Make your workplace anxiety-free with these tips.
Workplace anxiety hurts employee productivity. When people are anxious, they tend to experience the following:
- Take an unusual amount of time off work
- Overreact to certain job situations
- Focus too much on the negative aspects of their job
- Struggle to concentrate or complete tasks on time
In a local survey conducted during the onset of lockdowns in 2020, over 87% of the workforce experienced severe levels of anxiety. This is alarming.
In the same year, the United Nations (UN) saw the need to invest in mental health services and recommended community-based services for mental health support. To this day, we still feel the psychological stress brought by the pandemic. It’s important for us to understand that if we’re going to bounce back in business (and in life), we need to have an organization that’s mentally healthy and sound.
Here are a few things you can do as a leader.
1. Overcommunicate and individualize
Make it your personal goal to keep your team in the loop about any relevant changes happening within the organization. Be exceptionally clear about your expectations. Respond quickly to their questions and concerns. When people are not kept guessing by their managers, they feel safer and more at ease.
And don’t forget to individualize. If we can personalize our interactions for our clients and consumers, we can also do it with our people.
2. Create a shutdown ritual for your team
A shutdown ritual is a series of tasks performed at the end of the day to signify that time at work is ending. You can do this as a team, or you can set an example and encourage your people to build their own rituals. This encourages your team to unplug from work and fully enjoy the restorative benefits of a break.
3. Empathize and be compassionate
Empathy and compassion are so good for business that it solves a $600-billion employee engagement problem globally. Research has shown that a leader’s ability to recognize his/her people and understand what motivates them and gives them hope allows employees to be as good as they can be.
Being kind is free, but managers can reap amazing returns from it.
4. Offer mental health training and support it with relevant policy changes
As leaders, you hold the responsibility to create a mentally healthy culture in the workplace. Now, more than ever, it is critical to take proactive steps towards educating each member of the organization about mental health.
Invest in training. Send weekly self-care reminders. Offer peer support. Commit to the goal of supporting your people’s mental health by taking a closer look at your existing practices and decide what changes you can make for the better.
Read Related Article: 4 Ways Great Managers Respond to Employee Burnout
5. Take care of yourself
Lastly, make sure that you also have time to unwind and relax. Being a leader puts you in a position to care for the organization and your people that you may forget you also need some time off. It’s important that you also know how to reward yourself and take care of your well-being.
By doing this, you model a healthy work lifestyle for your employees that they can pick up and apply on their own.
