When your employees walk in the door each day they don’t leave their stress behind. It competes for their attention to their job duties as well as to their safety. And stress is often compounded by pressures at work.
Employee stress is nothing new, but it certainly is getting a lot of attention these days. American workers are up to their ears in job insecurity, disappearing savings, kids moving in, aging parents, higher insurance co-pays, and fears of viruses and terror attacks. The list goes on and on.
Why should you care?
As a safety professional, you know the mantra well: To have a safe workplace you have to develop a culture of safety.
Dave Logan believes the same is true about stress reduction. Logan is a University of Southern California professor and managing partner of the consulting firm CultureSync. He is also co-author of the book Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build Thriving Organizations. Logan believes that the culture a work group exhibits is responsible for the level of stress and depression employees experience in the workplace.
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Raise the Level, Lower the Stress
The lowest level is stage 1, characterized by the feeling that “life stinks” and that a person can do whatever it takes to even the score, including acting out. At this level, says Logan, people experience stress, depression, anger, and even violent incidents. If there is a loner in the group who is suffering from stress or worse, the culture does little to encourage other members to reach out.
In stage 2, the thinking is “my life stinks” but there is some hope that things may improve overall. Managers spend a lot of time telling people what to do and because of their lack of autonomy, individuals may appear angry and beaten down. Logan says mentoring can help employees at this level reach stage 3.
Stage 3 thinking can be described as, “I’m great and you’re not.” This type of culture is common among knowledge workers in fields such as sales, law, medicine, and academia. Workers may feel rewarded for their values and achievements, but competition is strong and the group is not cohesive.
“We’re great!” is stage 4 thinking. Members of a group acknowledge common values, but they’re often united against something or someone else, like another department or an outside competitor.
At stage 5, the highest level of workplace culture, members of the group are “all hands on deck.” They assist one another in diverse ways. If an individual appears antisocial, troubled, or simply stressed out, others are quick to reach out to assist, thus preventing the kinds of acting out more likely at lower levels. The social interaction in the group is robust and helpful. The thinking is: “What’s our highest aspiration and how can we positively change the world?” People at stage 5 feel connected, less stressed, and less prone to depression.
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What Does Stress Look Like?
Although people respond to feeling stressed and overwhelmed in different ways, there are some general warning signs—for example, feeling anxious or depressed, apathy and loss of interest in work, fatigue, headache or stomach problems, withdrawal, and use of drugs or alcohol.
Many of the commonly recommended methods of managing stress are similar to the practices recommended for good general health. They include:
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Getting regular aerobic exercise
- Making food choices that help maintain an even level of blood sugar in the body
- Drinking alcohol in moderation and avoiding tobacco products
- Getting enough sleep
- Prioritizing and organizing one’s life, for example, by not over-committing, planning regular breaks, and delegating responsibility
- Breaking bad habits such as expecting perfection from oneself and others, and falling into the pattern of negative thinking
In addition to publicizing those strategies, you can help employees manage stress by taking steps such as:
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Improving communication with employees and clearly defining their responsibilities
- Consulting teams about how work is scheduled and performed
- Offering rewards and incentives, including praise
- Cultivating a friendly social climate by providing opportunities for interaction and establishing a zero-tolerance policy for harassment
Tomorrow, we’ll continue with workplace stress and highlight a different approach by a workplace stress consultant whose clients include high-visibility organizations such as NASA, General Electric, the U.S. Army, and Stanford University Medical School.
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You can’t fix hazards you don’t know about. As we discussed in yesterday’s Advisor, regular work area inspections are a highly effective way to identify and correct hazards.