While feeling stressed is bad enough on its own, it’s even worse if the employee is stressed out because of the job he or she lives by. Stress in the workplace is harmful for both the employer and the employee.
When the employee is stressed, it affects his/her private life and health, especially if the subject of stress is his/her job, this can get worse and reach an inextricable point. For the employer, an employee’s stress can cause serious harm. For example, if the employee is stressed, his/her performance decreases and the efficiency of the work decreases, or if the work reaches a more serious dimension and affects the health of the employee, the organization loses a qualified employee and searching for, finding and getting used to a new qualified person causes both monetary and temporal losses.
Factors Causing Work-Related Stress
Work-related stress can be caused by personal reasons such as trauma, or it can be caused by the job itself, such as poor work management, relationships at work, and workload. Long working hours, the uncertainty of the role in the workplace, and lack of communication are among the factors that cause stress. Work-related stress is a reaction that occurs largely as a result of incorrect leadership and business management. By making changes in the workplace, the risk of employees experiencing work-related stress can be reduced.
What Are the Benefits of Reducing Stress at Work?
An employee who is working under stress harms the employee and the organization in the long run. When the employee feels stressed, he/she may not be able to complete the work at hand or delay it after the time he/she should have finished, so that the functioning of the work is disrupted. If the stressors are not eliminated, this may harm the health of the employee and render him/her unable to work. The person may not be able to work for a long time and may have to get support. Stress situation that is not intervened in time also damages the human resources of the organization. It can also be very costly to find a replacement for qualified personnel who are incapacitated.
Urgent elimination of stressors for employee health and organizational profit will lead to a common profit in the long run.
Ways to Reduce Stress in The Workplace
The causes of work-related stress can arise from the work itself or from personal problems. Reducing work-related stress has individual and organizational aspects.
Sleep and Healthy Eating
Good sleep and nutrition are essential to get rid of stress, which is not only related to work but also at every stage of life.
Insufficient sleep causes memory impairment, inability to multitask and slow thinking. An individual who does not get enough sleep experiences a decline in performance. According to the National Sleep Foundation, most adults should get between seven and nine hours of sleep each night. While we sleep, almost every part of our body goes through maintenance and repair processes. A good night’s sleep is good for us both physically and spiritually, it can effectively relieve stress. But it can be a little difficult to sleep when stressed. To overcome this, eating healthy and exercising both make it easier to sleep and help relieve stress.
A balanced diet can support a healthy immune system and repair damaged cells. It provides the extra energy needed to deal with stressful events.
Activities such as running, walking, breathing exercises and yoga accelerate breathing and cause more oxygen to go to the cells, thus reducing the tension in the muscles. Exercises help relieve stress in the long run.
Communication
Communication is one of the most important components in an organization. Having an environment where employees can easily communicate with their managers or leaders prevents work-related stress. The employee’s sharing any job-related difficulties with his/her manager prevents the stress from reaching further dimensions.
Some problems from time to time may extend the delivery time of some tasks. In such cases, getting help from teammates both increases individual communication within the team and helps the work to reach the result.
Digital business management applications can also be useful in this sense. The use of business management software such as PeerBie in organizations allows each employee to communicate with each other comfortably and uninterruptedly.
Take a Break
Working without a break can reduce your focus and cause you to feel overwhelmed and stressed. Taking regular breaks helps the mind recover and regenerate, and it can be more productive when returning to work.
In cases where the break is skipped and the stress has already arisen, the work should be stopped and interrupted immediately. The harder you push yourself, the greater the damage that stress can cause. When you’re feeling stressed, talking to a friend, going for a little walk, or even just washing your face sometimes can help you feel better.
Prioritizing
Although there are many things to be done during the day, determining which ones are priority gives an idea about what will be done that day. Detecting and finishing tasks with due deadlines prevents last-minute stress.
Knowing to Say No
Knowing how to say no to both ourselves and others. We are exposed to many stimuli throughout the day. Some of these are self-created, such as social media, but there are also external distractions, like e-mails and co-workers. Knowing how to say no to unnecessary things helps to finish prioritized tasks on time. Saying no to junk emails, meetings, chats, and even tasks and focusing on the task that needs to be finished will reduce stress.
Avoiding Conflict
Having a bad relationship with your co-workers can make you uneasy and stressed. Staying away from gossip, unpleasant jokes and sharing ideas and discussions that may cause uneasiness in the workplace provides a more peaceful working environment and prevents factors that can create stress.
Getting Organized
One of the main causes of workplace stress is incorrect workload management. Not having a plan for what needs to be done can create complexity and create stress. To-do lists and prioritization are indispensable for the proper management of the workload.
Business management software allows easy management of workload. With job management software such as PeerBie, you can assign tasks, prioritize the assigned tasks and add them to your calendar.
Using Time Efficiently
One of the main causes of stress is time. It is impossible not to be stressed while the questions of will it catch up or will I have enough time? It is necessary to manage time well in order to prevent the stress caused by wrong time management. Using a calendar or using a digital calendar can make the job much easier. With software such as PeerBie, tasks can be assigned time, so the task with a time limit tends to finish within the given time. Knowing how much time is spent on each task, not just limiting the task in time, allows you to notice the shortcomings and make a better plan next time.
Being Open to Criticism
Although criticism can be annoying at times, they are actually unique helpers that allow us to improve. We can recognize the mistakes made in line with the criticism and try to work in a different and better way next time.
Another advantage of business management software comes into play here. With PeerBie, you can share your tasks that need to be done with your friends, and get advice on how to proceed before doing the task. After the task is completed, you can inform that you have completed the relevant task, and you can share your notes about the task with your colleagues and get their comments.
Being Solution Focused
Mindset is one of the factors affecting exposure to stress. We become stressed when faced with a problem but focusing only on the problem at that moment does not offer us a way out. Focusing on finding solutions, even if it is difficult, makes the brain work differently. You can talk to your teammates and consult your leader for a solution.
