An excerpt from Lauren Parsons’ book ‘Thriving Leaders Thriving Teams’.

Workplace stress is on the rise.

Leaders can make a big difference for their team by understanding what drives stress at work and how to deal with it.

The three keys below will help you create a win-win-win. Team members will benefit personally, lifting health and happiness. They’ll also achieve more lifting satisfaction and performance. Plus, they’ll be more engaged and stick with you for longer. Sounds good right?

Here are three actions leaders must take to proactively address stress, prevent burnout and safeguard staff’s mental health:

1. EDUCATE & EMPOWER – Educate staff on how to manage stress and actively encourage them to integrate activities throughout their day to release stress.
2. PROTECT – Safeguard staff from excessively stressful conditions through great work design and support (such as ensuring clarity, autonomy, appropriate workloads and preventing inappropriate behaviours).
3. RESPOND – Make it normal to talk about mental health at work and make additional support easily accessible (proactive, internal support as well as reactive, external support).

Each of these aspects is important to help staff maintain great mental wellbeing. Staff mental health is a shared responsibility and one that you can have a great influence over by ensuring you’re taking all three steps.

1. Educate and Empower

There are such a wide range of practical ways we can look after our wellbeing. The key is to educate your team about these and make them the norm in your workplace. Set the example, integrate the keys below into your workday and make them normal ways of working for your team.

While this is a huge topic, some of the most important tactics to tackle stress include:

• Breathe diaphragmatically – learn this skill and integrate it into your day.
• Quality sleep – master the art of deep restorative sleep and get 7-9 hours sleep a night.
• Attitude of gratitude – focus on the good in your day and know how to reframe negative thoughts.
• Snack on exercise – get your heart rate up to create a physiological response that lifts both energy and mood. This is especially good if done outdoors in nature.
• Eat real food – have plenty of quality, natural, nutrient dense food, especially foods that promote great brain health. Avoid processed foods, which wreak havoc, causing your mood and energy to plummet.
• Build a resilient mindset – protect your thoughts by being mindful of what you watch, read and listen to.
• Set boundaries – have rituals that help create separation between work and home life. Be clear on what’s important and able to say no to things that aren’t.
• Stay connected – spend quality time with people who lift you up. Maintain good communication with your support networks.
• Shift your posture – understand the link between your psychology and your physiology and intentionally adopt expansive, uplifting postures to shift how you feel.
• Be present – practise mindfulness throughout your day and be fully present with the people you’re with rather than distracted or caught up in your own head.
• Embrace play and laughter – look for opportunities for play and laughter to flood your body with positive chemicals and switch you out of stressed mode.

As well as setting the example with these key things, you can teach your team members about their importance. Make it the norm to have a ‘wellbeing moment’ in your team meetings and discuss a different topic each time. Use your one-on-ones to check in on how your staff are doing – not just what they’re doing.

2. Protect

It’s important to understand the range of psychosocial risks you need to identify and manage to ensure the work environment isn’t causing undue mental distress. This is a process that should be repeated every 6-12 months to review risks and adjust your approach as needed to stay on top of them. ‘Thriving Leaders Thriving Teams’ includes a risk assessment questionnaire to assist you with this process.

Just as gardeners proactively protect their plants from wind and pests, leaders need to take steps to protect their people. If staff are dealing with too many things at once, it’s up to their managers to clarify priorities. 

Trees are pruned to focus energy in the right directions. Similarly, you need to help staff understand where to focus their effort (and what can wait). You also need to give people the space and autonomy they need to do their work.

3. Respond

When I ask leaders what they’re currently doing to ensure staff wellbeing, the most common response is providing an external EAP (Employee Assistance Programme). While having confidential counsellors available is important and highly beneficial, it’s also more of an ‘ambulance at the bottom of the cliff’ approach and a bare minimum.

No-one would argue ambulances aren’t important. What’s also important is to proactively prevent harm occurring. Organisations need to have both internal and external systems in place to respond to staff facing mental distress. As well as EAP, I recommend creating a network within your organisation as a proactive first line of support.

Much like health and safety reps who are spread throughout different work areas, you can set up a team of wellbeing reps, or what I call ‘Wellbeing Champions’. They form a team of workplace superheroes, being equipped with the skills to spot the signs of mental distress and share support while staying safe themselves. They also play a key role in making it ok to talk about mental health, as stigma around speaking up can exacerbate problems.

I’ve delivered Wellbeing Champion training programmes to numerous organisations in a variety of industries, including those in logistics and construction, power companies, the grocer sector, accountancy firms and marketing agencies, right through to the disability sector. It’s been inspiring to see first-hand the power these teams have to shift the culture and provide support, precisely when it’s needed.

Most times, leaders take part in the training as well as hand-picked or self-nominated team members throughout different departments. I believe all leaders should know how to spot when their staff may be struggling and know how to respond. These key skills and techniques, which I’ll outline shortly, help you prevent issues from snowballing.

A 2019 study showed that 86% of employees believed their company’s culture should support mental health, yet less than half of respondents felt it was prioritised and even fewer saw their leaders as advocates.

This needs to change.

The researchers said, “Trainings are imperative… especially for managers, to learn how to name, normalize, and navigate mental health at work.”167 While leaders don’t need to be therapists, they should have a sound baseline knowledge and the tools to navigate difficult conversations.

Equipping your staff to support each other’s mental wellbeing and addressing things like languishing mean you can address concerns earlier, rather than waiting until someone’s mental health has deteriorated considerably. 

Be sure to know how to spot the 9 signs of stressed staff, and be prepared to respond and offer support when it’s needed.

Enjoyed this article? 

For practical tips to improve staff wellbeing at your workplace, download a complimentary copy of my eBook 5 Keys to a Positive, Energised, High-Performance Culture here. 

About Lauren Parsons, CSP, AS

Lauren Parsons is here to help you and your team thrive. Awarded NZ Keynote Speaker of the Year and Educator of the Year 2023/24 by the Professional Speakers Association. Lauren is a sought-after international speaker, and one of only a dozen Certified Speaking Professionals and the only Accredited Speaker in New Zealand.

With over 20 years’ experience, Lauren is passionate about helping busy people re-discover how to feel vibrant, confident and energised. She integrates her wellness and business background to help leaders find the sweet spot between boosting both wellbeing and productivity.

TEDx speaker, Author of Thriving Leaders Thriving Teams and Real Food Less Fuss, Founder of the Snack on Exercise movement and host of the Thrive TV Show. Described as inspiring and life-changing, Lauren is a dynamic and highly-engaging presenter, and master story-teller who will have you laughing, moving and learning in a memorable way. Whether it’s virtual or in-person, you will leave Lauren’s session feeling uplifted and empowered to create positive change, today!

Based in the Manawatu, New Zealand, where she lives with her husband and three children, Lauren can often be found hosting dinner parties, playing board games or spending time outdoors. She travels regularly to speak at conferences and in-house and specialises in helping organisations create a high-energy, peak-performance team culture, where people thrive.

Find out more about inviting Lauren to speak at your event or work with your team (or just check out all the goodness on the ‘free stuff’ page) at www.LaurenParsonsWellbeing.com