How to Defuse Stress Management at Work Effectively

It is commonly believed that stress begins and ends in the office, which is more or less the truth. This is why stress management at work has become a burning issue globally. The average person spends around 10 to12 hours work when you include commuting to and from work, approximately 6 hours sleeping and just about 4 hours at home. Hence, the greatest part of the day comprises of time spent at office. This is the place which generates the greatest amount of stress, hence the importance of stress management at work.

Is Stress Management at Work an Achievable Endeavor?

It has been over 15 years that stress had been identified as one of the main reasons for decreasing productivity and efficiency levels. Ever since, stress management at work programs have endeavored to remove this factor from the work environment. Unfortunately, in spite of the great intelligence accumulated on this subject, the stress levels are the same if not more than it was in the past. Why stress cannot be eliminated is not known yet; however there are ways and means to control stress to some extent.

Some of the points listed below are suggestions that could give you sufficient control on stress levels at work. Stress management at work could and should be introduced and made compulsory for all employees. Some tried and tested methods that could be introduced by the employers, are as under:

1. Regular feedback forms (with anonymous response) to keep your hand on the pulse on what irritates people at work – this could be nepotism, favoritism, inadequate salary, maladjusted teams, outdates infrastructure and so on. This will give you a good idea on what are the underlying problems that if left unattended, would fester into an uncontrollable situation.

2. Follow-up immediately – give a deadline for taking action on the feedback. Have the process done as transparently as possible; take action wherever you find the majority need it. ‘Need’ and ‘want/ wish’ are not to be merged here. Apply changes on only those areas which are ‘needed’.

3. Make sure there is a place in the organization where people can come with their grievances; and that those grievances are followed through.

4. Create a de-stressing space – reading room, rest room, snack room – these all could be rolled into one, where can spend their breaks in and re-charge their batteries.

5. Ensure that each employee achieves a good measure of work/family balance; and enforce rules to support your stand.