Stress can be a real killer, especially on the workfloor. A heavy workload, poor communication and difficult clients are merely a few causes of this phenomenon. This stress can leave you feeling anxious, drained and overwhelmed.
Since it’s Stress Awareness Day, we want to shed some light on how we aim to eliminate stress on our workfloor. Open communication is the key to this. It’s used like a thread through our entire way of working. And perhaps it can be an inspiration for those looking to downsize their work-related stress. Here are three ways how we at Visuality cope with stress at work.
1. Integrating Nonviolent Communication
“A way of thinking, speaking and acting that contributes to mutual connection and cooperation”.
In short, Nonviolent Communication is all about using empathy in the way you communicate with others and with yourself. Creating a nonviolent environment on the workfloor where one can vent freely about their causes of stress – whether it’s work-related or not – is key to minimize stress.
It’s important to integrate this way of communicating in your team, but also within yourself. Sometimes the stress you have is enforced by your own thoughts. Try turning “the client isn’t happy with my work. I did a terrible job” into “the client isn’t happy with my work, but I did my best and will continue to do that”.
2. Venting during Charli Monday
On ‘Charli Monday’, our weekly monday-meeting, we catch up on several topics. With coffee and croissants from the Charli Bakery, we sit down to share knowledge and lessons learned.
There’s also a very important place provided for whichever tension a team member has. Talking about your causes of stress or tensions can help to take some burden of your tense shoulders. It also helps create a place where it’s okay to talk about your problems, how small you think they may be.
3. Talking with a Business coach
Finally, our team has access to a business coach where they can get a professional outlet. The coach helps us to better understand where our stress comes from and assess whether the cause of the problem comes from within or from our environment. It’s fully anonymous and we also have the possibility to assess our personal stress, since this can also affect your work-related stress (and vice versa).