How to kick workplace Stress out of your life.
Updated: Aug 29, 2019
Stress is one of the leading factors in damaging the lives of humans. Ongoing, chronic stress, can cause or exacerbate many serious health problems, including: Depression, anxiety, and personality disorders. Stress can even result in
heart attacks, and strokes.
One of the ways to manage stress is coaching. It is essential for our development and having an external support system generates better results at work and improves health and well-being.
Approximately 46% of workers find their jobs extraordinarily stressful, and some of the leading causes of stress are 20% juggling work, and personal lives. 28% are issues relating to other people and 6% job security (The American Institute of Stress).
In the UK the numbers are roughly the same in 2016 40% of all workplace illnesses were related to stress (ACAS 2016).
So what exactly is stress and how can we use coaching to reduce it?
Stress is how your body responds to danger or a threat, and while the response wants to protect you, it can cause long term illness especially over prolonged periods. For many people, financial problems, moving home, or changes in circumstances can cause intense pressure.
However, in the workplace, there are generally five leading causes of workplace stress and I will outline these below and share how coaching can be of assistance to you.
1. Workplace relationships play a huge role in how we feel at work. The conflict between colleagues is a hindrance to health at work. Many people struggle to maintain healthy relationships, and this causes poor performance and problems with health. Coaching is useful here because it will highlight the areas that are causing relationships to breakdowns in your workplace that perhaps are going unnoticed.
2. Managers are less likely to give employees control over their work, a micromanagement culture in the workplace. According to Herzberg's two-factor theory, of motivation, micromanagement decreases motivation levels, because some people are motivated by having access to more work and while you cannot force your managers to give you more autonomy you can learn how to channel your desire to want to work harder in the right direction through coaching.
3. Job overload and job demands are increasing in the workplace. Organisations are increasingly combining two job roles merging them into one, thus causing employees to feel overworked with many individuals taking work home. Coaching allows you to understand how to manage your workload and your time helping you to set boundaries healthily.
4. There is a lack of support and employees are feeling as though they are unable to communicate their concerns with managers and other members of staff. In today's workplace, there is not much room to be overt about issues, while employers should seek the well-being of their employees many of them do not. Therefore, it is essential that you invest in your well-being through coaching.
5. When an organisation introduces change, this can create an imbalance and cause staff to feel stressed. Change impacts, everyone, differently, and you need to be supported. Learn how to get the help you need through coaching.