When it comes to workplace stress, I’ve got both bad news and good news.
The bad news? If your work stresses you, you’re not alone. A 2013 studyby Harris Interactive for Everest College showed that 83% of American workers experience stress about their jobs. That was an increase from 73% in 2012. Low pay topped the list of work stressors, with unreasonable workload, annoying coworkers, and commuting also named as major sources of stress. The World Health Organization has estimated that stress costs American businesses up to $300 billion a year.
The good news? You can manage your response to stress. As with many things, the first step to taming stress is to understand it. With that awareness, you can choose strategies to reduce stress factors and improve how you handle the stress you face.
I spoke recently about workplace stress with my colleague, Dawa Tarchin Phillips, who will talk about managing workplace stress during his live webcast on Tuesday, April 5, the first of his Mindful Leadership Breakthrough System series. We talked about what he calls the workplace stress puzzle and how to deal with different kinds of stressors.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) defines job stress as: the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker.
Phillips identifies five pieces to the workplace stress puzzle. They include:
Allostatic refers to allostasis, “the process of achieving stability, or homeostasis, through physiological or behavioral change.”
Stressors are that which provokes stress. At work, that can mean job tasks, roles, and relationships with coworkers and supervisors.
The stress response is how our brain and body responds to the stressor. I’ve written extensively about “amygdala hijacks” and the brain science behind the fight/flight/freeze/faint reactions that stress can trigger.
Individual differences refer to the fact that each individual experiences stress differently. What can cause stress for one person may not be as stressful for someone else.
Paying attention to allostatic load recognizes that experiencing stress causes emotional and physiological changes. A single, simple stressor that causes minor stress makes short-term changes. More complex stressors or a combination of many stressors combine to have a larger, longer-term impact.
Allostatic balance is the process of recovering from stress and returning to a place of physiological and emotional balance.
Phillips suggests five ways to respond to and prevent workplace stress in his article “How Leaders Can Lower Workplace Stress.” He said,
READ: Simple Ways Leaders Can Help to Refocus a Team's Negative Outlook
To learn more from Phillips about how to use mindfulness to manage stress in the workplace, tune in to his Mindful Leadership Breakthrough System series.
The live webcasts are designed to help executives and leadership development professionals apply mindfulness principles to overcome common internal and external barriers to presence, productivity and performance.
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