Constant stress at work is common. Especially prominent stress can be in interior design when designers have to create the best design, agree on it with the client, change the design according to client’s comments, do it all on time and within budget. Recent research shows 94% of employees experience a certain level of stress and almost one third of participants say their level of stress is high or even critical.
There is also good news – a little bit of stress is actually beneficial for you. It helps concentrate and work with high efficiency. However, when stress level is too high or becomes chronical, the quality of employees’ work decreases, and their health becomes poorer.
It’s a common mistake to think that the more we work, the more effective we are. It’s actually not like that – constant stress takes away the possibility to maintain a productive work environment or raise employees’ motivation. It is harmful for organizational culture and leads to fatigue, anxiety and inability to prioritise. For designers, stress kills creativity and does not allow thinking outside the box.
When health is at stake, it’s essential to determine the reasons of stress at work and do everything to limit or even eliminate its source. Below are the essential factors of stress at work and methods of dealing with it.
5 main factors of stress at work and how to deal with them
Stress does not only lead to poor health but also escalates burnout and employee turnover. Let’s look through the reasons of stress and highlight recommendations that can help your team say “no” to stress.
1. Too many tools – 29% of employees use 7 to 16 different apps daily.
What to do:
- Connect your tools to make data exchange between them automatically
- Check your apps and determine which you can forgo
- Create a unified source of reliable information and store all the important data there
2. Too many emails – 62% of managers spend 2 to 4 hours reading emails daily.
What to do:
- Optimize work with emails using email productivity tools such as Boomerang or Sanebox
- Use instruments for mutual work to store content and discussion and not leave out the context
- Try chats such as Slack for fast and immediate information exchange
3. Unproductive meetings – 78% of managers say they spend too much time on meetings at the expense of productive work.
What to do:
- Hold meetings standing instead of seated so that they are shorter
- Make sure every meeting has an agenda and a plan
- Use a decision tree to determine whether you need this meeting
4. Lack of interaction – communication problems, necessity to wait for colleagues and other obstacles are major stress factors at work.
What to do:
- Use enquiry forms to receive all the information necessary for the project at once
- When coordinating, use responsibility assignment matrix, such as RACI, CAIRO or DACI
- Automate status updates so that members receive notifications that it’s their turn to step in the game
5. Lack of support from directors – employees experiencing high levels of stress are 24% less likely to say that their directors have a sense of their workload
What to do:
- Set a rule forbidding disturbance of employees past working hours so they have time to rest properly
- Hold daily planners to discuss challenges and achievements
- Use resource management solution to follow the workload of your team
Binary Management helps the busiest teams manage their projects in a reasonable and organized manner. BM gives you time for creativity.
What about you? What stress factors do you face?
Did we miss something? Tell us about stress factors at your job and how you deal with them.