Stress Awareness Month: Managing Stress at Work

April is national stress awareness month. We wanted to support that through our blog this week. Stress has many negative impacts on the human body, such as headaches, high blood pressure, skin conditions, anxiety, depression, and many more. These are just a few of a long list. Chronic stress can have impactful conditions that last a lifetime. It’s very important to know how to deal with stress properly to avoid chronic conditions caused from stress in your life. There are many reasons why stress can arise at work including low pay, work that’s not engaging, excessive overloads and overall lack of support to name a few. It’s crucial to understand ways to manage this properly.

1.     Know your stressors: do you know what is stressing you out at work? How can you avoid these situations or change them? How did you respond? Try keeping a journal if you’re not sure to identify the underlying reasons.

2.     Watch how you respond: now you know what is bothering you at work so how do you cope? Do you go have drinks and eat junk food or do you go burn off your frustrations at the gym? Healthy coping mechanisms are important. Going to the gym, yoga, read. Healthy body = healthy mind.

3.     R&R: it’s important to get enough sleep at night in order to tackle your professional day. You have to also disconnect from your job somehow. May this be putting your phone on “do not disturb”, meditating, zoning out and watching some T.V. to not think about work here and there. Taking a hike and spending time with family outside of work can also help you get good recovery time to recharge your mind and body.

These are just a few ways to learn how to cope with stressors in your professional life. There are many more such as talking to your supervisor, setting work boundaries and finding support with family or even therapists. The happier and healthier you are, the better you will perform on the job. Not only this, you will increase the longevity of your mind, body and quality of life.

Destressing Your Work Life

April is National Stress Awareness month. Work stress tends to creep up on all of us despite how much we may love our jobs. According to the Mental Health Foundation, “people affected by work-related stress lose an average of 24 days of work due to ill health.” Whether it be in the office or working from home it’s important to realize what ways stress manifests itself in your body. Every-body is different. Here are 10 quick tips to destress your body and mind throughout the work day. 

1.     Eat healthy. You literally are what you eat. When you chose healthy foods over processed ones your mind and body will reflect that. You will think clearer and feel better from getting proper amounts of essential vitamins, minerals and overall nutrients. And please don’t forget to eat. A lot of people get caught up in the daily hustle and bustle and get hyper focused on working. This is all bad but make sure to set reminders in your calendar to eat lunch and snack. Not eating enough can affect your mood and not to mention slow your metabolism.  

2.     Exercise at your desk. Take a 5-minute break here and there when you’re feeling fatigued. Do some jumping jacks, pushups, maybe even some burpees. Get your blood flowing. This is especially good right before a big meeting. There are even some companies, such as BurnAlong that assist employers. They specialize in instructional videos for mental and physical wellbeing. They even offer nutritional counseling. 

3.     Focus on your breathing. Take a few minutes away from your work day to meditate and just simply breath. It’s amazing what this simple act can do for our bodies that we so easily take for granted every moment. Apps, such as Calm help guide you through this if you’re unsure where to begin. 

4.     Step away for a moment. Run a work errand and get a change of scenery for a few minutes. You could even go grab a cup of calming tea from the break room or your kitchen if you’re working from home. 

5.     Stay hydrated! The general rule is to drink 8 glasses of water per day but an even better marker is to drink half of your body weight in ounces each day. If you’re one of those people who finds this difficult buy yourself a large reusable water bottle to make keeping track that much easier. Not to mention it’s better for the environment anyway ;) 

6.     Listen to your favorite jams! Put in your ear buds or air pods and listen to your favorite music while you work! 

7.     Keep your space organized! Your outside space reflects your inside space. Declutter your mind and your desk. 

8.     Have a quick stretch. Sitting all day can take a toll on your body. Muscle soreness and stiffness can restrict blood flow. Get up a stretch every hour or so. Set an alarm to remind yourself. 

9.     Prioritize your tasks accordingly. Focus on the harder tasks first thing in the morning when your fresh and more alert. This can make the rest of the day more manageable and will give more flexibility to handle unexpected concerns that may arise later in the day. 

10.  Positive beliefs. Say affirmations at the beginning of your work day. Just pick one positive thing about yourself that you believe to be true. It can be something like, “I am great at (insert something in your work-related field here) and have the skills necessary to be an asset to my team.” You can make this one whatever you like but keep it positive and keep it something unique to you. The way that we speak to ourselves is important. Our subconscious mind believes what we tell it. 

In a nut shell, we all have work stress and there’s no getting around it. What truly matters is how we learn to cope with and manage it. Learning new ways to help deal with work stress with keep you productive as your overall wellbeing isn’t being compromised. Healthy mind. Healthy body. Healthy work life! 

World Health Day 2022

 The theme of World Health Day this year is “Our Planet, Our Health.” The first thing that comes to mind with this how we should treat our bodies is how we should the planet too. Changing the world begins from the inside out. Mental health directly affects physical health. This is why stress management is so important inside and outside of the workplace. Did you know that we spend 1/3 of our lives working and also, 80% of workers feel stress on the job (American Institute of Stress)? Makes sense then that we should be happy in what we choose for a career as well as the work environment we end up in. From a management standpoint there are so many benefits to assist in preventing work stress for employees. Some of these are but not limited to: reduced poor mental and physical health, reduced sick leave, increased productivity, job satisfaction, increased work engagement and overall improvement of employee health (Better Health). Here at Locomotive, our Founder & CEO, Dustin Pagliughi has always been an advocate of creating a work environment where all employees feel comfortable in their roles as stress free as possible. He believes that employees should be managed in a way that is nurturing and supported in their roles in a way that doesn’t involve micromanaging or making constant demands. If the work load is too much, he’s never afraid to step in and get his hands dirty and do the work. It’s easy since he loves what he does. Since the inception of Locomotive, all of its employees have been able to work remotely in order to promote a better work-life balance. In fact, all of our employees are spread out in many parts of world. Employee and client satisfaction were two of the reasons that the company was born from many years spent in an industry where they were overworked, all while they overdelivered. 

As advocates of proper employee treatment, we will leave you with some ways to support employee stress reduction in the workplace that we find helpful at Locomotive. 

1.     Give credit when credit is due. Make sure to give recognition to employees for their good work performances. This will boost morale at the office.

2.     Offer flexible work from home options. We realize that you may not be able to do this for every day of the week, but some find it helpful and are still productive away from the office, if not more. This gives employees more of a work-life balance. 

3.     Let them grow! This one is a huge! Make sure there are equal opportunities for growth within the company. If there isn’t much room to move up, offer incentives, such as holiday bonuses and raises. 

4.     Walk the walk like you talk the talk. Make sure that your organizational values align with your actions from management.  

Circling back, you should treat your mind the way you should treat the planet. Litter free. Mental health is physical health. Stress will manifest its way out of the mind into physical forms throughout the body. Since work stress is one of the largest mental strains for adults it should be supervised properly from the top down in businesses. Our bodies are connected to everything on this planet. The air we breathe, the water we drink. When we begin to take care of ourselves physically and mentally from the inside out, our planet’s health can be an extension of that as well. Let’s all keep working together towards positive changes at home, at work, and on this large rock spiraling through space that we all share as one.