For most of your staff, employment is a necessity and not an option. Not only is it a source of income, but it also helps them build their social networks, fulfill their individual goals and lets them be productive members of society.  It also gives them one more thing – Stress.

Stress at Work
Even “dream jobs” have tight deadlines, performance expectations, and stressors associated with them. For some, workplace stress can quickly overwhelm your employee’s life. They may frequently worry about meeting deadlines, being unfairly treated by a supervisor or co-workers, or knowingly accept more than they can handle in hopes of earning a promotion. By putting their work before life they might also put their personal relationships in jeopardy, compounding the work-related pressures.

Layoffs, restructuring or management changes can heighten anxiety about one’s job security. In fact, a Norwegian study showed that the mere rumor of a factory’s closure caused rapid increases in workers’ pulse and blood pressure. Research in the U.S. has found that workplace injuries and accidents tend to increase in organizations that are being downsized.

The Body Reacts
Along with its emotional toll, prolonged job-related stress can drastically affect an employee’s physical health. Constant preoccupation with job responsibilities often leads to erratic eating habits and not enough exercise, resulting in weight problems, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol levels and an unhealthy employee is not a very productive employee.

Typical job stressors such as unfair or hostile work environments and long hours can accelerate the onset of heart disease, including the likelihood of heart attacks.

Job stress also frequently causes burnout, a condition marked by emotional exhaustion and negative or cynical attitudes toward other employees or oneself. Burnout can lead to depression, which, in turn, has been linked to a variety of other health concerns such as heart disease, obesity and eating disorders, diabetes and some forms of cancer. Chronic depression also reduces your immunity to other types of illnesses, and, along with other diseases, can even contribute to premature death.

What can you do?
Assist your employees on specific issues such as time management, assertiveness training, and improving social skills. Fortunately, there are many ways to help keep your talent stress free, happy and more productive at work. Some programs blend relaxation techniques with nutrition and exercise.

Making your employees go through psychometric tests would help you understand the causes and the level of stress that he/she is going through and will aid in developing appropriate coping mechanisms.

Here are some other tips for dealing with stress on the job:

1. Give your employees a break from a stressful day of work. Even a 10 minutes break during a tedious day will help your workforce relieve stress and rejuvenate himself/herself to continue to work at high productivity.
2. Most managers face failures as result of factors that are out of their control.When situations have been identified to be out of control, one should assist their subordinates in working on their self-limiting thoughts by ensuring a positive and stress-free approach to the failure rather than a negative or furious approach leading to embarrassment, fear, anxiety, depression, and frustration within the workforce.
   
3. Create a sense of resiliency among the employees by being flexible on certain targets, making realistic plans, keeping a positive and happy attitude and keeping channels of communication open with yourself and your employees.
   
4. Even though negative motivation(stern communication, ultimatum etc.) does work wonders, expressing anger and frustration towards your employees can be one of the main causes for stress throughout the week and a potential resignation in the long term.
5. When situations are perceived out of control, aim to remove or reduce the cause of the stressor offering aid in time-management and social support.
6. Wherever possible, provide group tasks in order increase engagement and interaction among the employees. The burden of work and achieving the targets would be divided among the group
   members and hence reduce stress.
7. Employee engagement activities such as in office yoga, meditation etc. can help boost employee morale and create a positive and enthusiastic vibe within the office.
8. Keep yourself available and approachable for help from your workforce. Nowadays many companies understand the value of development programs geared towards employee growth. Explain how you and your team would benefit from a development program that helps them identify their strengths and challenge areas and offers guided workshops to address those concerns.

To summarize the above, when factors like stress, emotions etc. come into play, productivity takes a hard hit. Research proves that the happier and calmer a workforce is,  not only will the productivity improvements, it boosts the loyalty of the employees towards the company, leading to better retention.

Stress-free employees, Profitable Company!

The post 8 ways your employees can Beat Workplace Stress appeared first on Cavantics.