Employers Have an Obligation to Reduce Workplace Stressors
By: William Mcpeck
Tags: Stress Management, Stress, Workplace Stress, Corporate Wellness, Williammcpeck

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A national trade magazine I subscribe to recently offered 4 benefit trends readers should watch in 2021. One of their trends was a continued focus on employee mental health.

One statement in the mental health trend description caught my attention. The statement was: “Where employers can contribute by reducing workplace stress, they are looking to do so.”

I would make the argument that every employer, no matter its size, can and must address the stressors associated with its organization and workplace. I use the word stressors deliberately and not as a replacement for the word stress.

Since stress is a physiological response within the body of an employee to a stressor (either an internal or external stressor), it is impossible for an employer to reduce an employee’s level of stress or their stress response. The stress response and stress level is unique to each individual employee and therefore can only be reduced by the employee themselves. An individual employee’s stress response and stress level will vary depending upon the individual’s response to a particular stressor.

What is possible for employers to address are three aspects of stress: (1) Workplace stressors; (2) Employee awareness and knowledge and skills related to stress; (3) Provide tools and resources to help employees better manage their stress responses and stress level when they occur.

Workplace Stressors

Many different factors can be workplace stressors. What is viewed as a stressor will be unique to each individual employee.

Workplace stressors can be the result of workplace policies, workplace practices, the work design, work arrangement, and the workplace environment. The workplace environment would include the physical environment, the psychosocial environment and the inter-personal environment.

Each workplace will have its own unique set of workplace stressors. Since workplace stressors can be so varied, the best way for employers to identify their workplace stressors is to ask employees. Obviously, once the employer knows their workplace stressors, they need to work on reducing or eliminating them. There is no reason why every employer, no matter its size, cannot seek to identify its workplace stressors and work to address them.

Stress Related Awareness, Knowledge and Skills

Employers have a number of strategies available to them to help employees build awareness and enhance their knowledge and skills related to stress. Awareness building and knowledge and skill enhancement should be a part of every employer’s initiatives related to stress. There is no reason why every employer, no matter its size, cannot at least build employee awareness related to stress. At the very least, every employer can post information to a bulletin board or set out stress related information on a table for employees to anonymously pick-up.

Stress Management Tools and Resources

Many employers can provide employees access to stress management tools and resources. Many employers already provide worksite wellness programs and EAP (employee assistance program) programs which can be enlisted into employer based stress related initiatives. At the very least, every employer can provide to employees a list of stress related tools and resources available in the local community.

Based on these three strategies, I would suggest that it is not “where employers can contribute,” but rather “how employers can contribute.” Every employer, no matter its size, can and should offer one or more of these strategies to its employees.

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