Effective Strategies to Reduce Workplace Stress

Whatever the industry, role, or level of seniority, no one is immune to the common enemy of workplace stress. The pursuit of performance, personality clashes, and even personal challenges employees bring with them to work all fuel stress—leaving managers discouraged, even when they love their jobs. Paradoxically, it is often when we love what we do most that stress creeps in.

But this situation is not inevitable. Whether you are personally experiencing stress at work or, as a manager, HR professional, or employer, need to address it, this article offers concrete tools and strategies.

Understanding Workplace Stress

Before managing a problem, you need to understand its dynamics. Defining stress in the workplace, assessing its impact, and identifying its sources are the first essential steps to build effective prevention and management strategies.

What Is Workplace Stress?

According to Anne-Sophie Rousselat, stress arises when there is a perceived imbalance between professional demands and our perceived ability to cope.

There are two main types of stress:

• Acute stress: intense but short-lived, sometimes even stimulating (e.g., a tight deadline).
• Chronic stress: prolonged stress with heavy consequences on well-being, which can even lead to burnout.

Stress also stems from the pressure of deadlines, performance goals, and competitiveness, as well as relationship difficulties with colleagues or managers.

Recent contexts, such as the pandemic, created new stressors—for instance, the blurring of boundaries between professional and personal life due to widespread remote work.

Why Manage Stress?

While sometimes stimulating, stress is primarily a defense mechanism that, over time, affects both physical and mental health.

The consequences include:

• Fatigue and mental or physical exhaustion
• Somatic symptoms: back pain, headaches, digestive issues, heart palpitations, sleep disorders
• Emotional symptoms: irritability, anger, difficulty managing emotions
• Cognitive symptoms: trouble concentrating, poor decision-making, behavioral changes

Over time, stress can cause loss of meaning, self-esteem, and confidence, fueling a sense of failure—one of the roots of burnout.

According to the teale Employee Mental Health Barometer, nearly 1 in 2 employees report an unmanageable level of stress at work. Stress should not be underestimated: organizations with high stress levels often suffer from higher turnover, a damaged employer brand, and weaker talent retention.

Stress is also one of the main psychosocial risks companies must address to protect employee well-being and long-term business sustainability.

Main Sources of Workplace Stress

Employee stress can arise from multiple causes: individual, social, and job-related factors. While not everyone has the same vulnerability to stress or anxiety, common workplace triggers include:

• Pressure to meet objectives
• Work-life imbalance
• Tasks that are uninteresting or mismatched with skills or roles
• Interpersonal conflicts with colleagues, managers, or clients
• Lack of support, recognition, or listening from management
• Safety issues and repeated exposure to hazards
• Job insecurity
• Poor working conditions: noise, physical discomfort, lack of resources

This complexity can make identifying the precise source of stress difficult. Yet doing so is the key step for both employees and employers to build effective anti-stress strategies.

Identify Stress Sources and Concrete Coping Strategies

Start by analyzing the causes of stress: when did it begin? In what situations does it appear? Then, assess your resources: personal strengths, social support, and preferred activities you can rely on.

Strategies for Managing Stress

Question Stressful Thoughts

As Epictetus said: “What troubles people is not things themselves, but their judgments about those things.”

Stress comes from how we interpret situations, not from the situations themselves. We often apply irrational thinking patterns, or cognitive distortions.

Examples include:

• Dichotomy: seeing everything in black or white (“Either my colleague is with me, or against me.”)
• Overgeneralization: drawing broad conclusions from a single event (“I didn’t get a raise this year, so I’ll never get one.”)
• Personalization: blaming oneself for external factors (“My manager is angry—it must be my fault.”)
• Minimizing the positive: downplaying achievements (“Yes, I got the job, but it was just luck.”)

You cannot change your environment or others—but you can change your perception, which reduces stress.

Use Nonviolent Communication (NVC)

NVC is particularly useful in stressful conversations where we might lose composure. It follows 4 steps: observation, feeling, need, request.

Example: In a meeting, your manager removes your agenda item at the last minute.

• Observation: “I noticed the point I suggested was removed from today’s agenda.”
• Feeling: “I feel disappointed that we can’t discuss it.”
• Need: “I need to address this client situation we’re struggling with.”
• Request: “Could we add it to the agenda for next week’s meeting?”

The Role of Company Culture

Practicing these strategies regularly is key. As with physical health, you shouldn’t wait until things are bad to care about mental health. Identifying early symptoms helps prevent burnout and related conditions.

But stress management should not rest solely on employees’ shoulders. The organization itself—through its culture, management style, and prevention measures—holds the keys to reducing stress at its source.

This includes:

• Upholding the right to disconnect
• Encouraging employees to say no when necessary
• Recognizing and addressing psychosocial risks
• Prioritizing prevention over reactive measures

teale’s Approach to Reducing Workplace Stress

As HR leaders, implementing a well-being solution helps anchor a mental-health-focused culture and supports employee well-being individually and collectively.

Key takeaways:

• Stress arises when there is a perceived imbalance between job demands and personal resources.
• To act, first identify the sources of stress and the resources available to cope with them.
• Challenge negative thoughts and recognize irrational cognitive patterns.
• Adopt practical methods—like nonviolent communication, cardiac coherence, or SMART objectives—to reduce stress daily.

With the teale app, employees can access personalized programs to track progress, learn stress-reduction techniques, and strengthen resilience.