Corporate Wellness: 5 Ways to Manage Stress in The Workplace

“Corporate Wellness” may be a new-ish buzzword, but it can have a significant impact on your employees’ overall mental and physical health. When you want to retain your top talent, improve employee performance, and create a workplace culture people want to engage in, you have to assess corporate wellness.

In this article, we’ll discuss what corporate wellness is, how stress impacts your bottom line, and what you can do to alleviate employee stress from a leadership perspective.

Ready to dive in, but don’t know where to start? Contact to Dr. Buzz Mingin for a free consultation on best practices for corporate stress management.

What Is Corporate Wellness?

Corporate Wellness, also known as Corporate Well-being, is a broad term used to describe activities, programs, events, interpersonal supervision, and/or organizational policies designed to support healthy behavior in the workplace.

Team Meetings

An example of Corporate Wellness includes team meetings discussing what is working in the company to provide fulfillment versus only having meetings to discuss what is not working. This exercise allows for management to give compliments and gratitude to all members of a team or teams. This way, you can encourage employees so that they feel appreciated, more confident, and have higher self-esteem.

Structured Activities

Another example of Corporate Wellness is specifically structured activities like team building exercises, equestrian training, and group yoga exercises. These activities allow team members to bond, improve their physical and mental health, and learn new details about their team, the people who they spend most of their time with.

Wellness Job Coaching

Wellness job coaching helps corporations reduce workplace stress for their employees. Wellness coaches provide enthusiastic support for employees who are experiencing stress and having difficulty on the job, i.e., keeping up with deadlines. Responsibly, job coaches provide individualized coping tools to employees, allowing them to thrive, not just survive on the job.

Common Sources of Work Stress

Chronic stress can look different from organization to organization. That said, there are some telltale signs that your organization may be creating a stressful working environment.

Below, we investigate common sources of stress that every leader should be aware of before trying to alleviate workplace stress.

Lack of Social Support

A lack of psychological and social support for employees results in a greater propensity for employees to withdraw from work and have higher absenteeism rates. Not to mention, conflict and staff turnover are more likely without these supports, increasing overall tension and stress.

Work stress can lead to physical symptoms (such as fatigue or headaches) or emotional symptoms (such as anxiety or burnout).

No Autonomy Over Job-Related Decisions

When employees are not given the freedom to make decisions or act independently, this lack of autonomy can be devastating. This type of dysfunction can manifest from limited decision-making authority like when a manager closely monitors and controls every aspect of an employee’s work (micromanaging).

Unclear Performance Expectations

A lack of clarity around performance expectations is a common cause of corporate dysfunction, as employees are unclear or unaware of the goals, business processes, and boundaries of their position.

This is common among companies that hire employees and do not provide accurate job descriptions, thoroughly train employees before they start work, or offer adequate management oversight in order to make the expectations clear on an ongoing basis.

Excessive Workload

An excessive workload can crush employees psychologically, emotionally, and physically when they are assigned additional or too much work without the time, structure, and training to complete it. As a leader, you want to ensure your employees have a healthy work-life balance.

If companies and schools wish to maintain employee wellness, employees deserve meetings to analyze the existing work structure and routine, assess the additional work to be expected, and define how managerial oversight will be provided to support the changes in employees’ expectations.

Few Opportunities for Growth

Having few opportunities for growth is a motivation killer! In business, we all know some of your best employees are those who advance from within. But, if the proactive structure is not in place for employees to become more skilled or to advance, and they’re instead restricted from moving up, employee motivation and morale can be suppressed and inhibited.

Low Salaries

Low salaries can sometimes tank employees’ work ethic. Having a low salary while working your tail off is one thing, but when the economy’s influence on living is stressing out employees – i.e., housing, food, and fuel prices have skyrocketed, making it literally impossible for many to support their families – low salaries become the root cause of panic, depression, mood fluctuations, poor decision making, suicide, and sabotage on the job.

The Effects of Job Stress

Workplace stress is much more devastating than many people realize. In the simplest terms, job stress affects people’s biological, psychological, social, spiritual, structural, functional, and occupational performance.

Not to mention, job stress most often creates home stress! Sadly, job stress may result in one developing mental illness, devastating personal relationships, and negatively influencing one’s financial stability and overall personal wellness.

Physical Health

Your physical health is easily compromised with job stress, as whenever you experience stress, your stress hormones elevate and make it more difficult to achieve resultful sleep, make healthy choices, have the energy to exercise or have fun in your free time, and simply feel good overall.

Developing physical resilience is important in reducing job stress levels. Most people would agree, but many do not have the answers to achieve this goal while maintaining job performance.

Mental Health

Mental health determines your body’s health, mindset, motivation, and follow-through. Stress is one of the greatest precursors to the onset of mental health issues, such as anxiety and related mood disorders. When you reduce stress, your mental health can become a priority, allowing you longevity, peace, and protection from prolonged physical and emotional distress.

Employee Performance

Employee performance is highly dependent on their defined skill ability, training, and managerial oversight. When candidates are hired, they need to be hired with competent credentials, a motivational attitude, and the specific talent that allows them to become trainable in order to meet the needs and expectations of the company.

5 Stress Management Techniques

Stress can significantly impact employee wellness. But, what can you do? Let’s explore five stress management techniques you can do from a leadership perspective to make a positive impact, retain talent, and improve workplace culture while managing workplace stress.

1. Assess Leadership Structure

Begin by assessing your leadership structure in an effort to learn how leader influence affects employee performance. This helps reduce stress company-wide and boosts employee performance. A team of employees is as only as strong as the leadership guiding the team.

2. Establish Clear Roles and Responsibilities

Establishing clear roles and responsibilities allows all employees to be aware of what’s expected of their individual contribution in order to meet the goals of the organization. When the roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, employee accountability is much more easily assessed as well.

3. Implement Checks and Balances for Work Delegation

Implementing checks and balances for how and how much work is delegated is a critical practice to reduce stress. This promotes an equitable and accountable team management system that prevents an imbalance of power and allows employees and leaders to work together toward a common goal.

4. Offer a Flexible Working Environment

In today’s workplace, a flexible working environment should be one that has structure but is also able to pivot as needed. This will enhance employees’ chances to achieve organizational goals and provide a sense of agency over their working lives that can improve morale.

5. Provide an Employee Wellness Program

Offer employee wellness programs that assist with achieving organizational goals through individual and team support. Wellness programs provide employees the opportunity to engage with functional, spiritual, psychological, and social experiences that allow for a mental health reset and suggest tools for coping.

Contact Dr. Buzz Mingin To Implement Successful Corporate Wellness Strategies

Navigating stress in the workplace, whether from an individual or organizational perspective, is no easy task, especially if you’re a leader at your company. That’s where Dr. Buzz Mingin comes in.

Dr. Buzz has years of professional experience behind him, allowing him to identify your individual or organizational strengths and make recommendations for opportunities for growth. When you’re juggling leadership responsibilities, you may not have time to do this vital work of assessing employee wellness. Let Dr. Buzz help.

Contact him today for a free consultation and additional stress management resources.