7 Ways Employers Can Reduce Stress In The Workplace

What are the Effects of Work Stress?

Work-related stress occurs when an employee’s demands at work exceed how much they are able to cope with.

Research shows that 83% of workers in the US suffer from work-related stress. If left untreated, work stress can have serious mental, physical and emotional effects for employees.

The effects of stress include:

• Feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope with workload
• Feeling depressed
• Feeling anxious (especially in regards to work)
• Lacking energy and feeling tired
• Headaches
• Chest pains or chest tightness
• Trouble sleeping
• Isolation from friends and family
• Drinking alcohol, smoking or other negative coping mechanisms

Workplace stress can also be a burden for your company. Work stress can lead to a drop in productivity and performance, increased employee sick leave or resignation and can end up costing your company a significant amount of money.

As an employer, it is your responsibility to make sure your employees are happy, healthy and stress-free at work. Ensuring your employees are free from stress will have positive benefits for the success of your team and company. This article highlights seven ways employers can reduce stress in the workplace.

7 Ways You Can Reduce Stress In The Workplace

1. Help Employees Manage Their Workload

Juggling lots of tasks, wearing lots of hats and working non-stop can wear down your employees. Your employees need to be able to effectively manage their workload, otherwise they will burnout and suffer from work-related stress.

You can help employees balance their workload by fairly distributing the workload among the team and frequently checking in with your team members to see how they are progressing with their workload. Make sure you offer reasonable work shifts and ensure employees have enough time to rest in between shifts and don’t work too many hours at once.

2. Better Understand Your Team With Employee Assessments

Using employee emotional and personality assessments like the Everything DiSC assessment, you can better understand your employees and how to improve your workplace to suit their needs, personality and learning type.

Employee assessments allow you to learn which communication and management strategies work best for each of your employees. By being able to tailor your management style to the people you are dealing with, you can improve the working relationship and help combat stress in the workplace.

3. Improve Communications At Work

Communication plays a crucial role at work. When employees are able to effectively and positively communicate with their co-workers and managers, it increases performance and reduces work-related stress.

If you don’t already, schedule weekly meetings with your team so you can share ideas, work-wins, updates and feedback. Giving your employees a chance to speak up and be heard can work wonders for employee wellbeing.

Other ways to improve communication at work include encouraging open communication, keeping employees updated about organizational changes, having one-to-one employee reviews and asking your employees for feedback.

Non-verbal communication is always important for managers and employers to master. Your body language can have a huge impact on your employees and co-workers so be sure to communicate with positive, open and approachable body language.

4. Make Wellness a Part of Work Culture

There’s no denying that small changes like exercising more or eating healthily can reduce stress. By introducing various wellness programs into your work culture, you can help resolve stress in the workplace by making your worksite a happy, healthy place to be.

As an employer, you could offer employees a free/discounted gym membership as a work perk or host weekly yoga sessions in the office to help get those endorphins flowing. By hosting weekly yoga or meditation sessions you can encourage employees to embrace mindfulness which, in turn, can help reduce stress.

You can easily promote healthy living habits at work by providing free healthy snacks in the break room and by encouraging employees to take regular breaks, get away from their work station and stretch their legs. A 10-minute break can decrease stress, encourage productivity and improve work performance.

5. Recognise Your Employees Contributions and Successes

When employees feel valued at work, it can reduce their likelihood of work-related stress. Job security can play a huge role in workplace stress. So, it’s important to communicate with your employees that they are a valuable member of the team.

By recognising your employees specific contributions and successes in the workplace, you can improve their morale and make them feel like a valued part of the team. Offer employee incentives for reaching milestones, have an employee recognition board or employee-of-the-month program and congratulate them when they do a good job, no matter how small. Showing employees that you value their contribution will help reduce work stress and increase work morale.

6. Offer Flexi-Time and Remote Working Options

By having control over their work schedule and being able to fit work around other life commitments, remote working and flexi-time can reduce employee stress levels.

We know that remote working doesn’t suit all industries or businesses. However, if your company is capable of offering employees the chance to work remotely, it can really help to boost employee positivity.

Offering flexi-time or remote working options has been proven successful at increasing company morale and profitability. It’s a great way to combat workplace stress and allow your employees to have improved work-life balance.

7. Effectively Resolve Workplace Conflicts

Whether you manage a small close-knit team or a large-scale business, conflict at work is inevitable due to people having different personalities or opinions. Effective employers are able to take workplace conflicts or disagreements into opportunities for growth and development.

Resolving workplace conflict will encourage a supportive, productive workplace and reduce employee stress, absenteeism and future conflict.

You can use employment assessment solutions to understand the causes of workplace conflict and how to effectively implement a conflict management strategy to provide conflicts from escalating and negatively impacting on your organization.

As you can see, there are a number of steps employers can take to help reduce stress in the workplace. It’s important to have a strong, supportive employee network and to offer your employees a comfortable, positive working environment. There are many benefits to reducing stress in the workplace.

To better understand your employees and how you can tailor your work environment to reduce employee stress, talk to us today to learn more about the employee assessment solutions we offer.