Managing Workplace Stress and Fatigue: A Practical Guide for Employers

The uncertainty of the last few years has taken its toll on many workers. Today, as many as 91% of UK adults have experienced high or extreme levels of pressure in the last year.

Many employees have therefore prioritised reducing unnecessary workplace stress and fatigue wherever possible.

Here’s the good news: There are plenty of steps that employers and employees can take to manage workplace stress and fatigue. In this article, we explore some practical strategies to achieve just that.

What are the main types of employee fatigue?

Physical fatigue: This is caused by prolonged physical activity or manual labour. It can lead to muscle aches, injuries, accidents and a decrease in overall energy levels.

Mental fatigue: Typically caused by prolonged cognitive overload or mental effort, this can lead to feelings of exhaustion, lapses in concentration, memory problems and in the long-term, burnout.

Emotional fatigue: A type of fatigue caused by prolonged exposure to stress, tension or emotional upset. It can lead to feelings of apathy, irritability and a lack of enthusiasm.

Shift work fatigue: Caused by working a non-traditional schedule or rotating shifts, which can disrupt a person’s circadian rhythm and lead to problems sleeping. This type of fatigue often results in physical exhaustion.

Travel fatigue: Caused by the physical and mental demands of travelling, such as jet lag, lack of sleep and other environmental changes. Again, it’s likely to lead to physical exhaustion.

Read more: The Top 5 Causes of Employee Disengagement

Causes of workplace stress and fatigue

There could be many factors that cause an employee to feel stressed and fatigued. As well as the causes above, there may be other situational factors you need to be aware of:

Bullying and harassment

It goes without saying that being bullied or harassed at work presents a significant cause of stress for employees. These situations can create pervasive worry and anxiety as a result of feeling anxious or unsafe at work.

It’s critical for organisations, therefore, to take a zero-tolerance approach to bullying and harassment in the workplace. To do this, make sure all employees are aware of what constitutes bullying, what the consequences are and how to report such behaviour. It’s particularly important that managers are aware of this.

If a bullying complaint comes through the HR team, there also needs to be clear guidelines for how the team should respond. There should be no ambiguity about how bullying is defined and what the appropriate response is.

Unmanageable workloads

Employees who feel unable to manage the amount of work on their plate will quickly become exhausted. While busy periods are inevitable in all jobs, consistently high workloads will make it difficult for employees to cope.

To avoid this issue, managers need to be in constant communication with their direct reports to monitor current workload and take action if necessary. That could involve better prioritisation of tasks, redistributing work among the team, hiring extra staff or outsourcing. Ideally, these conversations should take place through regular one-to-one meetings.

If managers simply turn a blind eye, the health and wellbeing of employees will suffer. Ultimately, this will impact productivity. It’s the job of the HR team to work with managers, laying expectations and ensuring such conversations take place.

Lack of autonomy or flexibility

According to the University of Birmingham, employees who have higher levels of autonomy at work report a greater sense of wellbeing and job satisfaction.

It can be helpful, therefore, to promote as much flexibility as possible in your workforce. This can include giving people the choice over where and when they’re going to work, what tasks they want to prioritise and how much responsibility they want.

This is just one of the many arguments for embracing a flexible working culture that empowers employees to find the right working style for them.

Strategies for managing workplace stress and fatigue

Of course, reducing stress and fatigue in the workplace is crucial for maintaining a healthy and productive workforce. There are actions both businesses and employees should consider, but in this article, we’re focusing on a top-down approach that starts with the employer.

Here are some strategies that can be effective in reducing stress and fatigue:

Promoting flexible schedules

As mentioned above, there is a proven link between flexibility and wellbeing. Employers can allow their teams to have more control over their schedules by embracing a flexible working culture, which in turn reduces stress and improves work-life balance.

Flexibility doesn’t necessarily mean working from home – especially for industries where that isn’t an option. Instead, it can come in the form of altered working hours or part-time work. Alternatively, you could encourage job sharing, shift-swapping or being able to do admin work from home, for example.

Providing support and resources

Employers can also provide resources such as an Employee Assistance Programme as well as access to counselling or educational programmes. Together, these can help employees learn how to better manage stress and fatigue.

Research suggests that employees who were offered access to a health assessment on average lost 14% fewer productive days than those without the service. The same study found that those who engaged with wellness programmes were 29% less likely to go to hospital for a health issue. It’s clear that these initiatives can more than pay off in the long run.

Read more: How to identify employee training needs

Wellbeing leave

Many organisations have introduced specific wellbeing or mental health days since the pandemic. Offered on top of the statutory requirements for annual and sick leave, this allows employees to engage in any activity that benefits their mental or physical health. Some businesses have even implemented business-wide shutdowns, essentially closing the business for the day.

Fostering a culture of open communication

This is a crucial yet often overlooked wellbeing strategy. Stress and fatigue can easily be hidden by employees. If staff don’t feel comfortable speaking up, it can be difficult to determine whether or not stress and burnout actually exist in the company.

That’s why it is so important for organisations to foster an environment where employees feel comfortable discussing stress with their managers and HR.

Leading by example

One of the best ways to create an open and supportive environment is to encourage managers to lead by example. If employees see their managers visibly stressed and fatigued, yet ignoring the root of the problem, they’re going to do the same.

Encourage managers to embody the behaviours they want to see from their team, whether that’s logging off for some much-needed rest and recovery, pushing back against an unmanageable deadline or taking a zero-tolerance approach to bullying.

Understanding the root causes

To be able to address the root causes of stress and fatigue, employers need to first identify them. That’s why regular employee sentiment surveys can be so useful. They can help pick up underlying issues and allow you to take proactive action to reduce the root causes of stress.

An anonymous, 10-question quarterly survey is more than enough for HR to monitor wellbeing levels among different teams, alerting them to early warning signs of workplace stress and fatigue.

There’s no one answer to reducing employee stress and fatigue

Managing stress is an ongoing process that requires commitment from both employers and employees. There are no quick fixes or one-size-fits-all solutions.

But fundamentally, work shouldn’t be a cause of long-term stress, especially if employers want a productive, sustainable and engaged workforce.

Building a culture of open communication can be a challenge in medium-sized and large organisations. The best way by far is for the HR team to proactively reach out for anonymous feedback. This means employees aren’t worried about how their feedback will be received. Crucially, it also means that you can combine insights and opinions from everybody in the organisation – not just the loudest voices.

That’s what we aim to achieve with ELMO Survey. Here’s how it works:

• Confidential feedback surveys – Send anonymous surveys to employers so you can gain honest insights into workplace stress, burnout and other issues.
• Optimised survey templates – Access best-practice templates so you can deliver effective surveys without the hassle.
• Tailored data collection – Take advantage of benchmarking and analytics capabilities, so you can understand how you compare to the market and prioritise the most vital improvements to make.

Ready to get started? Find our more about ELMO Survey.