3 Tips to help managers support their teams this Stress Awareness Month (April 1 – 30)
Stress Awareness Month can quickly pass by unnoticed at a busy startup. But as a manager it’s your job to use every opportunity you can to support your team!
I asked my lovely colleagues for their personal stress management tips and tips for managers looking to support their stressed employees. Lucky for you I work with HR professionals!
I hope these tips help you know what you can do to support your team this Stress Awareness Month and beyond.
Here is what they had to say.
What is a great thing that managers can do to help their teams manage stress?
1 – Work on your company culture
“A manager can help their teams to deal with work stress by making sure that there isn’t a blame culture. Mistakes should be seen as opportunities for change and learning!”
– Anne Campbell, Business Development Manager
A bad company culture can do horrible things to your team.
And when your culture leans more towards finding the culprit over learning from the problem, you’re in trouble!
A blame culture can do horrible things to your teams when things inevitably go wrong. ‘Owning up’ to mistakes can become an ordeal instead of a common occurance.
This can lead to feelings of guilt and make your team members afraid to take the blame. This is not good for employee retention and definitely not good for stress!
When problems do come up, it’s important not to dwell on who caused the issue. Your team’s energies should go towards finding the cause and a swift solution.
Then – after the problem has been put to bed – we can try to learn from our mistakes.
2 – Regular meetings are key
“I think that it’s really important that managers have regular one to ones with their people. If you want your team to discuss any worries with you, they need to feel like you’ve put aside enough time for them.”
– Kasia Gibbs, Account Manager
Making sure to have regular meetings with your employees is essential – especially when working from home.
My regular meetings with my manager are one of the highlights of my working week. I get to use an hour every week to discuss my projects, life and how my team can support me.
When you don’t have regular meetings with your remote team members, they can start to feel isolated and stressed.
3 – Empathy is power
“Checking in on any team members going through a stressful time is very simple and powerful. A bit of empathy can go a really long way.”
– Daisy Hanson, Content Marketing Executive
But you can go beyond the one to one meetings.
I’m in the middle of packing up my life and flat to move halfway across the country this weekend.
We all know that moving house is one of the most stressful things a person can go through. My manager was the first person at work to hear about it and the first to express some empathy.
Looking back, it was enough to just have my worries be heard by a manager. Sometimes we need to vent!
So please be sensitive to any issues that your team members are going through. Send them a text to see how they’re doing and if they need anything.
I hope these tips will help you know what do do for your team this Stress Awareness Month. But it’s important to keep on supporting your team throughout the year.
If you think your team could use any more advice, we have another article about personal stress management tips too.
And if you need any help hiring or managing your junior employees, check out our hiring platform and management resources.