In our fast-paced world, stress and burnout have become all too common. The relentless demands of work, family, and personal life can leave us feeling overwhelmed and depleted. But amidst the chaos, there’s hope. By adopting effective wellness strategies, we can build resilience, maintain balance, and safeguard our mental and physical health. In this blog post, we’ll explore practical ways to combat stress, prevent burnout, and prioritize self-care. Let’s embark on a journey toward well-being—one intentional step at a time.
Stress in the Workplace
According to SHRM’s Employee Mental Health in 2024 Research Series, 45 percent of workers said they are burned out from their jobs. Major stresses cited in the series include workload, compensation, nature of their jobs, poor management, and understaffing. Burned out workers are not as likely to go beyond expectations in their jobs creating a vicious cycle of increased stress for the worker and those co-workers who pick up the slack.
Employers are slowly making changes to the workplace to allow for better work life harmony and provide resources for those workers feeling overwhelmed or burned out. A recent survey revealed that 62.4% of Gen Zers believe that mental health and personal well-being are very important to them. This generation will continue to push employers to prioritize mental health and well-being in their organizations. Meanwhile, workplaces are only one part of the equation. We as humans have a personal responsibility to help maintain our well-being too!
Personal Well-Being: A Path Towards Better Mental Health
There are several strategies employees can embrace outside of work that will help them maintain a healthy work life balance and better personal well-being. Begin with setting healthy boundaries that allow you to meet personal demands while maintaining your work expectations. These boundaries could include dinner with your family during the week or an early departure from work during the week to catch one of your children’s games. Keeping up this balance helps maintain relationships and manage stress.
Taking a restorative vacation is another strategy I highly recommend. When was the last time you forgot what day of the week it was? Ate ice cream for dinner or had time to relax and unplug from your computer and really recharge your batteries. Vacations can have a big impact on your personal well-being and mental health. Recognizing the need for a restorative vacation is the first step. Boundaries come in to play with vacations as well. An employer who expects you to monitor and respond to email and phone calls while on vacation is not giving you vacation time, rather a work from anyplace policy. Vacations need to be unplugged to bring the best value to both the employer and the employee.
A few more strategies to help maintain personal well-being and mental health include better sleep. Establish a good bedtime routine. We do it for our children but then neglect ourselves. A routine allows our body to begin to prepare for sleep and is far more effective than an erratic sleep schedule. Eat a well-balanced diet. The choices we make impact how we feel and have a huge impact on our well-being. Exercise! I cannot emphasize this enough. When all else fails, make moving your body a priority. Walking, yoga, golf, or pickleball are a few of my favorites and are great options!
Stress does not need to sideline us from life. We have outlined several strategies to make healthy changes and to combat burnout before it becomes an issue in our jobs. Making our health and well-being is not a luxury – it is a necessity! Pick a few actionable tips and begin making incremental changes today to improve your mental health. Even a 1% improvement will lead to better stress management.