Stress At Work - How To Reduce Work Place Stress

Stress at work may be one of the hardest forms of stress to avoid. After all, you need to go to work and there are plenty of things to worry about once you get there. However, just like other kinds of stress, there are ways to manage stress in the workplace and there are steps you can take to avoid it almost entirely. Maybe you cannot avoid it altogether, but there is no good reason not to reduce it as much as possible. So what can you do about stress at work?

What Would It Take To Make Your Workplace Stress-Free?

Many Human Resources managers see stress as an too difficult or too costly a problem to tackle properly, or perhaps something that only affects the work-shy without whom their organisations would be better off. Although many provide employee assistance programmes, health club memberships and flexible hours, these are seen as expensive and not necessarily very effective. Many organisations seem to do the bare minimum to comply with their duty of care towards employees.

Perhaps you can try to consider stress at work in a different way since it affects your productivity, morale and commitment. When you find ways to remove the causes of stress in your workplace, not only will you feel better about coming to work, your sense of well being will also improve.

Where Is The Stress Coming From?

People are affected differently by stress at work or elsewhere so it can only be described as a subjective experience that may impact on your morale and performance. The information you need to determine what is causing your stress can be found by examining a number of factors that are commonly known to affect people and cause stress levels to rise in those who are most susceptible.

1. Your Work Place:

Could the actual place where you work be causing you stress?

• Is your office or workshop safe, clean, and tidy?

• Are the things you use most often easy to find and get to?

• Is it noisier than is comfortable, and is there somewhere quiet for thinking?

• Can you take a break every 90 minutes or so (more often if doing intense computer work, or physical labour)?

• Are your working hours reasonable - around 8 hours a day?

2. Do you have what you need to do the job properly in terms of equipment and knowledge?

• Do you have the tools or office equipment you need to do the job?

• Do you know what is expected of you?

• Do you have the skills and the necessary training to do the job?

• Does your job allow you to do what you are best at?

3. Do you know when you are doing a good job by receiving feedback?

If your answer is that you don't need feedback because you just know you are doing a good job, you'll still feel better with some feedback from someone else as a sort of confirmation of your value.

When you receive regular positive feedback you generally feel better about your job, but if all you get is an annual appraisal, you may find yourself becoming increasingly nervous as it approaches.

4. Do you feel that your job is important?

Most people need some meaning and recognition in their lives. If your job is meaningful to you and you see it as being worthwhile to the community, you are more likely to feel more motivated and more positive about overcoming any setbacks or difficulties.

5. Do you feel recognised as an individual?

People also need to feel valued for themselves and their contribution. If you feel that you are just a small or unimportant part of the organisation with no intrinsic value, your sense of self-worth will be undermined and you will probably become nervous about being made redundant or otherwise losing your income.

6. Are you learning or developing more skills?

To a point stress at work can boost your performance such as when you're under pressure, your performance rises to meet the challenge in the short term. However, beyond a certain point, such as if the pressure is sustained for too long, you acn get 'burnout' as you become exhausted. The other side of this coin is that if there is too little to challenge you, you become become bored and fed-up which can itself be just as stressful. If you are ambitious but are not learning and developing new skills, you will begin to worry about getting left behind. When you find yourself under-utilised, your worries about having done something wrong take over and you may fall into the trap of 'presenteeism', that is to say, being at work and appearing to be busy but without actually doing anything.

Your responses to the factors described will tell you whether you need to make or seek changes in your working environment. You can take these up with your personnel manager where appropriate and take the steps to minimise stress at work for yourself. Although many of the corporate initiatives are intended to be a 'broad brush' approach to minimise organisational stress levels, it is at the individual level that small changes can be most cost-effective.

For some really effective ways to deal with stress at work and anywhere else, Click Here!

Finally, do something for yourself, try to take control of your surroundings, whether they are just a corner of a room or a desk at work. You can even use these steps to help you unwind and remove much of the stress at work. By creating your own personal haven, you will be better able to relax and calm yourself. A few small changes may be all that you need.

You are here: Stress At Work now continue to read my next article and Stress Management Tips or continue to read about how to attain Work Life Balance.

Do you know what a difference positive thinking can make to how you feel?

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