Category: Employee wellness

woman sitting in front of macbook
December 12, 2021
Blog, Employee wellness

Employee Stress: How You Can Help During the Holidays

Discussions about employee stress often focus on what the individual can do to help themself, but have you thought about how you can help your employees manage their holiday stress?

Chronically high stress is a key ingredient in the recipe for burnout. As such, it’s important for managers to recognize the signs and the areas where there is the possibility for them to contribute to or subtract from that stress. 

Here are some simple, yet powerful ways you can start doing that.

Assisting with Employee Stress Management

  • Check in with employees regularly. You should have a good idea of their workload and their stress levels. Check in with them to see how they’re doing and look for nonverbal cues.
  • Redistribute tasks as necessary. Following from tip # 1, if workloads are too heavy for some, redistribute as is appropriate and doable. Also, help employees prioritize. Some things may need to be back-burned for the time-being and you need to communicate that it is OK when that happens.
  • Infuse some fun into the season. I don’t mean the obligatory office “fun” folks roll their eyes at. Seek out the activities and events employees actually enjoy and host those, whether it’s a Secret Snowflake gift exchange, a surprise lunch on the company dime, or in-office chair massage. 
  • Foster an environment that prioritizes mental health. Encourage employees to take their lunch break. Don’t “ding” employees for using PTO. Ask them about how they’re doing and show genuine interest in their responses. Remind them of the resources they have available to support them, such as EAPs. And model work-life balance to them through your own actions and choices.
  • Give staff some liberty in how they work. Gone are the days when seats had to be kept warm until 5 pm. Employees want flexibility and trust and they aren’t tolerating micromanaging. It’s important for management to be open to different ways of achieving the same goals and tasks. Being able to work from home and get the work done when it works best for them can go a really long way towards keeping stress at bay.

As I’ve said before, employee burnout doesn’t happen in a vacuum and it’s critical for management to step in to avoid it as well.

person in brown long sleeve shirt holding black handled scissors
December 12, 2021
Blog, Employee wellness

Managing Holiday Stress

Managing daily stress presents its own challenges, but coupling that with holiday stress can be overwhelming. Stress management is critical for our health as uncontrolled stress has been linked to health conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, gastrointestinal issues, depression and anxiety, and even diabetes. All of this is thanks to a little hormone called cortisol. While an integral part of our stress response, cortisol also plays important roles in a number of other body processes. Thus, when chronic stress raises our cortisol levels for long periods, other processes suffer as well.

How to Manage Holiday Stress

When strategizing about how to manage your stress, remember that there are 2 parts to it:

  1. Limiting how much stress you experience
  2. Mitigating the effects of the stress you can’t eliminate

So, let’s talk about how to manage your holiday stress through these lenses.

Limiting How Much Stress You Experience

  • Cut out the non-essentials. This time of year, we tend to heap a bunch of extras onto our to-do lists. And a lot of those things we don’t have to do and we don’t want to do. Take a good look at your calendar and to-do list and ask yourself why those items are on there. If they aren’t essential, cut yourself some slack and let them go.
  • Enforce your boundaries. People pleasing is a major cause of stress and having strong boundaries is the antidote. Don’t be afraid to say “no” to the things you don’t have to take on that will cause you more stress.
  • Plan ahead. Nothing worsens a stressful situation like feeling completely out of control of it. Look at the items you have control over and plan for them. Make lists, put it is a schedule, and avoid procrastinating so you’re not scrambling at the last minute.

Mitigating the Effects of Stress

  • Get sufficient sleep. We need sleep in order to recover and for our hormone levels to balance out. Do what you can to ensure you get your 7-9 hours each night. This could include: making sure your bedroom is a cool, dark, and restful space; having a bedtime routine; and stopping screen time 1-2 hours before bed.
  • Make time for you. Self-care is the way we recharge. Making even just a little time to do something that you enjoy every day can go a long way for mitigating stress. Going for a walk, making a craft, journaling are all types of self-care. Really, the only requirements are that, 1. you enjoy it, and 2. it’s not another to-do list item.
  • Don’t forget to enjoy the season. At the end of the day, the whole point in this holiday season craziness is that we have fun and enjoy time with those we love. So make sure to squeeze that in.
people woman relaxation laptop
October 20, 2021
Blog, Employee wellness

Employee Burnout Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum

Employee burnout is a hot topic right now, as it very well should be. A July 2021 survey by The Hartford found that 55% of US employees reported feeling always burned out while 16% said they often feel burned out. And study after study has shown that levels of burnout in the American workforce are all-time highs with no signs of dropping. We also know that burnout is one of the factors fueling our current Great Resignation in which employees are leaving their jobs in droves.

At this point in time, if you are an employer or manager who does not realize that employee burnout is a very real issue, something is wrong. Whether employee burnout is real isn’t the question. Rather, the question is: what do we do about it?

As a wellness provider and an employee wellness program provider, specifically, I can say with confidence that employee burnout does not happen in a vacuum. It’s not an isolated incident and it is not the sole responsibility of the employee. The employee does not choose to wallow in stress and burn out. Management plays a critical and massive role in both creating and preventing burnout. So a few webinars on self-care and stress management for employees simply will not cut it.

What Causes Employee Burnout?

A number of factors contribute to employee burnout, but at its most basic burnout occurs when the burden is too great and the outlets too little. Or, as Emily and Amelia Nagoski explained in their 2019 Book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Code, burnout occurs when we become stuck in between our stress response and stress resolution. Something must happen to break us out of that jail and resolve that stress response.

So what gets us stuck?

Causes of employee burnout often have little to do with the employees themselves:

  • Having too great a workload and/or too few resources to deal with it
  • High-conflict work environments/lack of community in the workplace
  • A lack of trust or recognition from supervisors
  • Ineffective or poor management
  • Unclear roles

These are issues that management is responsible for. These are not issues that employees can address or fix. And no amount of meditation or nature walks will remedy them.

Related to these contributors to burnout are factors such as:

  • lack of social support
  • lack of boundaries between work and home life, and
  • poor stress management

What Can Management Do?

Giving employees tools to manage their stress is important – I should know, since I provide those webinars. But it cannot end there. Management must demonstrate to their employees that they are supported and their well-being matters. In this day and age, if an employee doesn’t believe that to be the case, they are walking out the door.

It Starts with You

As a manager, you can model behavior to help mitigate burnout. For example, implement boundaries between work and home life for yourself and adhere to them. Don’t keep it a secret when you take a mental health day or do some type of self-care. Make sure your employees know that you do these things. This demonstrates that it is acceptable for them to do the same. Then, take it a step further and make expectations for employee availability explicit. If you don’t expect them to answer emails at 9 o’clock at night, tell them that…and make sure you’re not emailing them at 9 pm either. This creates a company culture in which caring for your well-being is not only accepted but expected.

But modeling these behaviors isn’t helpful if you aren’t creating an environment conducive to employees utilizing those behaviors as well. As a manager, you need to have open and honest conversations with your employees, even the quiet ones. You need to check in with the regularly. You should know what their workloads are like and whether they are properly resourced for them. You should how they’re feeling. And you MUST be able to offer flexibility to support them. That can mean redistributing the workload, sitting down with them to help them prioritize, reallocating resources to them, etc. It also means that you need to be aware if and when you needlessly contribute to that workload through unnecessary or drawn-out meetings, micromanaging, excessive email or phone communication, etc. And you must reel that in when it happens.

As a manager, it’s critical that you always have your finger on the pulse of your workforce so that you can see the early signs of burnout and take action to mitigate it as best as possible.

woman seated at computer
March 1, 2021
Blog, Employee wellness

About Your Work From Home Space…

What does your work from home space look like? One of the most common issues that I hear from employees now working from home is that they very often feel like they’re living at work rather than working from home. This can significantly impact their stress levels in negative ways, leading to burnout and even physical ailments. Luckily, there is something you can do today to start to improve this situation.

Work Space vs Living Space

I’m sure you are familiar with the saying “your home is your castle.” Home is supposed to be your safe space, the place where you relax, recover, unwind. But when we are working in those living spaces, they lose that relaxing feel.

Ideally, you should have a workspace that is separate from your living space and the two do not cross. However, this is not possible for many of us, in which case, we need to get a little creative to separate the two.

The Bedroom is not a Work from Home Space

First and foremost, your workspace should not be your bedroom. If your home is your castle, then your bedroom is the keep – the strongest most protected part. This is your most important rest space. When you start working in your bedroom, or worse, in your bed, you stop associating that space with rest and start associating it with work and all of the stress and anxiety that may go with it. This translates into poor sleep, low energy, higher stress levels, and more. Once that association is created, it’s difficult to change it back.

Working in Your Living Space

Crossing the bedroom off your list may leave you with your kitchen, dining room, or living room as your shared work and living space. In this situation, you can set the scene for your work day versus your non-work hours in order to create some separation.

Setting Up Your Work from Home Space

When it is time for you to work, set that space up to resemble work. Set all your work materials up nearby. If you have some things from your desk in the office, like a certain mug full of pens, setting those out is helpful. Next, remove as many distractions unique to your home as you can (by turning off the TV, for example). Finally, try to create a work routine. This could mean getting up at the same time every day, actually preparing a lunch for yourself for later, or setting a schedule for checking email, etc. Taking these steps will help mimic a routine workday at the office and put you in a work mindset, making you more focused and productive.

Setting Up Your Living Space

Once your work day is up, it’s time to convert that work space back to a living space. Put away everything that you used to create your working space in the morning. As long as those items are in view, you will find it more difficult to “switch off.” Plus, if your laptop is away, it will be a lot harder to answer emails at 8 pm! If possible, replace some of those work items with “homie” items – whether they be scented candles, family pictures, etc. Creating a routine can play an important role here as well. Set a hard stop time at the end of the day and create a ritual to mark the transition from work time to home time. For example, take a walk around the block every day at the end of the day to mimic your old home commute. Taking each of these steps will help transition you back into your home mindset so you will be better able to relax, switch off, and unwind.

Many of us have found working from home far more stressful and challenging then we could have imagined. While this may be our reality for a while, there are, fortunately, little tricks we can use to help mitigate that stress.

Since work from home is our new normal, many employers have started offering wellness webinars to support their employees from home. Be sure to check out Well & Simple’s employee wellness offerings to help support your workforce!

- Theme by Grace Themes

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