relievers from your wellness arsenal. Employees appreciate such efforts, which can bolster your employer brand. But unless you also try to prevent workplace stress in the first place, you may as well be serving food past its expiration date and then offering an antacid.
To truly prevent work-related stress, it’ s important to ponder the role you might be playing in creating it. Let’ s look at what really stresses out employees, and what you can do about it.
Money Matters It should come as no surprise that people get stressed over finances. Less than half of employees believe they are fairly compensated for the work they do, and more than a third feel they are undercompensated. Your goal, then, is not to convince employees they’ re being paid enough( as if!)— it is to pay them fairly. And then explain what“ fairly” means. That entails conducting benchmarking and salary studies to ensure:
Internal equity to compensate people according to the relative value of their jobs in the organization; employees want to feel that their performance and job differences sensibly match differences in compensation External equity to make sure your company’ s compensation levels are at least comparable with those of other organizations in your labor market Furthermore, fairness and transparency go hand in hand. Don’ t overlook the importance of communicating your compensation philosophy. Don’ t overlook the importance of communicating your compensation philosophy.
No, repeating that sentence was not a typo. It’ s to drive the point that uncertainty and lack of knowledge around compensation decisions often create more anxiety than the paycheck itself. Simply put, there’ s no such thing as too much communication when talking to people about their pay.( That’ s why you should use multiple methods, such as direct communication, individualized total compensation statements, employee self-service technology, etc.)
It’ s About Time More than half of U. S. employees feel overworked or overwhelmed at least some of the time. What’ s more, 91 percent of people say they work more than 40 hours a week. All of which leads to stress.
PTO is not the answer. Sure, it can help alleviate stress, but again, it’ s a Band-Aid that gets ripped off the moment people return to work. Besides, about a quarter of people say they don’ t use all of their vacation time.
Nor is this about work-life balance. Yes, it’ s great to offer flexibility around when and where work gets done. But such accommodations won’ t address the heart of what’ s really stressing people— not enough time to get work done. So rather than trying to squeeze 10 hours of work into five, consider whether you need to set more realistic expectations, while also helping your people work more efficiently.
For starters, think about leveraging technology geared to reduce timeconsuming administrative tasks so that people can work more effectively— and on projects that interest them. After all, 92 percent of employees base work satisfaction on opportunities to use their skills and abilities.
SSA( Safety, Support, Autonomy) No, we’ re not talking about Social Security here!
Safety: Employees get stressed when they worry about negative consequences. People need psychological safety, often defined as“ being able to show and employ one’ s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status, or career.” In other words, employees need to feel like they can take intelligent risks at work without fear of going to the principal’ s office.
At the core of creating psychological safety is tolerating mistakes.
Actually, that’ s not entirely true. You don’ t want to tolerate errors so much as welcome them, even embrace them at times. Doing so demonstrates
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