Dealing with stress at work

However when you allow stress to fester it can seriously impede performance and your health. It is to the benefit of staff and workplaces alike to have tools to manage work based stress.

Stress can come in many forms and by identifying what is causing you to experience stress is the first step in developing strategies to combat it.

Demands

Taking on too much work and ending up with a never-ending pile with an encroaching deadline can cause people to feel overloaded and unable to cope. The best method of dealing with this type of stress is to talk about it. Speak to your manager about delegating work to other team members or shifting deadlines so you have more time to complete tasks. By voicing your concerns you are showing that you are aware of the importance of the work and the deadlines, but acknowledging that the work load may cause you to miss these without assistance.

Control

Sometimes it feels like we have no control over our work lives – over what we do, how we do it and who we do it with. Feelings of loss of control can lead to stress. If this occurs, the solution is to talk about it. Make an appointment with your boss or HR to discuss your concerns and draw up an action plan to give yourself more autonomy in your role. Show your initiative where possible and ask for additional performance reviews. Most managers don’t want to deal with the nitty gritty of how things are done, they just want results.

Support

Feeling unsupported and alone at work can lead to stress that can affect performance and staff retention. If you are feeling like your workplace does not support or respect you, you are less likely to want to stay there – keeping you supported is in the interests of the business as well as yourself. Confide in a colleague or speak with HR about training programs and development opportunities that might be available to you that have not been communicated previously. Speak with your boss about developing a mentoring program for you so that they become invested in supporting you as part of their roles.

Relationships

A break down in office relationships, or perhaps never having a positive relationship between staff members or manager-assistant can cause a great deal of stress with every time you need to discuss something with them, it becomes more about managing personality rather than the task at hand.