Helping Employees Overcome Workplace Stress

Published June 7, 2005

Long hours...unrealistic deadlines...frequent interruptions. Does this sound familiar? It should, since it most likely describes your average workday. Now add "stressed out" to the list, and it just about sums up America's overwhelmed workforce.

Today's high stress workplaces not only affect employees' quality of work on the job — typically, work performance suffers when employees feel overwhelmed — but also their quality of life outside of work. When employees feel stressed out about their jobs, it spills over into their home lives and has a negative impact on their families, friends, community projects, etc.

To make matters worse, workplace stress also has an adverse impact on employee health. Research conducted by the Stockholm Heart Epidemiology Programme (Sweden) concluded that employees on a tight deadline at work are six times more likely to suffer from a heart attack during the next 24 hours. As a matter of fact, 8% of the people who took part in the study and had had a heart attack said they had experienced a stressful event at work within 24 hours prior to their attack. The study also revealed that if a man is given increased responsibilities at work, his heart attack risk can go up six fold, while a woman's can increase three fold.

In today's 24/7 work culture, it's no wonder that workplace stress can increase a person's risk of heart attack. Stress is the body's response to any demand made on it. As the body responds to various forms of physical or emotional stress, certain predictable changes take place, such as increased heart rate, blood pressure, and secretions of hormones. Continual exposure lowers the body's ability to cope with additional forms of physical and mental stress and can eventually lead to a heart attack or other health problems.

So if employees feel so stressed out, why don't they do something about it? Employees gave a number of reasons as to why they remain stressed on the job.

• Some are convinced that speaking out would harm their careers or give the false impression that they are not team players.
  
• Others claim that their bosses are so overworked and overwhelmed themselves that they dare not approach them with their own complaints or suggestions. 
  
• Still others claim that their bosses just don't get it. Despite employee complaints, bosses continue to overwork employees by assigning them tasks they consider to be a waste of time and resources - all in the name of multitasking.

Stress Busters

Here are some steps you can take to help defuse employees' stress in your workplace.

• Employees can become overwhelmed when they have too much to do in too little time. Loosen deadlines when employees are struggling, if possible. 
  
• Give them time to grab a cup of coffee and let the stress of the morning commute ease up before hitting them with problems or new projects. 
  
• See to it that employees actually rest on their breaks and lunches, instead of working straight through. 
  
• Encourage employees to take their full vacations and avoid calling or e-mailing vacationing employees with workplace problems. 
  
• Avoid throwing an employee who is returning from a medical leave right back into the thick of things - especially if the leave was related to workplace stress. 
  
• Make certain that adequate technical and emotional support is available. 
  
• Find ways for your employees to spend more time on higher priority tasks.

Related Topic(s): Safety & Health