How To Help Employees Manage Work-related Stress
Over 16 million working days are lost a year due to work-related stress, depression, or anxiety, according to the Health and Safety Executive.
As such, it’s vital for employers to find ways to support the health and wellbeing of employees. Not only is this beneficial from a business perspective, as people are less likely to take sick days, but it’s also important to make sure people feel comfortable and safe in the workplace.
To help you get started, we’ve highlighted six steps you can take to manage stress in the workplace.
What is work-related stress?
The NHS describes work-related stress as excessive pressure in work that starts to impact overall happiness and quality of life, as well as physical and mental health.
Our report on Mental Health in the Workplace revealed that 90% of employees surveyed had dealt with mental health problems at some point. Our research also revealed how difficult it is to navigate work-related stress, with 43% of participants reporting that they’ve taken time off work as a result of struggling with their mental health.
What are the signs of stress at work?
Work-related stress can impact both physical and mental health. As such, you need to be aware of the signs of stress at work, so you can better identify when your employees might be struggling.
Common symptoms of stress at work include:
Fatigue.
Headaches.
Tension in muscles.
Depression.
Anxiety.
Irritability.
Lack of concentration.
How to help employees manage work-related stress
While there’s always an element of work-related stress, especially in fast-paced business environments, you can minimise its impact with an effective health and wellbeing strategy. We’ve got five suggestions for how you can help employees with stress in the workplace.
1. Encourage flexible working hours
With the rise of hybrid and remote working, many employees are looking to move away from a traditional 9-5 working day – especially those with dependants.
Adopting flexible working hours in your workplace gives employees the ability to manage their own time, offering them a greater sense of control over their working day. For instance, if they have children, then they may wish to work 8-4 or even 7-3 to allow them to make pick up or drop off time.
As the working culture in the UK has changed over the years, it’s now more common for both parents to work, reports Working Families. As an employer, it’s important to be supportive of this to help reduce stress at work - allowing flexibility is just one way to do so.
2. Respect your employees’ personal time
As an employer, it’s important to recognise your employees need time away from work. This helps to encourage a healthy work-life balance, reducing stress, and improving energy levels.
Setting a culture that having time away from the job is acceptable, can help employees feel more comfortable and alleviate stress. Try the following steps to help set a culture that’s respectful of employees’ personal time:
Set a time limit on work emails: Logging on and immediately receiving emails sent out the night before can feel overwhelming. To alleviate this, it’s best to set a time limit on emails, by suggesting employees and management don’t send emails outside of your companies regular working hours.
Allow employees to flex their work hours when needed: Some employees may have care requirements that mean they need to take an hour or two out during regular working hours. To accommodate for this, you can suggest employees work later when they can but take the time back when best suits them. Allowing this means the work still gets done, but employees feel less stressed about their own personal commitments.
Suggest work chats be muted during annual leave: Creating work group chats are a great way to keep in touch with employees on the go. However, receiving messages while on holiday or out of working hours can mean people are unable to switch off. Try suggesting employees mute or archive these chats when on annual leave or at the end of their working day, to allow them to switch off and relax properly.
Encourage time away from the work environment: It’s important to encourage employees take their full annual leave allocation, as this helps them switch off fully from work. However, you can also encourage they take time away from their desk, the shop floor, or working environment throughout the day as well. Try moving a meeting to a coffee shop or allowing people to take regular short breaks throughout the working day, as well as a regular lunch break.
3. Suggest exercise classes at lunchtime
As well as being great for your physical health, exercise has been shown to reduce stress at work too.
That’s because exercise helps to reduce fatigue, increase alertness and concentration, and improve cognitive function. This means that exercise could actually encourage increased productivity, in addition to reducing signs of stress at work.
Some site-based or hybrid businesses have found success in encouraging employees to set up exercise classes in work, including group runs, circuit training, and yoga and Pilates sessions. Fostering a culture of acceptance of employees wearing their workout clothes ready for a lunch time run, for example, can help promote positive health and wellbeing attitudes.
For remote businesses, you could try taking a digital approach, by using apps that suggest local exercise classes for employees to take during lunch.
For example, Benenden Healthcare for Business offers access to a range of live and on-demand wellbeing classes, available at the tap on the app, anytime, anywhere.
4. Ensure clear priorities
Ensuring employees are able to manage a full workload is key to alleviating work-related stress.
However, in particularly busy periods, it can be impossible to get everything done in a normal working day. That’s why it’s important to be clear on exactly which tasks are a priority for each day or week, so employees don’t get stressed about their ever-expanding to-do lists.
One of the simplest ways to communicate priorities is to introduce a short morning briefing. In larger companies this can be split into departmental meetings, but in a small business it could involve everyone. Set a timer for 10 minutes for each member of staff to share what they’re working on. You’ll then have a clear overview, which can be tweaked if necessary.
It’s important to keep in mind that this is dual responsibility to be shared between manager and employee. While an employer should have sight of this, it’s beneficial for the employee to take ownership of their workload, as they know best what they’re capable of getting done within the working week.
5. Offer support
Some employees may find it difficult to speak to a manager about work-related stress. As such, it’s best to offer additional or external support alongside your own.
Consider Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs), where you can arrange free counselling for employees to access, both in and out of work hours. With these services, a mental health professional will be able to offer practical advice to help cope with stress at work.
For example, with Benenden Healthcare for Business, employees can benefit from get access to 24/7 Mental Health Helpline and Care Planning and Social Care Advice service for immediate advice and signposting. As well as short-term structured support via Mental Health Support service.
It's important to grow a supportive culture between employees as well, consider training some employees to act as Mental Health First Aid (MHFA). Sometimes even the act of speaking to another person can help alleviate a bit of stress and having a group of MHFA’s in the workplace for employee support could help facilitate the much-needed conversations.
Mind suggest organising a work buddy system as well, for employees to seek support from colleagues who may be going through a similar situation.
How much do you know about work-related stress? Take our quiz!
If you want to learn more about how work-related stress impacts people and business alike, as well as discover how much you know about it, take our quiz.
To begin, click the ‘start’ button, below.
How can Benenden Healthcare for Business help with work-related stress?
Managing stress in the workplace can be tricky for both employers and employees alike, especially if you aren’t sure how best to help or what steps to take.
Benenden Healthcare for Business can help you to provide support for employees dealing with work-related stress. With immediate access to our 24/7 Mental Health Helpline, your workforce will be able to seek immediate emotional support and signposting from professional healthcare workers.
For more information on ways to tackle workplace loneliness or how to support bereaved employees, head over to our Be Healthy hub.
Medically reviewed by Dr Cheryl Lythgoe in May 2025.
