Stress management is a factor that directly affects the work performance of employees and managers in business life. Stress can negatively affect the motivation, concentration and general health of employees and reduce work efficiency. For this reason, stress management is a basic skill that enables a person to be happier and more successful both at work and in private life.
By applying effective stress management techniques, it is possible to improve the overall success of both individuals and the organisation. How? Let’s first take a brief look at the causes of work stress. Then, let’s take a look at the methods to be used while dealing with stress.
What Causes Work Stress?
Stress has become an inevitable element in today’s rapidly changing business world. Intense work tempo, constantly increasing expectations and uncertainties can create a heavy stress burden on the shoulders of employees. Stress management is an effective and necessary process for solving these problems in working life.
One of the biggest causes of stress is time pressure. Employees feel anxious about completing the tasks assigned to them within the specified time. The ever-increasing workload can cause individuals to feel constantly tired and experience burnout syndrome over time. This situation can lead to an increase in errors by making stress management difficult.
Disputes between colleagues, managers or customers and conflicts in the working environment create a constantly tense atmosphere at work. This can increase employee stress levels. Poorly managed labour relations make cooperation and teamwork difficult, which can harm overall work productivity.
Work-life imbalance is caused by the inability to maintain a healthy boundary between work and private life. If employees continue to think about work in their non-work time, this can negatively affect both physical and mental health. Thinking about work during rest periods can increase stress levels.
What are Stress Management Techniques in Business Life?
The most important element among stress management techniques is to prioritise your work. Listing your tasks in order of priority and allocating enough time for each of them makes your workload more manageable.
Before you start working, you can create a workflow for yourself by differentiating between important and non-urgent tasks. At the same time, you can determine in advance how much time your tasks will take so that you can alleviate the anxiety of completing the work. At this stage, using time management applications such as Chainly app will help you better manage your task completion times.
You can apply some stress-reducing methods within the work stress scale to increase both organisational and individual success. An article published by Michigan State Universityemphasies the importance of taking a break from work in managing stress. Accordingly, it is understood that taking a break has a positive effect on the mental health of employees while reducing work stress.
The Pomodoro technique can be a good guide to relieve stress at work. This technique recommends 25 minutes of working time followed by a short rest period of 5 minutes. Each 25-minute work period is called a ‘Pomodoro’ and after four Pomodoros, a 30-minute break is taken to refresh the mind and for a longer lasting renewal. By using this technique, you too can streamline your break times and significantly improve your stress management.
How to Manage Stress?
Stress, which arises as a result of increased work demands and pressure on the employee, negatively affects almost everyone in business life. Factors such as long working hours, overtime, insufficient time pressure, mobbing can cause this. Stress management can beachieved with some methods to be applied in the workplace, as well as with the care that the person shows to himself/herself.
Physical activity plays a leading role in coping with stress. To put the mechanism behind this process simply, when exercising, the body releases endorphins, known as happiness hormones. This helps you feel happier and more positive. You can make an energetic start to the day by determining a suitable exercise routine for yourself. For example, by taking a brisk walk in the morning before going to work or, if possible, cycling to work, you can give yourself an advantage in managing stress throughout the day.
How to relieve work stress?
A healthy balance between work and personal life is one of the ways to reduce stress. In order to lead a balanced life, it is important that the hours spent at work as well as personal time are filled with quality and meaningful activities. Spending time outside of work with activities that are meaningful to you and with your loved ones can have a positive impact on your mental health.
Positive communication in business life increases the performance of employees and makes it easier to overcome the difficulties that occur with it. General job satisfaction helps to increase personal happiness and thus the negativities caused by work stress are eliminated.
Supportive relationships at work have a significant impact on stress management. Such relationships not only provide moral support in difficult times, but also make it easier to overcome challenging tasks. In challenging projects, the support that the employee will receive from his/her managers ensures that the process is completed more efficiently. In order to make a positive difference in personal and professional life; support such as stress management training in working life should be requested and techniques should be applied completely.
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