An employee walks into an office. He goes to his cubicle, turns on his computer, and starts working. After an hour, the entire office hears a blood-curling shout. The same employee is now experiencing a mental breakdown due to stress. Before you know it, everyone in the office is now worried, gradually slowing down productivity.
It’s a scenario that is happening in offices worldwide. Breakdowns due to stress are becoming a massive problem in every country. For example, in China, there is an ongoing problem with the ‘996’ culture which means that employees are forced to work from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. It’s an unrealistic and unhealthy amount of work that leads to mental and physical health problems.
Every company in the United States must strive to avoid this culture if they want to avoid the scenario outlined above. Here’s what you need to do to ensure that you’re safe from an office stress meltdown:
Overtime
Millennials are now spending more time in the office than ever. The average workweek for a millennial is now 47 hours. This is because we live in a constantly connected world, and companies are now expecting employees to be available 24/7. While this may seem like an excellent way to get ahead, it’s leading to more stress and burnout.
Discouraging overtime work means not paying employees if they work overtime in your office. Instead, it’s about finding ways to encourage a work-life balance. You can do this by ensuring that employees have the time and space to take breaks during the day, enabling them to use their vacation days, and understanding if they need to leave early for an appointment.
One way to implement all these things is to treat overtime as the exception and never the rule. Another way is cross-training your employees. You can do this by having employees train each other on how to do their job. This way, if someone needs to take a day off, someone else can fill in for them.
Mental Health
Mental health is just as important as physical health. Mental health problems are one of the leading causes of stress in the workplace. Employees dealing with anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues are more likely to experience burnout.
It’s why it’s so crucial for companies to support mental health in the workplace. This can be done by providing employees with access to counseling services, offering flexible work hours, and creating a culture of open communication.
Dental Health Problems
Did you know that half of employee presenteeism is caused by dental problems? Unfortunately, not many employers know this, but it’s time that you start emphasizing the importance of dental health in the workplace.
There are several ways to do this. First, you can provide employees with access to dental insurance. It will help them get the care they need to avoid stress and absenteeism.
You can choose to partner with dental clinics for this. For example, Take 2 Dental Implant Centers are willing to help your employees with implants. It can bring great joy to your senior employees who might be lacking some teeth at this point in their lives. In addition, by partnering with dental services such as this one, you can drastically reduce the number of days needed for dental operations while saving money on dental costs.
You can also offer on-site dental clinics or discounts at local dentists. Finally, you can educate employees on the importance of dental hygiene and how it can impact their overall health.
Overworked Employees
One of the main reasons why employees are stressed is because of how much work they have to do. 43% of employees say they’re stressed because they’re overworked.
This is why it’s so important to hire more employees. By hiring more staff, you can distribute the workload more evenly and avoid putting too much pressure on any employee. Additionally, you can create a culture of collaboration by ensuring that employees have the opportunity to work together on projects.
You can also start creating assistant jobs for managerial positions. These assistant jobs will help to take some of the pressure off of managers and allow them to focus on more critical tasks. By doing this, you can also convince some bottom-line employees to sta d up and take an apprenticeship.
When there are more employe s in your workplace, more people can cover for one another. Moreover, everyone will feel like they have a valuable role in the company.
The workplace can be a stressful environment. However, there are a few things that you can do to reduce stress in your office. Doing these things can create a more productive and positive work environment.
