Workplace 2.0: It’s Diverse and Stress-Averse

If you’ve been reading our summer blog series exploring the causes and effects of workplace stress and the myth of busyness, you learned that there is good stress and bad stress. You also acknowledged as recently as last week that if you think stress will kill you, you’ve given it a green light to do just that.

Yet despite these recognitions, if you are like the majority of corporate professionals, you may be hesitating to avert the prevalence of stress and workplace stressors, and understandably so. Such a move could catapult you far beyond your comfort zone and initiate a sort of personal culture shock. After all, we fear what we don’t understand. But that very fear leads us right back around to stress in a predictable cycle. Truthfully, only when you begin to dissect the realities of workplace stress and gain wisdom can you diminish your fears and break that vicious cycle.

The Not-So-Sneaky Sources of Stress

That aforementioned dissection, when executed holistically, will reveal the two juiciest underlying sources of workplace toxicity. For one, if your employees are working 80 hours to get the job done, you might have a business model that’s not in alignment with reality. The result: Undue, anti-productive stress. Secondly, if your skilled employees didn’t arrive at your offices with a proper dose of Corporate Emotional Intelligence, and you haven’t yet taken steps to remedy the circumstance, your workplace environment will lack the social chemistry it needs to function efficiently. Again, the consequence: Destructive, entirely preventable stress.

In considering solutions to these predicaments, keep in mind that there are as many as four generations sharing the workplace. In other words, it’s not just millennials, and therefore, millennial traits are not the only ones that should be addressed (although they do need to be addressed uniquely.) The need for soft skills is universal; It’s also urgent, as so many companies today are learning as they outsource their remedial roles and seek employees with a knack for critical thinking. But as this Wall Street Journal article indicates, spotting an empathetic job candidate via their résumé and an interview can prove impractical, while cutting-edge recruiting techniques can be surprisingly expensive. The answer lies a bit deeper, and deeper doesn’t mean out-of-reach.

How Open Are You?

If EQ and employee retention are going to be your golden ticket to pulling ahead or maintaining your status as an industry leader, there are some stress-eliminating concepts that you’ll need to embrace. Consider your familiarity with terms like empathy, adaptation, employee investment, long-term planning and sustainability when you examine the current state of your business. As I mentioned, millennials are only part of the equation, but they’re a growing part. Have you made an effort to connect with their values? Perhaps you have an employee development program in place. Have you considered factoring-in participation as part of their career goals?

These big questions and others will be addressed in the coming weeks in a series of DRIVEN articles designed to lay out the specifics when it comes to mitigating stress at the source to restore workplace harmony and optimal productivity. Your company can operate like a well-oiled machine! I invite you to find out how by staying tuned for what’s to come.

If you’re considering additional ways to make your company more attractive for long-term employees, or are interested in refining the talent you have in-place with the intention of retaining them for the long haul, let DRIVEN offer you our customized Private Client Services. They’ve proven to be a recipe for success for a host of major players in business. Is it your company’s turn?