The impact of stress and anxiety on workplace performance, and why it’s an important managerial issue

We are of the distracted generation. Life with tablets, smartphones and 24 hours of connectivity has led to an “always on” culture. According to Professor Sir Cary Cooper of Manchester Business School, who has studied email and workplace stress, something like 40% of people wake up, and the first thing they do is check their email. For another 40%, it's the last thing they do at night. Personally, I could imagine the numbers being much higher. Reports are consistently showing that this instant and constant access to our work is causing us to be in worse mental health and far less productive.

The development of new models of management, such as empowerment and self-management, is a positive sign of increased decentralisation and more freedom for individuals. But is also places greater responsibilities on employees for the work environment as well as for managing their career life, which can potentially lead to stress. Of course, home life, relationships, money, health, and any other number of external factors can illicit stress, but as we know, work can be a huge part of peoples’ lives.

The positive side of stress is that small amounts of it can jump-start adrenalin and motivate employees to perform tasks at a higher level, or just more quickly in response to impending deadlines. However, an overwhelming workload, lack of peer support and too many demands at once, can contribute to a sense of frustration and panic that there isn't enough time to complete the work. And all this leads to problems with time management, relationships (inside and outside work), focus and health.

For many, workplace stress may feel so normal that they truly don’t realise the extent of it until they step away – either by taking a holiday or having time out. We live in an era where there is an expectation that everything will be done NOW, where corporates have consolidated jobs in a drive for profit, and the remaining workers are trying to manage an often-unreasonable number of competing priorities.

More than ever, stress – both recognising and responding to it – is an important managerial issue. As a manager in the 21st century, the key act of recognising a stressed employee is increasingly important if you want to maintain a healthy and productive workforce. Why? Because a stressed-out worker is often an ineffective worker, and unless you really want to see your employees crawl under their desk and assume the fetal position, it’s your job to recognise stress and intervene by putting in place numerous coping mechanisms and structures to help them.

Blogging4Jobs identified a number of ways to help employees manage stress:

Set up regular meetings

Schedule regular check-in meetings with your employees to go over what the employee is currently working on and find out if they need extra help or support. This is especially important if you manage a team of people who spend a lot of time working with minimal supervision. Your independent employees may be working to the point of exhaustion without you realising it if you do not regularly check in to see how they are doing.

Help delegate

If you notice that an employee is having a particularly difficult time managing stress, start by working on prioritising tasks and breaking projects down into more manageable bites. You can also be an advocate for that person and step in when others at the company are pressuring your employees to rush to get a task done. When they fail to delegate, do it for them. 

Provide regular positive feedback

Do not be the kind of manager who falls into the habit of only providing feedback when things do not go well. Workplace stress is not completely avoidable, but giving positive feedback can do a lot to help an employee know that all their time and energy was worth the effort.

Provide a wellness programme

Wellness programmes can be anything from providing access to a gym to setting up lunchtime running/walking clubs or nutrition talks. But an organisation might go another step and bring in a coach to support them through behavioural change to mitigate stress. A common theme I hear through my coaching is stress caused by lack of time, and often linked to lack of delegation. Not that I am suggesting the stress should just flow down the chain, but I’ve coached many senior managers who feel unable to delegate or speak out for fear they will be seen as being incompetent. Through great cognitive coaching, individuals can learn techniques to help manage these demands and reassert that all-important job control by knowing they have the social support required.

Coaching, as I’ve highlighted in previous posts, is not about providing employees or individuals with direct answers to their issues – in this case stress – rather it is about teaching self-awareness and helping them to identify stress and anxiety and aid discussions and actions to tackle the root issues.

It’s increasingly important to try and help your employees to acknowledge and manage stress, even before they may feel the true extent of it. Back in 2005, Rob Kelly – a psychotherapist with over 25 years clinical experience – developed the first iteration of something called the THRIVE programme. Testing a variety of simple psychological interventions he had been developing, with the help of a researcher at Cambridge University.

Now, the THRIVE programme has been recognised as turning lives around for individuals in business and their personal lives – and over the last ten years, Rob and his team have moved further and further away from the ‘medical model’ (waiting until someone is sick / ill / stressed and then trying to fix them) towards a ‘health model’ (giving people the skills and resources to manage their own mental well-being, so that they don’t become sick or ill). Encouraging employees to talk to a coach will provide them with psychological training that empowers them with the skills, insights and resources to to take control of their life and work.

Apply these practices as a manager or leader and you’ll find that your workforce can manage a higher level of stress, and thus an increased workload and/or increased productivity. Without the help of a good manager, and a great coach, don’t be surprised if sick days increase, relationships with other employees break down and work subsequently suffers.

I’d love to hear how you deal with stress: are you a manager who has specific techniques to help your employees? Do you have a particularly stressful job and have you found self-coping techniques? Have you ever been helped by cognitive coaching?

Mark.