Imagine two employees with the same expectation to get through more work than is physically possible to accomplish in one day. One employee is helped by their leader to prioritize what is most important and assured that they understand everything can’t be accomplished in one day, and that the expectation is to do the best they can during their working hours. The other employee is told that if they don’t get it all done there’s a risk of failing at the project, losing a client or even a risk of losing their job. If the hours worked and the capability of both employees is the same, who do you believe would be more productive in the long run? Who do you believe would be more likely to complain about workload stress?
Daniel Pink, in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, provides evidence that the external pressure over time will reduce productivity and significantly increase work stress, leading to a higher potential for illness, disability and absence.
The point is that often workload stress has less to do with the quantity of work to be done and more to do with other stressors. What follows are tips and strategies for you as a leader to support productivity during times of high demand while you also reduce workload stress.
Your role as a leader
Most leaders strive to have a fair distribution of workload. But many factors can interfere with this objective. For example, tasks may take longer or shorter than we imagined, there may be more contingencies or waiting time for others to do their part, there may be tasks that have been long-standing that you no longer take into account or there may be responsibilities that you are not aware of related to compliance or reporting. Left unchecked, work stress can lead to burnout or other serious health concerns. Burnout response for leaders helps you recognize workplace factors and help support those recovering from burnout.
By being transparent about your intention for every employee to do a good job each day, without the continual need for stress, pressure or overtime, especially unpaid overtime, you open the dialogue for a psychologically safer workplace and reduce workload stress.
The following questions adapted with permission from Benoit Lefebvre, University of Ottawa, can help you think about the systemic or broader issues that may be impacting work stress:
- Is the amount of work expected of each employee reasonable for their knowledge, experience and position?
- Do you regularly ask what an employee’s current demands are before you assign an additional task?
- Do you help prioritize, delegate or delay competing tasks when the additional assignment adds workload stress?
- Do employees come to you and are they comfortable discussing their work stress, job demands and preferred level of autonomy?
- Do employees have the ideal setting, equipment, tools and resources, and time needed to do their jobs successfully?
- Is the work environment free from unnecessary interruptions and disruptions, including conflict, competing demands and endless meetings?
- Do employees have clarity and/or control over how their tasks and responsibilities are prioritized?
Managing workload stress
Even the most conscientious leader can have a high level of workload stress among their team. It may not be for any other reason than that each team member is intrinsically motivated in a way that is neither balanced nor healthy. If you have attracted passionate, energetic employees who also have poor personal boundaries or self-care habits, it’s almost inevitable that workload stress is or will become an issue.
Working hard is not in itself a stressor. Working hard is not bad for our mental health if we feel we:
- have clarity about what we need to do
- are working regular hours
- take regular breaks
- have the necessary equipment, tools, skills and time to meet our obligations
- don’t have too many distractions or interruptions
- are adequately recognized and compensated
- work in a safe setting where we can speak up about concerns
- are doing something that is valued by our team or organization.
Review the list above and if any of these are potentially an issue for one or more of your employees, you may want to start there to collaborate on effective ways to intervene and reduce work stress.
There are many resources you can use with your team to help raise awareness and create new, healthier approaches while continuing to do good, if not better, work with less stress.
- Evidence-based actions for workload management. These actions and responses can be implemented with a minimal investment of resources or cost to the organization.
- Performance management. These strategies for supporting performance in a psychologically safe way, even when mental health is an issue, focus on solutions that also support employee well-being and help reduce unnecessary work stress.
- Hybrid teams. In a hybrid team, some employees work on-site and some work remotely. Read more to learn how to balance and effectively support the success, and manage the stress, of both sets of employees.
- Workload management workshop materials. Learn how to facilitate a team discussion to address and improve workload management in the workplace. This resource includes a guide and slides to help you get started.
- Evidence-based actions for clear leadership and expectations. These actions and responses can be implemented with a minimal investment of resources or cost to the organization.
- Clear leadership and expectations workshop materials. Learn how to facilitate a team discussion to address and improve leadership and expectations in the workplace. This resource includes a guide and slides to help you get started.
- Psychologically safe team assessment. This assessment looks at team dynamics, including how employees interact and the extent to which each team member feels that the team is an inclusive environment. This doesn’t specifically delve into workload, however, often when a team works well together, they support each other through the ebb and flow of work demands. This helps to alleviate work stress when the demands are higher.
Activities that help reduce work stress
While it may seem that team building activities take people away from the task at hand, and therefore increase workload stress, some activities actually allow people to feel more calm or energized.
Healthy break activities has many ideas which take 15 minutes or less for you to choose from.
Team building activities are aimed at improving team effectiveness, cohesion, communication, problem solving or well-being, which can also help reduce the work stress.
What if there actually is too much work?
Work stress is more likely related to fear or the perception of pressure than it is to the quantity of work.
Your approach as a leader can contribute to the perception of pressure to perform by your tone of voice, body language, the words that you use or where you focus your praise. In Performance management and Recognition strategies for leaders, you can read more about an approach that minimizes pressure while increasing motivation and productivity. The psychologically safe leader assessment goes even further in thinking about the strategies that promote psychological safety while also improving employee performance and team cohesion.
As a leader, it is your responsibility to manage the stress and pressure in a way that optimizes the energy and focus of every employee. This means that when there is simply more work than is possible to get done in a day, consider the following:
- Write out each task or deliverable and assign a realistic number of full-time equivalent (FTE) hours to each.
- Total up the hours and divide it by the number of full-time equivalent employees you have available and capable of doing the work.
- You may want to engage each employee in creating their own list, which you can review and put together into a team list.
- Taking the time to do this may create stress when everyone is already feeling workload pressure. Explain that your intention is to advocate for stress relief.
- Total up the hours and divide it by the number of full-time equivalent employees you have available and capable of doing the work.
- Identify any shortfalls in terms of capacity, and bring the list to your leader to choose which of the tasks or deliverables are a priority and which ones can be delayed, given to another department, or dropped altogether.
- This is simply a mathematical calculation which shows what is realistically possible. It is not a sign of weakness or poor management.
- Be open to questions about the amount of time assigned to each task and the capacity of each employee.
- Rather than being defensive, if challenged, be prepared to back up your calculations.
- Ask what your leader’s priorities are and which tasks they feel could be delayed, delegated outside of your team or dropped.
- If relevant, ask if and when additional staff will be hired, or when ongoing demands will be reduced.
- Once you have a realistic goal from your leader, bring your team together to discuss how you will achieve these goals and how your employees can reset their own work schedules to improve the quality and reduce the stress related to their own work success.
- Check back in with your team to reassess how these changes are impacting their workload stress and take necessary corrective action.
Individual employee concerns
Work stress may be part of a bigger issue with an employee. Before you jump to solutions, you may want to have a conversation to understand where the employee is at. Developing employee plans for leaders provides step-by-step guidelines to help you collaborate with an employee to develop their own strategies for success. Some other resources that could be helpful include:
- A tool to support employee success. A process that engages employee and employer to develop solutions that support productivity and well-being. Supporting Employee Success is for any employee, including those needing accommodation.
- Communicating with emotional employees. These strategies can help you have supportive conversations with employees and avoid triggering negative reactions.
- Employee mental health issues. When employees have mental illnesses, effective accommodation can help them stay productive at work. Learn to leverage resources, manage co-worker reactions and support a successful return to work after leave.
- Helping employees to manage change. Any organizational change may have an unsettling impact on employees. You can help through thoughtful planning, effective communication, and engaging employees in exploring how changes can be handled in a psychologically safe way.
- Performance management. These strategies for supporting performance in a psychologically safe way, even when mental health is an issue, focus on solutions that also support employee well-being and help reduce unnecessary work stress.
- Supportive task improvement. These resources can help you support an employee to improve their performance and productivity related to a specific task by working through potential barriers and building a plan for success.
To share with the employee
You may also want to share these resources with your employees beforehand, to help them prepare for a productive conversation about what could be done to help alleviate their work stress:
- Workload reflection and discussion tool. This fillable form supports the employee to explore what may be contributing to their stress around work as well as to consider possible solutions and strategies that might help. This form can also be completed by the employee in preparation for a discussion with their leader or in collaboration with their leader.
- Preparing for a difficult conversation. Taking a few moments to reflect on your assumptions and intentions before beginning a difficult conversation can set you up to be more effective. Sharing this with the employee in advance of a conversation with their leader may help reduce their stress.
- Resources for employees. These resources to support well-being for employees and their families include topics ranging from dealing with work issues to accessing help and resources.
- Managing stress, Prevent burnout and Work-life balance tips. Be careful that you don’t imply that there’s something wrong with the individual who is sharing their stress with you. If the individual says there’s other things in their life that are contributing to their stress, then this resource can be introduced with a statement such as, “It sounds like you have a lot of demands on you. I want to help you deal with the work stress, but this resource may also help you protect your well-being.”
Another option is to share all of these resources with your employees, before they are necessary, as tools to help them feel comfortable discussing work stress before it has a negative impact on their well-being.
Employee issues that could increase work stress
If you only have a single employee struggling with work stress, it’s likely that there are factors other than the quantity of work that are contributing to the stress. These factors could include burnout, personal, relationship or financial stress, bullying or harassment, disability (mental or physical), not enough breaks, inadequate sleep, not feeling included, low motivation or lack of appreciation.
If you suspect that there are other factors at play, there are many helpful resources available for you under Employee concerns.
Additional resources
- A tool to support employee success. A process that engages employee and employer to develop solutions that support productivity and well-being. Supporting Employee Success is for any employee, including those needing accommodation.
- Employee stress prevention process. Understand how chronic mental stress is defined and how to recognize hazards. This tool provides strategies at the organizational level for reducing risk to protect both employers and employees.
References
- Lefebvre, B. (n.d.). Workload management. UOttawa. Retrieved January 26, 2023, from https://www.uottawa.ca/campus-life/health-wellness/workload-management
- Pink, D. H. (2011). Drive. Canongate Books.