees who feel burdened by excessive work pressure can be made to share the workload with one or two colleagues or delegate a part of it to them.
2. Empower Employees with Stress Management Techniques and Tools
Are your employees not engaged in their work? Show signs of dissatisfaction? Have lost focus? Or have a sharp decline in productivity? All these are signs of stress. If you notice them in employees, it’s time to intervene.
You can adopt a three-pronged approach with primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions. Focusing on stress prevention via conflict management and wellness programs makes up primary interventions while helping employees develop coping skills and redesigning roles (if possible) to reduce stress-inducing factors form part of secondary interventions. Tertiary interventions emphasize employee assistance programs and counselling to support stressed-out employees.
Conducting training on workplace and personal stress-management methods and time management (focusing on task prioritisation and delegation) is an effective way of empowering your employees. Hosting sessions by experts where employees are taught to evaluate and address their personal stress levels frequently can help them feel a greater sense of control, thus reducing stress.
Providing resources for managing stress and its side effects is equally crucial. You could do this by offering employees
- subscription to relevant apps (for body scan, sleep tracking, relaxed breathing, etc.)
- mindfulness or meditation sessions
- monthly classes with yoga experts
- hosting talks with medical professionals specialising in handling workplace stress
- links to useful blogs, videos, articles, and other multimedia resources
3. Create a Positive Work Environment and Make Work Meaningful
You can reduce stress in employees by creating a positive work environment. Providing opportunities for continuous learning and career development, fostering a culture of collaboration and support, hosting team-building activities, celebrating small wins, and recognising efforts are ways to build a positive work environment.
Encouraging two-way open communication is equally crucial to creating a welcoming workspace. It can help employees share their needs and experiences while leaders can be transparent about company challenges, goals, and changes. This will build trust between employees and management to make the former feel more valued and secure, thus triggering increased commitment and loyalty to the company.
When employees can voice their ideas, opinions, and concerns freely without the fear of retribution, it fosters psychological safety, facilitates collaboration, and improves engagement with work. Leaders too can share their views on and experiences of work-related stress, talk about the stressors their team and/or employees are facing, and discuss if it’s good or bad.
A little bit of stress can often be healthy as it helps people compete and thrive but when stress tends to become too much to handle, it’s time to take note and intervene. When leaders share their own journeys or stress-related battles, it can make employees more willing to share their struggles, which creates a culture of supporting each other for sustained long-term organisational success.
Leaders should also focus on making work meaningful by aligning roles with an employee’s strengths and passion. Encouraging team members to take ownership of work and providing them with a sense of autonomy and purpose can bring down stress levels significantly.
Final Words
Stress is an unavoidable element in the modern workplace. However, it doesn’t have to dictate your company culture. As a leader, you can take proactive steps to help stressed-out employees by running a stress audit, empowering employees with stress management techniques and tools, and creating a positive work environment in addition to making work meaningful.
It’s the responsibility of organisational leaders to make employees feel engaged, valued, and less stressed. Employees who learn to manage stress effectively can ensure their overall well-being and help boost the company’s performance.
For your company, office spaces and modern technologies are important but not at the cost of your people. As a leader, you need to prioritise the mental well-being of your people and take effective steps to address the stress epidemic. When you do this, both your employees and the company bottom line will have you to thank for.
If you need to hire leaders who can play a key role in helping stressed-out employees while building a positive company culture and improving productivity, connect with us at InHunt World today!
This article was written by Sonali