Steps to Creating a Healthy Work Environment

In today's business climate, employees are tasked with doing more with less. Many employees are working longer hours to cover heavier workloads and increased responsibility. Increased employee stress often accompanies increased pressures and demands on employees.

Stress clearly is rampant in today's workplace. For example, at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, which tracks workplace stress for its own employees, 53.4% of employees reported being "somewhat" or "very much" stressed in 2009-2010. And the effects of stress — diminished productivity, more employee sick days, etc. — can negatively affect a company's bottom line.

Luckily, many companies could improve their work environment without a lot of time, effort or money. Training employees to manage workplace stress is a significant first step toward lowering stress and creating and maintaining a healthy work environment.

A second step involves discovering the level and type of stress employees are experiencing. Anonymous surveys are a great way to do this. Consulting firms can be hired to conduct surveys and collect the results. Websites such as SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang can deploy surveys, organize the data and create reports with full anonymity for respondents. Ensuring that respondents can safely give honest responses is the only real way to find out what types of stressors are most affecting them, what level they measure their stress at, and what can be done to help alleviate the stress.

Once the information is collected, you can begin to identify what types of changes are realistic for your organization. Create a plan and share it with employees. Engaging employees is an important element of healthy work environments. You can help to reduce employee stress with training on managing workplace stress and by fostering a culture in which employees feel that they are being listened to and their issues are being addressed.

Categories: Workplace Compliance