How to deal with stress

Once you have found possible stress problems in your business, you can then take steps to tackle the causes.

Work-related stress

You can try the following measures to deal with work-related stress: 

• If overwork is causing people to feel stressed, consider how you might reduce their workload. Ensure targets are challenging but realistic. Help people to prioritise work, cutting out unnecessary tasks and providing time-management training if necessary. Encourage delegation of work where possible, and try to delegate work yourself.
• Make sure staff take their holiday entitlement - and take your own.
• Check individuals are well-matched to the jobs you give them. Make sure your recruitment and selection procedures help you to achieve this.
• Make sure every employee has a well-defined role - and that they know what this is.
• Review people's performance so that they know how they're doing and you can identify any training they may need.
• Where possible give employees more autonomy, allowing them to plan their work schedule and decide how to tackle problems.
• Adopt a management style that encourages employees to discuss problems with you. Provide them with opportunities to feed back to you or express ideas about their work.
• Keep staff informed about your business' direction and make sure you tell them about significant changes to the business.
• Ensure you have effective disciplinary and grievance procedures to tackle bullying and harassment.

Non work-related stress

Consider the following ways of tackling personal-life stress: 

• Encourage employees to achieve a better work/life balance. See promote healthy work-life balance in your business.
• Take a sympathetic and consistent approach to any personal problems that employees may have - for example a relationship break-up or family illness. See common causes of personal stress.