How to Deal with Stress at Work

According to The American Institute of Stress, 83% of US workers suffer from work-related stress. Furthermore, US businesses lose up to $300 billion yearly as a result of workplace stress. Work can be stressful at times, which can easily take a toll on your body and mind. Anyone can feel frazzled with unanswered emails, unopened Slack messages, or even the impromptu meeting by your employer. Even so, it’s pretty normal for everyone to deal with stress at work one day of their life. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes unavoidable.

While stress may affect your work performance, creating solutions to ease that stress is key to dealing with it physically, emotionally, and professionally. In this blog, we will discuss what may be triggering your stress and ways you can deal with it.

What Causes Stress at Work?

Various stressors in the workplace are responsible for the stress and pressure we may feel. Some of them are unavoidable, while others are simply not. Here are some of the common ones you should know about:

Excessive workloads: Only 43% of US employees think their employers care about their work-life balance. Imagine a scenario where you reach the office and find loads and loads of paperwork awaiting your approval and confirmation. Or a situation where no matter how hard, smart, or fast you work, the workload doesn’t seem to reduce. Each of the two scenarios happens all the time, and it can be extremely stressful.

Poor salaries: Workers and employees getting below-average pay or barely minimum wages can slowly feel the pressure and stresses of work overwhelming them. Unfortunately, underpaying your employees also makes them feel overworked.

Lack of control over job-related decisions: Employees tend to feel overlooked when their opinions are ignored. Additionally, when job-related decisions are made by only the higher-ups, others can feel left out.

Undemanding work: Some jobs lack the necessary engagement and challenge needed to keep up active and interested for long. Boredom at work can leave you to feel unneeded and make you perceive the job as meaningless. That can leave you stressed and depressed.

Few to no growth opportunities: It’s in human nature to want to advance and better our lives. With no growth opportunity, you can feel stuck, stressed, and depressed.

How Stress Affects Employees

Work-related stress can affect you in numerous ways, even when out of the office. It can affect your well-being, health, and self-esteem. Additionally, a stressful work environment is a recipe for more sick days and stress leaves. Employees with chronic stress can start complaining of issues such as (warning signs):

• Migraines
• Headaches
• Short or hot tempers
• Lack of sleep
• Poor concentration

If left uncontrolled, excessive stress can become chronic, leading to more severe long-term health conditions like obesity, mood swings, depression, anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, and heart disease. In most cases, employees can start substance abuse like smoking to deal with the stress. The result is poor productivity and increased losses.

Ways you can Deal with Work Stress

You must control your work stress before it affects every other aspect of your life. The good news is there’s hope for relief. Here are ways you can deal with your stress at work:

Take short breaks

You don’t have to be cooped up in front of your PC or at your workstation for long hours. That can easily lead to burnout before the end of your shift. Instead, you must take regular breaks and time to recharge your energy in between work. Even when you do not feel like leaving your desk, taking a stroll to the cafeteria may prove beneficial or answer a trivia question located on breakroom screens.

Additionally, you should avoid thinking of work when on vacations and breaks. Instead, go through the switching-off recovery process to meet your other needs. Besides, unwinding can leave you feeling re-energized and even excited to go back to work.

Get social support

There’s a significant stigma surrounding mental health issues like depression and stress. Even so, that shouldn’t be a reason to shy away from getting help from family and friends. You can also use the resources available at work to help you manage your job stress.

Create Clear Boundaries Between Your Work and Personal Life

Most people feel overwhelmed with both home life and work, making their stress grow into uncontrollable heights. You need a work-life balance to reduce your workplace stress level by separating the two entities. You can start by creating self-rules and guidelines that work for you. For instance, you can reduce the pressure of working by making a rule against checking your messages and emails at the dinner table.

Come up with healthy coping methods

Turning to substance abuse and alcohol or other bad habits will not solve your problems- far from it. Instead, it may leave you unable to complete daily tasks. For instance, when you feel your temper rising, you can count backward from 10 until you come down. You can also exercise more often and take yoga classes to reduce muscle tension. Healthy habits are your best bet against stress.

Track your stressors

Some stressors are unique to us, and you may not even know them until you start paying attention. You can begin a tracking exercise to ensure you identify situations that added tensions or pressure to you. Additionally, you must note how you responded to the situation and how that made you feel. Finally, you can take notes in a journal to help you work through your issues.

Avoid conflict

Conflict is one of the stressors of a work environment. If you can avoid it, then do so. Sometimes arguing with your colleagues can only leave you feeling worse than before. You can include the help of a superior when you can’t solve an issue. Or you can simply walk away when necessary.

What can Employers do about Stress at Work?

Employers can help support mental health awareness at the workplace. As an employer, you can make it mandatory for team leaders to take mental health awareness training for starters. That can help them understand workplace stressors better and intervene when an employee feels overwhelmed. You can also post these tips on digital sigange for everyone to learn from.

Additionally, you can include mental health coverage in medical covers for the employees. That ensures that your employees can readily get help. Starting an employee program to deal with mental health where a psychologist is available on the call or in person can also help your workers adjust and adapt to the work environment.

Final Thoughts

Loving what you do is not enough to prevent work-related stress. The pressures can get to you in numerous different ways. Besides, switching jobs is not the solution either as all jobs carry their weight of pressure. However, you can use the steps and tips above to prevent stress from taking a toll on your emotional, physiological, and psychological well-being.

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