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Employee stress in the workplace can be a productivity killer, and it reduces employee enjoyment as well. As a leader in the workplace, you benefit from working toward creating a productive environment for your employees. Using team building activities to reduce employee stress just might be the ticket to creating a unified workplace.
Workplace stress is not a new. Several well-written articles offer suggestions for employees to reduce their workplace stress. This article references the following articles: 5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Reduce Stress at Work, 10 Work Stress Reduction Tips, 7 Easy Ways to Avoid Burnout, and Your work-life balance hangs in these four quadrants.
Stress in the workplace may not be completely avoidable, but by utilizing team-building activities and offering these tips to your employees, you can greatly reduce the stress levels.
Focus on attainable goals. Setting high expectations of ourselves and of others is a good thing, but sometimes goals are unrealistic and they actually decrease productivity and team morale. According to the article 5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Reduce Stress at Work, it is important to focus on realistic and attainable goals and to let go of goals that are unrealistic. And this is where team-building activities can help an organization. With the help of a team-building consultant, organizations are able to identify employees’ strengths and weaknesses and build effective teams to achieve company goals.
Accept the stress. Stress really is a fact of life, and sometimes it is unavoidable. In these cases, the article 10 Work Stress Reduction Tips suggests that you accept that there is stress in your life. Once you accept that it is there, you can create ways to work through or move past the stress. And the same goes for leaders. If you know that your employees are stressed, accept it and create ways to help them deal with it.
Unplug before bed. Cell phones are wonderful tools, but according to 7 Easy Ways to Avoid Burnout, all of our devices can keep us awake and thinking about work. The article suggests taking a step back before bed, and putting all of your devices into airplane mode. You are cutting yourself off from communications and allowing yourself to take a break. By allowing yourself to step away, you will likely feel refreshed and energized in the morning, ready to tackle your workday.
Focus on rewarding and fulfilling work. According to the article Your work-life balance hangs in these four quadrants, there are four quadrants that work can fall under: rewarding work, fun and purpose, drudgery and tasks. In order to remain committed to your work, you need to have more rewarding work and fun and purpose, and less drudgery and tasks. Leaders can lead their team members to these top two quadrants by utilizing team building activities that re-energize employees, give a fun break in their day, and a purpose to meet company and personal goals.
Stress is an unfortunate work aspect for many people, but with passion and a clear purpose, employees can experience less stress and increase their productivity. With the help of team building activities, leaders can help their employees to leave the stress behind and reach their goals.
Copyright TIGERS Success Series by Dianne Crampton
About TIGERS Success Series, Inc.
TIGERS Success Series is an Oregon team building consultant that has been helping leaders build high performance teams and collaborative work communities for over 20 years. TIGERS offers team building licensing and certification, team building events and team building activities along with ways to track and measure the team development process.
