Balancing Stress At Work

It is known that stress at work is one of the things that can quickly cause your small business to go downhill in a hurry. When employees are under a great deal of stress they are not able to perform their job duties effectively and they may always seem on edge. Employee morale will likely decrease as your employees are dealing with stress. So how can you balance stress at work for yourself and also for your employees? Here are some tips that will be able to help you to get started.

Tip # 1 - Reduce absenteeism
One of the big issues that can happen with employee morale comes from absenteeism. If you have employees that are constantly sick or taking time off, it forces your other employees to step up and take over their work. When people have too much work to do, it leads to higher amounts of stress in the workplace. You need to find out why so many people are taking time off. Is it due to the stress? Are they simply overwhelmed and burned out? It is a good idea to find some temporary employees that can come in and help out if you are dealing with a lot of absenteeism in the workplace. You also need to keep the working environment as clean as possible to reduce the spread of germs.

Tip # 2 - Recognize stress
You need to be able to recognize symptoms of stress in the workplace. These common signs of stress include the following:
- Failure to focus on work
- Missed deadlines
- Showing up to work late or leaving early
- Irritability
There are other signs as well but when a person is overwhelmed and unhappy, it is usually pretty easy to spot. You need to keep an eye on your employees and find out what is happening and talk to them. Call them into your office and find out if they feel they have too much work to do. Talking to your employees can give you greater insight into their mindset and will be able to help you figure out a plan of action to help reduce their stress level.

Tip # 3 - Conflict
Conflict in the workplace is often seen as a sign of stress. Employees that do not get along with each other will fight in the workplace and may end up causing morale problems. You may have staff that ends up siding with one person or the other and this can usually lead to huge problems in the workplace. You need to step in and make the employees accept responsibility for their actions and also to make sure this conflict is not getting out of hand to the point that it is hurting the employee morale.

Tip # 4 - Take breaks
You need to make sure your employees are taking their breaks. Encourage them to get away from the workplace for breaks and go outside to take a walk. Encouraging them to go outside can help them to clear their minds and can easily reduce a lot of the stress load that they are dealing with on a daily basis. Breaks are a vital part of your staff's day so you need to walk around and find out if your employees are giving themselves those mental breaks that they need to become more productive.

Tip # 5 - Interesting work
Rotate your employees work so they do not get bored. It is quite common for employees to become bored and lose their focus on their jobs when they do not feel challenged. While the work cannot always be exciting, you should rotate their work around so they can feel motivated to work harder and so that they push themselves.