Do you know how work culture is? There is a lot of pressure. Submit assignments in time? Complete projects within deadlines? When you are under this sort of pressure, it is natural to feel stressed out. However, the problem arises when you are unable to cope up with the stress. If you can’t cope with stress, you experience health problems like heart diseases, low immunity, and anxiety.
In this article, we will learn about common signs that say that employees experience stress. Most importantly, you will know about how to manage stress.
Signs of stress for employees at work
Individually and structurally, there are a lot of signs that indicate that employees experience stress. For better understanding, I provide the list of signs below.
1. Irritability
Stress indeed affects you emotionally. Have you ever paid close attention to the interactions among employees in your office? If you observe that employees are constantly getting irritated with each other, it indicates that employees face a lot of stress.
2. Fatigue
Another sign of stress could be that the employee is visibly tired despite working only during office hours. If the employee looks tired regularly, it is important to assess the impact of stress on the individual.
3. Shyness
There is scientific evidence to demonstrate the link between shyness and stress. On the one hand, some employees are indeed introverted by nature. On the other hand, if employees who are open and loud suddenly retreat into the shell and become reclusive, you should guess that something is bothering them. This kind of sudden behavioral shift indicates spiking stress levels.
4. Temper issues
Concerning signs of stress, temper is one important red flag. Sudden outbursts of anger with co-workers are signs that the work environment is getting extremely challenging.
5. Time-offs
Time-offs are very important for working people. If your employees are reluctant to take time off from their work life, you need to ask why. Your employees might not want to give work a miss for many reasons because they are excessively worried about pending work.
6. Personal problems
If employees go through personal problems, they prefer not to discuss them in the office due to privacy and confidentiality.
A few signs that the employees are going through personal problems are
- Inability to focus on the tasks at hand
- Frequently absent and withdrawn from work
- Finding it difficult to process instructions
7. Low productivity
Apart from this, the issue with falling productivity levels is that it negatively impacts the workplace. If an employee’s work performance is inefficient, it indicates that they experience stress. Overall, this affects the morale, efficiency, and functioning of the company members.
8. Laughing
A simple question- are your employees laughing, or is the ambiance always serious? To see if your employees experience stress, it is useful to assess their interaction in the office spaces. For instance, notice whether people hang out together in the cafeteria? Do they have lunch together? It is important to look for signs of healthy social behavior to assess stress. If the work culture is stressful, you won’t come across friendly group gatherings in the office.
9. Low attendance
A drastic rise in sick leave is related to stress. As you already know, stress not only affects the body mentally, it harms our body too. For instance, stress can trigger problems like insomnia, headaches, gastrointestinal problems.
10. Long working hours
Suddenly, if you notice that some of the employees are working for long hours in the office, it could be that there is a lot of work. Long working hours also indicate the employee is struggling to complete work within a limited period. As a result, their workplace productivity might go in for a toss.
How to manage stress at work
Now that you understand different signs of stress among employees, it is time for us to go through solutions that are helpful to deal with stress.
1. Set well-defined goals
If the company can set well-defined and practical work goals, employees will find it easier to face work-life challenges. If you don’t set proper objectives, there are high chances for employees to feel anxious about the work. So, it is important to have well-defined goals to give employees a sense of direction and calm them down.
2. Encourage mindfulness
Most of us by now know the use of mindfulness in everyday life. You should know that a lot of companies are already incorporating mindfulness in their offices. When Mindfulness is incorporated into work culture, employees will benefit a lot. For instance, Google offers a course to its employees called ‘Search Inside Yourself’. The course offers meditation classes to its employees to teach them emotional resilience. The program empowers its employees by teaching them to handle stressful situations.
3. Offer paid time off
Most employees don’t take time off because they feel tense about being paid while they are on holiday. To make the employees feel at ease, the company needs to offer paid leave to its employees. Offering employees paid time off is important to help them feel rejuvenated, relaxed, and fresh.
4. Encourage frequent breaks
For employees, overworking is a common problem. So, it is necessary to encourage them to take frequent breaks from work. Taking breaks will help them to relax and recover from stress.
