Strategies to Manage Workplace Stress

You’re at your office desk at 11 pm on a Friday night, hurriedly eating a slice of cold pizza because a presentation that was due six hours ago is nowhere close to finishing, when a new mail from a client pops up on your laptop screen as the tenth message from home beeps on your mobile.

Learning more about what stress is, its signs, symptoms, and how and when you experience it can help you recognise and address it well in time. This is particularly important for people for whom workplace stress may have become so routine that they no longer notice its adverse effects.

Replace Unhealthy Coping Strategies with Healthy Ones

Adopting healthy coping strategies is likely to help you manage and prevent stress. These include exercising, getting adequate sleep, having a healthy diet and limiting your caffeine and alcohol intake.

Establish Work-Life Balance

Establishing clear boundaries between your personal and professional life can help you feel more balanced. For instance, you could avoid using your phone during meals or checking office emails once you reach home. You may also restrict office related work to a specific place at home.

Relaxation

Incorporating relaxation practices such as meditation, deep breathing and mindfulness in your daily routine could help reduce and prevent stress.

Alter Your Expectations

Setting realistic expectations from yourself and from others at work, rather than being perfectionist, could help you turn stress into healthy occupational demands.

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Stress can sometimes manifest itself as sudden, disproportionate or frequent anger and irritation, among other unpleasant emotional states, causing misunderstandings or differences with others at work. If you experience unpleasant emotions often, and intensely, it might help you to try relaxation techniques or routinely engage in any activity that you find helpful.

Communicate Clearly

When working on team projects, discussing expectations and styles of working could be helpful in minimising conflicts, thereby reducing the possibility of a stressful situation. Seeking help and feedback whenever required from your supervisor/colleagues is another helpful strategy for stress reduction and prevention.

Build Healthy Relationships

Maintaining healthy relationships at and outside of work and seeking support when needed is helpful in stress reduction and prevention.

In conjunction with these strategies you could also utilise any employee wellness services that your employer provides. However, in case you find that the suggested strategies are not working for you, it could be because the stress is severe or that there are other underlying concerns. You might find counseling or therapy helpful in enabling you to identify, understand, and cope with your concerns.