Career Development: More Ways to Reduce On-The-Job Stress

We’ve been discussing an infographic from Human Resources MBA describing how job stress may be killing you.  So far we’ve talked about solutions to reduce on-the-job stress including:

Aligning workload with capability and capacity of workers; and

Making room for workers to grow and use talent in their positions.

Today we are going to explore the infographic further and look at ways to reduce stress in the workplace by:

Ensuring all workers know their job responsibilities; and

Letting workers have a say in changes related to their jobs.

Ensure All Workers Know Their Job Responsibilities

Zig Ziglar said it best,

The only thing worse than training your staff and having them leave,
is to not train them and have them stay.

Good training is essential for employees to not only know what their responsibilities are but also to know how to execute them properly.  Stress and frustration will quickly mount and interfere with good performance if expectations are not clear and the employee is not trained to do the job correctly.

Also, when employees aren’t trained, there’s no basis for managing performance.  As a result, employees will lose focus and work will be unreliable and inconsistent. An employee who has had adequate training is clear on what the expectations are and has had an opportunity to acquire the skills to meet them.

Let Workers Have a Say in Changes Related to Their Jobs

Deciding job related changes is often viewed as a task left to managers; however, innovative employees will provide valuable input for job-related changes when a manager acknowledges their ideas for how their positions can be better for the company.

Workplace cultures that support employee innovation and empowerment have managers that are coaches and developers instead of those who feel threatened by loss of decision-making power.

This doesn’t mean that an employee should have the last say on every decision.  Good boundaries must be defined … and then managers must trust that the employee will have the ability to make good decisions within the boundaries.

Ensuring all workers know their job responsibilities and empowering them to make their positions better for the company can alleviate job stress and promote a more positive company culture.