Mental Health Awareness Week - Anxiety

Stress and Resilience Strategy

Back in January of 2020, I wrote about the business case for implementing a stress and resilience strategy and culture as part of your people management policies . The messaging has not changed.  Many of your colleagues will come to work bringing with them pressures from outside of work into the workplace. Many too may find work a place of anxiety be it their pay, their job security or issues with colleagues or clients. As employers, in particular managers, it is important to spot the signs (and spot them early) if someone is not ok at work. Are we robustly managing people’s holiday entitlement? Do we monitor working hours or sickness absence levels? If we manage issues early, it can, hopefully, avoid an individual going off on long term sickness absence, raising a complaint or even a claim.

 

How full is your “pint glass”?

We can all remember times in our own lives past and maybe present, when the “pint pot” was full, nearly full or spilling over; a time when work or home (or both) was the stressor. Throughout our lives, we move through a continual wave of feeling ok, moving up into anxiety and down into depression and that this is normal. However, feeling anxious can sometimes feel like we are moving on autopilot.

However, it is important that we remember to put our own life jackets on first.  If our management team are not engaged or are anxious, they cannot support, engage or motivate their teams or colleagues.  We must manage our own anxieties before we can help those in our teams or other colleagues.

 

Being Anxiety Aware

Good work is good for us. How can businesses support this? Workload, hours, pay, job security, promotions are all high level and strategic concerns. What about the day to day things managers and businesses can do as well?

Communicate 

From my experience, most issues arise because there is a communication disconnect.  How clearly do managers and the wider business communicate with their staff?

 

Control 

People feel anxious, often, when they feel out of control so making sure there is clear messaging and expectations around roles, responsibilities, future plans and prospects is key to this.  Also, we can only control what we can control – this sounds glib, but it is true.  We need deadlines, but be flexible where you can and if a deadline is not going to meet, deal with this early and make new plans.

 

Autonomy

Give people autonomy to make and own their decisions.

 

Courage 

Sometimes managers have to have courageous conversations with their people. This can cause anxiety for managers but maybe, the issue which you are putting off discussing is the thing that is causing someone else anxiety.

 

Switch off 

Rest breaks are a good thing, presenteeism (at work or remotely) is not.  Encourage a culture where it is ok to go for a walk or sit in the garden and sending emails at 3am is not what you want. Managers should exhibit role modelling behaviours as well. Our instant messaging age is fantastic; but are we too quick to fire off an email – stop, pause, and preferably re-read an email to make sure your tone and message is what you want to convey.

 

Know your people

When is someone just having an off day or when is something more serious? Building high trust worth relationships can help in that if someone trusts you, they are more likely to come forward and talk to you. This is also important when we think about making reasonable adjustments if someone has a mental impairment under the Equality Act 2010.  ACAs has also produced new guidance regarding making reasonable adjustments.

 

Kindness

When did you do something at work which was kind? When did someone say “thank you”? It is ok to have fun, to enjoy work and who you work with.  Happy people make a happy business.

 

We run stress and anxiety awareness courses for managers and wider employee populations either in person or as pre-recorded E-learning sessions. To find out more about the topics covered in this article please contact Emma O’Connor at [email protected]