How To Manage Stress In Your Organisation

Workplace stress is an epidemic, with burnout, anxiety, illness, and depression from workplace stress leading to high rates of absenteeism and employee turnover.  

In the healthcare sector where the stakes are so high, employees often work longer than usual hours and operate at a relatively high level of pressure.  

If a workplace then compounds these stressors with poor management, such as unclear or excessive expectations or a lack of support for their employees, the problems can become severe and impact on employees’ mental and physical health.  

Here are some strategies to identify and reduce workplace stress in healthcare environments.  

Employees will rarely come to a manager to talk about their stress levels, particularly if they’re operating in a high performing environment where overworking pressure and a poor work-life balance has been normalized.  

As such, healthcare sector managers who care about the health of their employees must learn to identify the signs of work-related stress.  

1. Notice the atmosphere in the office 

Do people appear comfortable with each other, enquiring about each other’s weekends and having a laugh or talking about sports results? If there’s not much communication between your team above the bare minimum of work talk, that can be a sign that your employees are feeling some pressure.  

2. Are sick days on the rise? 

When non-attendance rates take a sharp upturn, you can generally assume one of a few things. Either there’s a particularly virulent flu strain this year…or you may have something to be concerned about.  

Perhaps your team members really are sick rather than just taking a day off because they’re stressed, but there’s also the added consideration: are they getting sick more often because they are stressed? Your absenteeism rate might be one of the clearest signals of a stressed-out workforce, so pay good heed to these figures.  

3. Assess your turnover rates.  

Your turnover rates can also be a good indicator of stress levels, but there’s every chance your team is simply leaving because of other factors. Therefore it’s so important to run comprehensive exit interviews, to ascertain whether pressure or long hours were factors contributing to their resignation.  

Also, check out reviews of ex-employees on sites like Glassdoor. If you notice a recurring theme of the company overworking its staff, expecting a lot of overtime, or complaints about work/life balance, then you’ll know you have a significant problem with workplace stress.  

4. Run a Wellness Survey. 

Because employees can be reticent about their mental health, it can be more productive to ask everyone to fill out an anonymous survey rating their levels of stress. Use the opportunity to also ask for feedback on what could be done to reduce stress, such as health and wellness initiatives in the workplace. 

How to Manage Workplace Stress in your Organisation 

1. Establish an employee wellness policy—and visibly stick to it. 

This might be a combination of health checks, meditation or yoga, subsidized gym memberships or a masseuse coming to the office to give out treatments.  

Often companies implement wellness policies, but they aren’t visibly adhered to by the people at the top, so the system never has much uptake. It’s crucial that senior figures are seen to actively adopt and support the wellness policy, and it’s a good idea to have someone senior in charge of the program.  

2. Break the overworking culture.  

Studies have shown that working longer hours makes people less productive during those hours and leads to illness, so you may need to break the existing ‘overtime culture’ to re-energise and de-stress your team.  

Are there any efficiencies you could adopt to reduce the workload, such as less red tape, removing redundant reporting structures, or using better software? Ask your team about which tasks or systems they feel waste their time and reduce their productivity.  

3. Allow your employees to have more say in how they approach their work.  

A feeling of powerlessness at work can dramatically increase stress levels, so giving people a little power back can make them feel in control. Asking your team about how they would like to be developed and how they prefer to be managed can really help, as can granting flexible work hours where possible.  

4. Manage change with confidence and understanding. 

When things are changing in the office - whether someone is leaving the team or a new software platform is being implemented, it’s your job as a manager to guide the change with minimum stress and disruption to the team. Lead the way by being positive about the change, but acknowledging any resistance people might have.  

5. Be quick to act when you see conflict arising.  

Stressful environments often produce conflict, and conflict then creates more stress in the environment. You must act fast to intervene, as tension in the office rarely resolves itself. 

6. Be clear about expectations and roles.  

It’s very difficult for employees to remain on an even keel emotionally if they are unsure of what is expected of them. If a manager is often piling on work that isn’t technically in their job description, or an employee feels that they don’t know when they’re doing something wrong, this can create a whole new level of stress due to ‘shifting goalposts.’  

Be very clear about what you need from your team members, so everyone is on the same page.  

7. Create a support structure for those employees who are feeling under pressure.  

As a manager you should make it clear that you are there as a support system, but also make other options available- whether that’s chatting with HR, giving access to mental health support, or giving people time off for personal days when they feel they are becoming overwhelmed.  

As a manager, there is a great deal you can do to reduce work-related stress on your team. Which strategies will you start implementing today?  

Thanks,

Chris Atkinson

About Kinetic  

Kinetic pride ourselves on being the leading regional experts in the full range of recruitment solutions for the Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices industries.  

Kinetic understands the niche requirements for all specialisms of this ever-increasing regulated industry.  Wondering if your salary structure is correct in today’s market. Then download The Kinetic Salary and Employment Survey here.  

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