Latest updated: 19 January 2023

Today is Stress Awareness Day, which is an excellent opportunity for employers to think through how they can work to prevent stress, and for employees to review their own situation. Stress is a big and growing problem in the workplace, but with the right knowledge, good policies, and routines in the workplace, it can be counteracted before it takes root. The benefits of working to prevent stress cannot be overstated.

Requires knowledge and competence

Stress Awareness Day can therefore be seen as an excellent opportunity to review the stress prevention work, evaluate it and discuss it with colleagues. How high is the degree of stress at your workplace today? What new stress factors may have emerged since you last discussed and addressed the issue? What additional measures can you take to prevent the negative and dangerous form of stress?

To be able to prevent stress, one must above all make sure that there is sufficient knowledge about stress and stress symptoms in the organization, and not least among managers at all levels.

A manager should hold continuous conversations with their employees about how they feel and how they experience their work situation, and should also be able to identify stress symptoms at an early stage. Symptoms can be both physical, cognitive, behavior-related and emotional.

Physical symptoms can consist of the employee looking tired and worn out, suffering from minor illnesses (such as colds) more often, complaining of headaches and insomnia, and so on. The cognitive, behavior-related and emotional symptoms can range from simple mistakes or a deterioration of memory to beginning to withdraw from social contexts in the workplace despite working very long days. Mood swings, depression and lack of motivation are also common symptoms.

When a manager discovers problems of that kind, they must act, in a respectful but yet resolute way. They must talk to the employee and try to find the source of the problem. Then they must also be open to the fact that stress may be due to something that the manager themselves wants to defend, for example the distribution of tasks and responsibilities within the team or the demands made on the individual employee. Even the manager's own way of communicating can be a culprit in the drama. It is therefore important that the manager is unassuming and open-minded, so that they do not bury their head in the sand when it becomes obvious what the stress is due to. Long-term, all parties will win by addressing the causes of stress.

The next step is therefore to both short-term and long-term address the problems that cause the stress, as well as offering the employee the help and support needed. This can include coaching, rehabilitation, and various forms of self-help. The employee may also need to work on themselves and consider any lifestyle changes that may be necessary.

However, it is unlikely that stress is only caused by the employee themselves and their own lifestyle or personality. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the entire operation and talk with the rest of the team about the various sources of stress that may be present in the operation. Identify the faults and deficiencies that exist in everything from work distribution to communication procedures, address these and also ensure that employees receive the right type of support to handle the demands of modern work life.

Preventing stress may feel both laborious and costly, but if done in the right way and with the right knowledge and skills, it will lead in the long run to healthier and more engaged employees, and thus a healthier and more productive organization.