Stress Management Planning

It’s no secret that stress can lead to an entire boat full of other health problems. People who are stressed at work tend to use more sick days and tend to call into work sick more than employees who are not as stressed in the workplace. Outside of the risk of becoming sick more often, people who are stressed at work are also prone to shorter concentration levels while they’re on the job, which can lead to a greater risk of accidents and other mistakes. Beyond safety, being stressed out can lead to the staff not being as efficient as they normally are when they are without stress.

Another unfortunate side of stress in the workplace is that up until recently, many employers did not realise how much of a negative effect that stress was having on employees. Work has always been stressful for most people so it’s always been one of those things that employees and employers just lived with, without doing much about it. But now that many health organisations have come out and shared the risks of stress within the workplace, many companies have decided to implement stress management plans. What is a stress management plan and is it right for your business?

A stress management plan identifies common stress triggers within the workplace and then outlines strategies for how the business and its employees can reduce the stress. For example, for a business that provides customer service, an angry customer may be a stress trigger. Other stress triggers in this business may include sitting for long periods of time or getting frustrated with the technology that the customer service representatives use (inadequate training). A company in this situation would then go ahead and implement a strategy that would help relieve stress, such as transferring a tense call to a manager, frequent breaks to relieve the physical and mental stress from sitting and then also providing training so that the staff does not get frustrated with the technology.

Developing a stress management plan takes the entire company because many businesses have several different departments that have varying stress triggers. A person that is working with heavy machinery is going to have different stress triggers than someone sitting behind a desk, but both people deal with stress in their jobs. On top of that, each individual person deals with stress differently. Due to this, one person may have a lower or higher tolerance level for stress than the next person. To develop a good stress management plan, it starts with research and a lot of feedback from your staff.

If your business is considering whether or not to develop and implement a stress management plan, one good place to get started is with an overall health and wellness program. A health and wellness program can start to assess the stress levels and triggers within your company and also work with employees to start reducing their stress levels. The quicker that a stress management plan can be implemented, the quicker the stress level can go down and therefore restoring a workplace that is more relaxed and efficient.