Wellbeing in the workplace: Tips for dealing with employee stress

What are the signs of stress in the workplace?

To start off with, here's some of the main signs of stress in the workplace that employers and employees should be looking out for. 

According to the NHS, some initial telltale signs of stress at work can include one or more of the following:

• Individuals becoming more withdrawn than usual.
• A noticeable decrease in self-confidence.
• Heightened emotional reactions to normal situations (eg, being short-tempered).
• Active avoidance of certain tasks.
• Working longer hours than needed.
• Loss of sleep.
• Taking additional time off work.
• Being more accident prone.

If you notice any of these symptoms being consistently repeated over a long period of time, then it’s likely that the individual in question is experiencing some form of workplace stress.

Alternatively, if you’re yet to implement a workplace wellbeing strategy for your business, then you should keep an eye out for any of the following points as indicators of whether or not you’re operating in a high-stress work environment:

• You experience high staff turnover.
• You note an increase in absenteeism and sickness levels.
• You have a long-hour working culture.
• Your employees are not able to take their full holiday entitlement.
• You’re experiencing low levels of business productivity and efficiency.

How to improve employee wellbeing at work

Employee wellbeing at work is something we should all be aware of, especially if you and your employees are already working in a high-stress trade role, so what exactly should you be looking to include in a workplace wellbeing strategy?

Having spoken to our wellness helpline, we’ve shared their top insights on how employers can cultivate a positive business attitude to health and wellbeing at work:

1. Focus on creating a healthy work-life balance

If you want to start promoting effective health and wellbeing strategies at work, then it’s absolutely essential that you give your employees the opportunity to have a healthy work-life balance.

Naturally, the sort of hours required for those working in the trades can vary, and sometimes you might be required to work late or over a weekend in order to finish a job on time.

However, this sort of overtime should be the exception rather than the rule, and employees should not be expected to consistently work past their weekly hours, or cancel or cut short holidays to meet deadlines.

Instead, if overtime is required, you should look to spread this fairly over your employees’ schedules, taking into account who has previously worked overtime in recent weeks, and if required, hiring external contractors to provide additional assistance to complete work.

2. Encourage a positive attitude towards mental health

While speaking up about stress has certainly become more acceptable as of late, there’s still plenty of room for improvement in this area, meaning it’s on employers to encourage this sort of positive and open attitude towards mental health and stress in order to facilitate a change in attitudes.

For example, with your business, this could be something as simple as encouraging employees to speak up when they’re feeling overworked or experiencing stress elsewhere in their lives, or it could take the form of providing access to mental health services so they can speak directly to a professional.

We’d recommend speaking with your staff to see how they’d like to handle this sort of employee wellbeing support and then tailoring your approach accordingly.

3. Provide employee wellbeing benefits

Another big area you can focus on is providing your employees with a range of health and wellbeing benefits – such as those relating to food, exercise, and sleep.

Case in point, while many of the most common trades require a certain degree of personal fitness to do the job properly, this sort of everyday movement is not the same as doing regular exercise.

Plenty of studies have shown that even a little regular exercise can help ease stress levels, boost your mood, and generally improve your self-esteem, so you might want to consider doing something simple, such as subsidising or providing local gym discounts as a form of employee benefit.

Alongside this, you could also look to promote exercise in the workplace through active travel policies, such as walking, cycling, flexible working, and other similar green incentive schemes.

You might want to consider providing complementary fruit and healthy snacks to encourage healthy eating, and the addition of a fridge means that employees can bring their own food in from home instead of feeling the need to buy their lunch every day.

Finally, a focus on sleep and relaxation is something that any good workplace wellbeing strategy should employ. For example, if your firm has shift patterns, avoid assigning any one person too many night shifts in a row and instead share them around.

It’s hard to overstate just how important sleep is for a safe and effective working environment, so if you know that some of your employees are dealing with sleep problems, consider subsidising these areas, such as by assisting in the purchase of blackout curtains or membership for mindfulness apps like Headspace or Calm.

4. Share your story

Lastly, and in the same vein as promoting a more open attitude to mental health and wellbeing at work, if you’ve experienced your own troubles with workplace stress, then you should absolutely share them with your employees.

Simply put, if you’re willing to open up to your staff about how you’ve personally handled workplace stress in the past, they’re more likely to do the same in return, creating a two-way street of feedback in the workplace that can encourage more workers to share and open up.

How to handle workplace stress as an employer

While a lot of the tips we’ve covered so far focus mainly on providing a workplace wellbeing strategy for your employees, many employers can find themselves just as stressed as their staff – and sometimes even more so.

Anyone who’s ever run their own business will tell you that doing so is no easy task, and for those just starting out, the weight on their shoulders can feel intense. Thankfully, all the tips we’ve shared above can apply to employers as well as employees, though you might also want to consider looking into the following as a means of lightening your workload:

• Where possible, look to delegate tasks to qualified individuals so you can focus your energy where it’s most needed – which also has the added benefit of instilling a culture of trust and responsibility within your workplace.
• Investigate the feasibility of hiring external assistance with regard to handling your business finances, employee wellbeing services, HR management, etc. so that these responsibilities are not left to you alone.
• Provide your senior employees with additional training in areas such as management to ensure they have the skills necessary to properly support the employees under their supervision and can handle lower-priority problems without them needing to be brought to your attention.
• Create and adhere to a stringent hiring process to ensure that you’re only bringing on board workers who are capable of meeting the demands of the job and who have the sort of attitude that matches your company values and culture to avoid the problem of cyclical hiring.

What are our Trusted Traders doing to promote staff wellbeing?

Alongside speaking with the team manning our Trusted Trader helpline, we also asked some of our Trusted Traders directly to share the processes they have in place to help reduce stress and promote mental health in the workplace. Here are a few of our favourite examples:

Introducing an open-door policy

Both the owners of Strata Windows in Stoke-on-Trent, and MG Window Systems Ltd, based in Northampton, told us they’ve recently introduced their own variation on the classic open-door policy.

At a base level, an open-door policy indicates to employees that a supervisor or manager is available to listen to an employee’s questions, complaints, suggestions, and challenges around the workplace, and will do so without judgment or criticism.

This sort of practice encourages the sort of open communication, feedback, and discussions needed to accommodate good workplace wellbeing practices, and both companies noted how it’s gone a long way to reducing stress in their workplace.

Training mental health first-aiders

Tincknell Heating, based in the Southwest, told us that one of the best additions they’ve made to their workplace wellbeing strategy is introducing dedicated mental health first-aiders.

Naturally, everyone involved in the trades should have some form of physical first-aid training. However, Tincknell Heating say having certain staff trained as mental health officers for their workplace has proved crucial in giving employees a dedicated person to speak to about any issues they may be having.

Relaxation and massages

Gareth Jones, CEO of UK Leisure Living Group in North Wales, said he recently offered all his staff the benefit of an hour-long massage with a massage therapist, while also paying for counselling sessions and hypnotherapy for those interested.

Again, these sorts of employee benefits are becoming more commonplace in the modern work environment, and sometimes even just knowing that they have them available can be enough to help employees better meet the demands of their jobs.

Find out more about our Which? TT members helpline

The Trusted Trader wellness helpline is a confidential telephone counselling service that Which? Trusted Trader members can call to talk to a trained counsellor about any troubles. 

Whether it’s worries about your business or other financial problems, health issues, a bereavement, addiction or any other personal matter, counsellors are available to listen.

The service is provided by ARAG and is free to use for all standard Which? Trusted Trader members and your immediate families.

Not a Which? Trusted Trader? Apply today to gain access to more benefits like this.