6)How to reduce the Stress level ?

Stress can decrease employee engagement, may disrupt productivity, and could lead to various health complications. Chronic stress can weaken the immune system, which may increase susceptibility to colds, flu, and coronavirus infection. This, in turn, can increase the number of sick days that your workforce takes and lower employee output. Over time, even small stressors can lead to health problems, as employees feel rising pressure and anxiety. To combat these issues and help your employees thrive, it’s important to create a company culture that helps decrease work-related stress.

Create a Strong Work-Life Balance

Some ways to achieve a healthy work-life balance include ensuring employees adhere to traditional working hours, avoiding emails or calls after they have left the office, and providing adequate amounts of time for tasks to be completed. These boundaries reduce the pressure on employees to work an extended workday and diminish the rate of burnout. While this is only one piece of the puzzle, it’s an essential one to adhere to. Unless there is a time-sensitive emergency, be sure to only send emails, and texts and make work-related phone calls to employees within core business hours.

Provide Employees with Strong Benefits

One of the most impactful ways to reduce an employee’s workplace stress is to take care of them. Caring for employees may include providing your workforce access to strong mental and physical health benefits alongside other, non-traditional, options. Providing coverage helps combat the negative consequences of stress and reassures employees that, if anything happened, they would be covered. The safety net of strong benefits can help decrease active stress within a workplace while improving the overall employee experience and satisfaction. Access to premium benefits extends beyond medical, dental, vision, life, disability, retirement, transit, and a wide range of voluntary benefits. When you provide your workforce access to strong plans and options, stress levels decrease, and productivity is strengthened.

Encourage Open Communication

Unfortunately, a lot of workplace stress may come from top-down positions. When employees don’t feel comfortable communicating with upper-level management, they have a higher risk of health problems and tend to feel more pressure while in the office. As an employer, you have the power to shape the employee experience and reduce stress caused by leadership issues. There are training classes and workshops that can help managers develop more effective communication methods and stronger delivery when providing constructive criticism. Making it clear to your workforce that the line of communication between bosses and employees is open can help combat interpersonal stressors and challenges.

Offer Adequate Paid Vacation

Many employees could attribute this to having too much to do at work and may not feel comfortable leaving the office or unplugging for more than a few days. While productivity is important, taking vacation time off can help eliminate workplace stress and may actually improve output throughout the year. As an employer, try to encourage your workforce to use their vacation leave and make sure that you’re offering enough time off for them to enjoy it.

Consider Scheduling Team Outings

Scheduling team Outings can help improve office morale and facilitate stronger cooperation. Schedule events offsite and consider the interests of your employees. However, these outings should be during normal business hours to avoid cutting into your employees’ personal time or generating potential additional wage obligations. Some options could be happy hour at a nearby restaurant a group volunteer project or even a traditional company picnic. This can help improve interpersonal relationships at work while destressing together as a team.

Encourage Breaks Throughout the Day

While in the office, many exempt employees may adopt a non-stop work mentality. Depending on deadlines or their schedules, they may not even take a break to eat lunch. Instead, grab-and-go options become the norm, and lunches are eaten over their keyboards. While this may be the norm in many workplaces, taking breaks can help employees avoid burnout while reducing overall stress levels. It’s important to unplug, stand up and move around. Try to encourage your exempt employees to take breaks throughout the day by offering on-site facilities, exercise classes, meditation spaces, or even nap pods. If your employees are non-exempt, you will need to comply with applicable state and local requirements on providing meal and rest breaks throughout the day.

References

• TriNet (2022) Why Getting a Handle on Employee Stress. [Online] Available at https://www.trinet.com/insights/10-ways-to-reduce-workplace-stress [Accessed on 10.12.2022].