Tips for managing stress and burnout in the workplace

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, making now the perfect time to check in with yourself! We’ve been navigating our new (and always-changing) normal for over 15 months. It’s completely okay to feel stress as social distancing and mask mandates end, and the world opens up again. These changes directly impact your day-to-day life, especially when it comes to working. Are you headed back to the office after a year of working from home? Or maybe your company has decided to stick with a work-from-home workforce or a hybrid model.

In today’s blog post, we share helpful tips for managing acute and chronic work-related stress and addressing ways to handle — or preferably avoid — burnout.

Tips for Managing Work-Related Stress

As defined by Medical News Today, stress is a natural feeling of not coping with specific demands or events. It is the body’s defence system against predators or threats. The feeling floods our bodies with hormones (cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine) and enacts the fight-or-flight mechanism. Unfortunately, stress can become a chronic condition if it is not managed properly and harms someone’s quality of life.

If you are experiencing stress due to work, here are eight tips that can help you handle the stressors in your life.

• Establish and maintain healthy work/life boundaries. Strive for balance!
• Speaking of boundaries, be sure to turn your computer off at a certain time each day.
  
• Create a designated workspace, if possible.
  
• Along these same lines, change in and out of work clothes. This behaviour will serve as a visual representation that work is beginning or ending for the day.
  
• Take regular breaks! Stand or stretch every hour. If you have some flexibility in your day, try to take a walk or move your body in a way that feels good.
  
• Connect with supportive colleagues during the workday. Similarly, make time for friends and family during your “off” time.
  
• While you are “off”, enjoy yourself on evenings and weekends! Be sure to take advantage of your paid time off (PTO) and schedule a vacation, if possible.
  
• Nourish your body.
  

When stress starts to affect your overall wellness and becomes chronic, you may want to practice combining the strategies above and consider the six strategies below in your quest for calmness.

• Reduce your intake of alcohol, caffeine, and/or other substances.
• Remove, reduce, or change the source of stress.
• Consider therapy or counselling. Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) can help you alter how you view a stressful event and teach you alternative coping methods.
• Practice breathing exercises, such as diaphragmatic breathing or progressive muscle relaxation.
• Commit to a daily meditation session to encourage mindfulness. Apps like Calm or Headspace can help guide you.
• Practice this 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 grounding exercise: What are 5 things you can see? What are 4 things you can hear? What are 3 things you can touch? What are 2 things you can smell? What is 1 thing you can taste?

How to Handle Burnout

Burnout occurs when “people are highly engaged over a long period of time without the personal skills and organizational support to maintain their wellbeing.” It can lead to lower productivity, health problems, substance abuse, increased occurrences of anxiety and depression, lower commitment, higher absenteeism, and more turnover in the workplace.

It’s no surprise that burnout, which has been soaring in recent years, reached an all-time high during the COVID-19 pandemic. As an example of this increase, when software company Limeade surveyed their employees months before the pandemic began, 42 per cent of workers reported burnout. When they surveyed their workforce a few months into the pandemic, the number had increased to 72 per cent.

If you’re struggling with burnout, here are three key takeaways:

• Seek creative outlets to help keep you engaged and motivated and improve your ability to think accurately and flexibly.
  
• Make self-care a priority. Lucky for you, we have a blog dedicated to how to do that intentionally!
  
• Accept support. When you’re experiencing burnout, you’re likely trying to avoid others, which only makes you feel worse. Instead, maintain social connections and share your feelings with a trusted friend, family member, supportive coworker, or therapist .
  

Closing Thoughts

We often don't stop to contemplate what is contributing to feelings of stress until it's too late and we hit burnout. Take a moment now to check in with yourself. How has the shift to a virtual, back to the office or hybrid schedule impacted you over the last year? Narrowing in a bit, how have you felt since the start of 2021? And lastly, what strategies will you try to help reduce that stress?

If you’re dealing with stress in your life or burnout in the workplace, you’re not alone! Live LYTE Counseling can help you live life on your terms.

For individual therapy or clinical supervision, reach out to Marissa Friedman, LMHC, NCC. For professional development or clinical supervision, contact Carmen Bolívar, LCSW.