Whatever the age or professional status, stress is everywhere in the world of work: objectives to be achieved, new clients to be convinced, turnover to be achieved. Stress also has negative repercussions on the functioning of a company: turnover, absenteeism, demotivation of teams, loss of quality in production and performance. Stress is a new evil which affects the organization of companies.
Tensions which generally lead to a bad conflict management, communication difficulties with colleagues or manager contribute to our daily stress. In addition, we combine sometimes external personal difficulties and stress management at work.
To maintain good mental and physical health, you will have to learn to manage your stress.
There are several kinds of stress, such as:
- good stress that stimulates and allows you to give the best of yourself,
- bad stress makes us sick and demotivates us
- chronic stress which is much more serious.
The symptoms of stress will be broken down into several phases:
- The alarm phase: the individual is facing, but he calls on his energy resources to adapt to stress.
- The resistance phase: the individual persists in adapting to stress and resists. Its energy resources are depleted; the body has trouble recovering. The individual is facing, but he is under tension.
- The exhaustion phase: the individual is no longer coping. The situation is installed and continues over time, the stress is permanent and becomes chronic. We can then speak of burnout, which the WHO defines as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic stress in the workplace that has not been properly managed”.
Burnout was included in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a “work-related phenomenon” (source: World Health Organization).
How to deal with stress at work?
To manage your stress, you will have to call on your personal abilities and resources to learn to manage different situations and adapt serenely, to know how to self-manage and therefore work on oneself. It will therefore be necessary to know how to perceive and apprehend external situations.
Stress can appear when speaking in public, when you have to ask for a raise or ask for a promotion, during your integration into a company. Stress cannot be managed overnight, we will have to stop posing as a passive victim and get back in hand. There is no miracle cure, to do this:
- a good hygiene of life is essential as to find the pleasures of its centers of interest;
- master your interpersonal communication by working on your emotions;
- behavior must change, namely:
- take a step back,
- play down the situations that worry you,
- adopt a positive, calming attitude.
The causes of stress
To better manage your stress, it is a good idea to determine the causes, such as:
- unsuitability for the job,
- poor time management,
- difficult work relations,
- overwork
- the cult of performance,
Once the cause or causes have been detected, appropriate preventive measures must be taken to eliminate or reduce stress.
Prevention measures
There are several measures to prevent stress at work such as:
- strengthen their individual resistance;
- beware of alcohol, tobacco and coffee which are false friends to de-stress;
- think about devoting time to yourself: a positive mindset is recommended
- spending some time in nature (it doesn’t matter whether it is walking or sitting and gazing at nature) 20 to 30 minutes three times a week would be enough to significantly reduce the level of cortisol (one of the hormones stress);
- knowing how to say no when necessary.
JoyCorporate Academy offers trainings and workshops for stress relief of your employees, so you can choose to prevent stress at work using yoga classes, stress management training or courses based on a positive mindset.
