TO BE CREATIVE YOU NEED TO REDUCE STRESS IN INDIVIDUALS, TEAMS AND ORGANISATIONS

Recommendations for reducing employee strain

If organisations want to become more creative and deliver innovation they first need to reduce employee strain. Individuals, teams and organisations cannot ignite creativity and in turn deliver innovation if they are too stressed – they will burnout.

Thankfully, a wealth of recommendations can be made to organisations aiming to reduce employee strain and several psychological theories and research can be applied.These include the identification of stressors, individual differences and types of employee strain.Each of these are explored in this blog.

Stressors can be defined as variables that can predict employee strain outcomes and be both positive and negative.Examples of stressors can include work-life balance, work conflict, personal circumstances, job demands and micro-aggressions. Micro-aggressions can be explained as actions or behaviours towards an individual that may not be immediately noticeable but can be signalled individually for example not inviting individuals to meetings or making ‘personal slight’ comments that infer discrimination.Stressors lead to strain outcomes and are influenced by intervening variables of individual differences.

Individual differences can include locus of control, negative affectivity and emotional intelligence.Locus of control can be defined as an individual having an external or internal perspective approach to how they can control their environment at work.The internal approach suggests that individuals believe they can control their outcome and the external approach as believing events are outside their control.Those with internal locus of control are less likely to suffer from strain and those with external locus of control are more likely to suffer from strain.Negative affectivity can also influence employee strain.Those with high negative affectivity such as anger, negative behaviour, anxiety and thinking negatively are more likely to suffer from employee strain than those with low negative affectivity.Low negative affectivity can include behaviours such as being authentically positive in the work environment, optimism, hope and assertiveness.Individual differences, locus of control and negative affectivity can be measured by questionnaires.The Beck depression inventory would also give an indication of any stressors that may reside within the individual.Emotional intelligence can also influence employee strain and organisations can measure emotional intelligence levels with their employees.Those with high emotional intelligence are less likely to experience employee strain.

Once an organisation has identified stressors such as conflict, job demands, work life balance, general health (measured by the general health questionnaire) and also have an indication of its employees individual differences it can then assess the most appropriate interventions to reduce employee strain.This leads to consideration for how employee strain can be identified to enable the organisation to respond and improve the environment with appropriate interventions.

Employee strain can be observed in psychological and physiological distress of an individual.There are different levels of strain, acute and chronic. Acute includes psychological distress experienced by an individual for a relatively short length of time and could be observed as anxiety or depression, loss of interest in role and inability to cope with job demands.Chronic strain includes strain experienced by the individual for a longer period and can lead to cardiovascular disease, hyper-tension, burnout (cognitive and physical hypertension).

It’s important for organisations to measure the level of strain in their employees and they could use self-assessment questionnaires to do this.With the level of strain known organisations can respond by making interventions to reduce stressors such as conflict, job demands and increase work life balance according to individual needs.Interventions can be made with employees to help them at a job level such as decreasing job demands and conflict or helping them with adjusting their environment.Conflict may be perceived as positive but generally this is not the case and it is recommended organisations reduce conflict that is negative such as bad leadership, ambiguity, harassment, high job demands.They can apply interventions to address the specific issues through coaching, training, counselling and stress management training.

Organisations can also implement an Employee Assistance Programme whereby employees can have access to one to one counselling support for any internal or external issue such as mental health issues, financial difficulty and other individual and personal matters that might need psychological support.The organisation would need to take a broad approach to the implementation of an Employee Assistance Programme and requirements would need to be defined to improve employee health and not just save cost of employee strain, that in the UK is estimated at £25bn per year.The organisation would need to measure the success of any intervention and this could include improved psychological, physiological health and other measures such as increased productivity and reduced absenteeism.However, measuring absenteeism to the extent it creates presenteeism where employees feel they have to attend work even if they are ill.This leads to the consideration of the key recommendations an organisation could be advised to take to reduce employee strain.

Recommendations to reduce employee strain include identification of stressors such as conflict, job demands, work life balance, personal issues of the individual (under confidentiality) and any micro-aggressions being signalled.Next, an organisation needs to review individual differences that may influence employee strain such as locus of control, negative affectivity, and emotional intelligence.The employee strain outcomes also need to be observed such as psychological and physiological negative frequencies.The organisation could respond to the employee strain outcomes with interventions such as stress management training, 3rd wave cognitive behaviour therapy such as acceptance and commitment therapy, mindfulness programmes and implementing an employee assistance programme. The most effective intervention is to reduce job demands, reduce conflict and increase work life balance for individuals to support their health and wellness at a psychological and physiological level.