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Summary
- Living through the pandemic has taken an immense toll on people’s mental health while aggravating work stress.
- Government estimates show that work-related stress costs Australian businesses over AU$10 billion each year in lost productivity and sick days.
- Work professionals can utilise different tips and techniques to reduce their stress levels.
The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly altered the way we work, with ‘work from home’ becoming a new normal for most of the people residing in Australia and the rest of the world. However, the new reality of remote working has increased stress to our daily lives, with individuals juggling between work and home responsibilities while failing to define a clear boundary between the two.
As per the government estimates, work-related stress costs Australian businesses over AU$10 billion each year in lost productivity and sick days. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the existing challenges associated with work-related stress, with people experiencing the strain of social isolation and an "always-on" mentality.
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Even the people who have already returned to the workplace remain concerned about the well-being of themselves and the people they care about most. While the work-driven stress is expected to persist unless individuals reach a comfort level and a new equilibrium, a few tips and techniques can help work professionals reduce their stress levels.
If you are also among the one who is finding it hard to cope with work stress, here is what you can do about it:
1. Keep track of your stressors
To minimise the amount of anxiety you encounter at work, it is important to know what stresses you out. Towards this end, you can develop a practice of creating a journal for some weeks in order to detect the stressors and observe how you usually respond to them.
As for instance, individuals may feel stressed about their low salary or workplace decisions or just an unpleasant work environment. Keeping notes in the journal will help individuals better understand their stress patterns while enabling them to execute a targeted approach to their specific stressors.
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2. Start the day right
If you frequently experience a stressful morning, there is a high likelihood that you are affected by work stress. Thus, it is imperative to start your day off right with exercise, good nutrition, and effective planning.
Regular exercise can be your best sword against work strain, taking off the tension and stress from your head while letting you focus on the immediate task. It is equally important to develop healthy food choices rather than attempting to combat stress with alcohol or fast food.
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3. Embrace ways to relax
Adopting techniques like deep breathing exercises, mindfulness, and meditation can help you melt away work stress. Individuals can also try out stretching or a quick walk outside their home at a time when stress and anxiety get hard to handle.
Begin by taking out a few minutes each day to focus on any of these simple activities, and you will gradually see yourself getting stronger in stress management. In fact, proper good night sleep is sometimes enough to keep you energised during the day. This can even lower the risk of getting fatigued from long working hours.
4. Seek balance in responsibilities
Work-life balance has become more important than ever in the new normal of remote working and hybrid working models. It has become important for people to stay productive at work while handling their vital parenting and caregiving activities at the same time. In this regard, individuals need to work as a team with each and every member in the house.
It is essential to set clear guidelines and basic rules for everyone while splitting house responsibilities with family members. Although multitasking is a good attribute, performing every chore on their own for a protracted period could drain people completely and make them much less productive at work.
5. Talk it out
As employee health is closely associated with work productivity, corporations have an incentive to build a work environment that promotes employee well-being. Thus, individuals can ponder on having an open conversation with their immediate boss.
The objective is not to lay out a list of complaints but to devise an effective plan that can help them manage the stressors they have discovered. Individuals can also seek the help of the coworkers they trust and find out what their colleagues are doing to deal with the work-related stress.
No doubt, dealing with stress at work is a real problem, but it is definitely solvable. These tactics can help you bring your stress level back down into the healthy range, allowing you to achieve new milestones in your professional life.
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