Ways In Which An Employee Can Help Reduce Stress At Work

There are plenty of things you can do to reduce your overall stress levels, if it starts interfering with your work performance, health and/or personal life, it is time to take action and regain a sense of control at your work.

Tips That Can Help Employees Reduce Stress At Work:

1. Reach Out: Sometimes the best thing you can do to reduce your stress is by reaching out to others, maybe to your colleagues, to your peer group or seeking support from an EAP service in your organization.
   1. Turn Towards Your Co-Workers For Support: Having a good support system at the workplace helps in buffering from the negative effects of job stress.
   2. Build New Relationships: Meeting and interacting with new people with similar interests by joining a club, or by actively volunteering for some causes helps in building new relationships which immensely reduces stress levels and brings pleasure.
2. Pay Attention To Exercise & Nutrition: When you’re supporting your health with good nutrition and regular exercise, you become stronger and more resilient to stress.
   1. Exercise Regularly: Exercising regularly for 30 minutes boosts serotonin levels in our body, making us feel lighter and less stressed. Physical and rhythmic movements can help you regain your balance and reduce stress. Taking frequent breaks to move away from a stressful situation is also considered healthy.
   2. Consume Light Stress Relief Food: Food choices have a huge impact on how you feel throughout the day. Consuming small, frequent and healthy meals can help your body maintain an even level of blood sugar and focus, and prevents mood swings. Low blood sugar, on the other hand, can make you feel anxious and irritable while eating too much can make you lethargic.
3. Keeping A Consistent Sleep Schedule:
   1. Take time off screen-time: Turn off all of your smart-phones, computers, TV, tablets one hour before bedtime. The light emitted from all these electronics suppresses your body’s production of melatonin and can severely disrupt your sleep.
   2. Don’t Cut On Your Sleeping Hours: Aim for 8 hours of regular sleep per night- the minimum amount of sleep most adults require to operate their best.
   3. Eliminate Noise & Light From Your Bedroom: Use blackout curtains or a sleep mask, turn away from your phone and listen to a soothing sound for better sleep.
4. Indulge In Time Management
   1. Plan Your Day Out In The Morning: instead of worrying about how your day is going to look like and being uncertain to start the day, plan your day ahead of your time. All work and no play is a recipe for burnout. Try to find a balance between work and family life, social activities and solitary pursuits, daily responsibilities and downtime.
   2. Establish Healthier Boundaries: It is important to maintain periods where you’re not working or thinking about work. Many of us feel pressured to be available 24 hours a day or keep checking our smart-phones for work-related stuff.
5. Break Bad Habits That Lead To Workplace Stress: Stress at the workplace with negative thoughts and behaviour makes the employees feel more overwhelmed. Turning those negative thoughts around, it can help in reducing employer-induced stress.
   1. Resist Perfectionism: Aim to do your best because no one asks more than that. When you set unrealistic goals for yourself, you’re setting yourself up to fall short.
   2. Skimp Negative Thinking: Focusing on the negative aspect of every situation and interaction, you’ll start draining yourself of all the energy and the motivation you’ve got. Try thinking positively about your work. Avoid having unnecessary arguments with your co-workers and treat yourself whenever you do something good.
   3. Find A Way To Lighten The Mood: Using humour during a stressful situation helps to relieve stress in the workplace. Whenever going gets tough, and you start taking work too seriously, find a way to lighten the mood in the room by sharing a joke.

Conclusion

There are many ways to reduce stress, some of which were mentioned above in this article. Although job stress will never completely be eliminated, strategies like altering one’s lifestyle and be able to manage time well are effective in reducing its occurrence and improving the productivity and morale of employees in all types of organization.