How to reduce stress in the workplace?

Today, about 83% of people experience work-related stress. While stress is an element always present in the modern workings style, it can damage company performance. Stress makes employees more likely to make mistakes, creates conflicts in the workplace and causes mental health issues. Despite all that, it’s still a problem overlooked by many organizations, which has damaging results. 

Stress in the workplace can increase the turnover rate and seriously affect employee performance. If you want to know how to reduce stress in the workplace, we can help you. At T2W we have an extensive experience in talent management. In this article we will discuss some of the actions you can implement in your organization to reduce stress in the workplace. 

How to reduce stress at work? 

1. Offer the right working hours 

 There is a direct correlation between long working hours and stress. In fact, it’s estimated that working more than 34 hours per week, 48 hours per week or 55 hours per week increases the chances of having anxiety and depression. As you can imagine, that has a negative impact on employee performance and, as a consequence, the company’s productivity. 

For that reason, to relieve stress at work, it’s necessary to respect employee working hours. This must be a policy part of the organizational culture: the work philosophy at the company. That also helps to create a good employer branding, which is also perfect to attract new employees. 

On the other hand, we must consider that working from home and hybrid working are very common now. The last thing you want is to be one of those companies that uses these work modalities to demand more from workers. If there are employees that work from home, you have to respect the digital disconnection. That is key to fight work-related stress. In addition, to prevent stress while telecommuting, it’s important to offer flexible working hours so that employees can complete their tasks at their own pace. 

2. Promote interaction in the workplace 

It’s necessary to stop looking at workers like machines that are only in the company to move it closer to its goals. That’s is a philosophy of the twentieth century. Don’t live in the past! Human beings need to interact and socialize with the people around. That’s necessary in the personal life as well as in the workplace. 

Interpersonal relationships are important to reduce stress levels at work. After all, in moments of intense work, having company, camaraderie and support are key elements to deal with stress. So, to manage stress in the workplace is important to promote interactions inside the organization. To achieve that, a simple and effective action is to create an open workspace that foster collaboration and interaction. 

3. Organize leisure activities and events 

When stress levels are high and they extend for too long, employees will start associating work and coworkers with stress. Little by little, just knowing that they have to go to work or speaking with a coworker outside the work environment will cause anxiety. In the long term, you could have many cases of the burnout syndrome in the organization. 

To help reduce stress in employees, it’s good to organize events that gather workers outside the work environment. You can do this simply by celebrating birthdays or special days at the office. You can also organize company picnics or dinners so that people can interact far from the office and all the stress it causes. 

4. Offer psychological assistance 

The nature of some organizations makes it impossible to avoid having seasons of intense work. It increases the workloads, the working hours or both for a while. That is the perfect scenario where stress levels rise. If you are aware that workloads change seasonally, you should implement an employee wellness program focused on offering psychological assistance. 

There is a variety of employee wellness programs that meet different needs employees have within an organization. A psychological assistance program will help them deal with emotional and psychological issues that work can cause in their personal and professional life. This way, you can prevent serious problems and crisis that could affect your employees and the whole company. 

If you wanted to know how to reduce stress at work, these are the most important actions you can implement. Keep in mind that a stress-free workplace requires a constant evaluation of the work environment and employees’ stress levels. The result not only will be beneficial for employees, but also for the company’s productivity. 

At Talent2Win, we strive to align your company’s business objectives with the best Talent Acquisition strategies available. If you want to learn more about the services we offer, do not hesitate to contact us.