On average, you, as an employee, spend 35 hours a week at your workplace. That comes down to 84,365+ hours in your lifetime. We spend a significant portion of our lives in our workplace, surrounded by our managers and peers. As such, your workplace is bound to have a lasting impact on you.
A survey from LinkedIn ahead of World Mental Health Day 2021, which was carried out to address work stress prevalence in India, revealed the following –
- In India, 55% of working professionals report feeling stressed at work. (Total respondents = 3,881 professionals)
- The top 3 stressors identified among employees were –
- Balancing work and personal needs (34%)
- Not making enough money (32%)
- Slow career advancement (25%)
- There is a significant gap between what employees require and what employers provide to manage stress.
The increased expectations and the blurring lines between work and home due to hybrid and remote work models have significantly increased stressors. What can we do here? Understand how to manage stress and anxiety at the workplace. But before we delve deeper into it, let’s understand the sources of stress and anxiety.
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What Causes Stress and Anxiety?
A healthy amount of stress, or optimal stress, can prove to be productive and helpful. It provides a fresh perspective on how to arrange and shape your reality so that you may respond healthily to any demands or stressors in your life. However, anything that exceeds these optimal levels can hamper how you deal with and react to stressors. This, in turn, may make you feel anxious.
Here are a few reasons or sources of stress and anxiety at the workplace —
- The inclination to mistrust oneself and feel utterly inadequate.
- Lack of solid relationships
- Coping with a challenging boss
- Irrational or unclear expectations
- Lacks sufficient staff.
- Overly competitive environment
- Inadequate instructions
- Job insecurity
- Limited growth opportunities and more.
How to Manage Stress and Anxiety at the Workplace?
Now that you know what some of the possible causes of stress and anxiety are, here’s how you can try to manage them –
1. Identify and Track Your Stressors
Maintain a journal where you can track stressful situations over the course of a few weeks and how you react to them. Note down your thoughts, emotions, and the possible reason behind them. Ask yourself –
- What do you have in mind?
- How does it feel?
- Where do the stresses manifest themselves?
After recording and tracking stress, identify trends and try reducing or creating a new response to the trigger. Identifying trends will help you understand how your emotions, their impact your behaviour and help you regulate them better.
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2. Set Boundaries
Setting clear work-life boundaries is crucial in our always-online society. Setting and managing expectations, agreeing to reasonable timelines, and communicating boundaries help in better management of personal time. For instance, avoid working during meals, block time for personal commitments, or limit your home conversation regarding work to 30 minutes maximum.
3. Embrace Grounding Habits
This is perhaps the most effective way to manage stress and anxiety. Grounding habits include regulating breathing with breathing exercises. Watch and control how you breathe. You can begin with simple techniques like square breathing (box breathing) and go on to try visual or auditory meditation.
If you don’t like the idea of meditating, you could choose a hobby that makes you feel calm and grounded, like playing an instrument, dancing, painting, doodling, or simply writing.
4. Seek Help
Support is everywhere, helping you manage stress and develop healthy coping techniques. Whether you’re an employee or an employer, you can practice these methods. Employers can even introduce mental health courses on stress and anxiety.
Practice these methods whether as an employee or employer. Introduce mental health certificate courses on stress and anxiety as an employer.
You may practice these methods irrespective of whether you are an employee or an employer. You can introduce relevant mental health certificate courses on stress and anxiety as an employer.
The British Safety Council India offers comprehensive Digital Learning Courses that you may introduce as a part of your workplace health and safety initiative. Some of these are –
- Managing Stress Within Your Team
- Mental Health: Start the Conversation
- Mental Health: Manage the Conversation
- Stress Awareness and more.
Take a step towards promoting good mental health in your workspace.
