Stress-Reducing Tips for Administrators and Managers
Working as managers and administrators in the competitive corporate world are roles fraught with high stress levels. Prolonged and sustained stress levels can be mentally as well as physically taxing on your health, and may lead to long-term damage. At times, you will feel unheard and the feeling of just being another cog in the corporate machine might grip you. At other times, you might even think about quitting altogether.
When it comes to the stressful nature of the job itself, there’s not much you can change, but there are ways to combat stress. No matter how stressful your job is, there are always certain, easy steps you can take to to alleviate stress.
With the most stressful jobs of all in the corporate world, administrators and managers can gain a lot from the stress-relieving steps mentioned below.
- Communication is key
Many workplace problems can be traced back to inadequate communication. Part of managing people entails establishing a good, two-way communication. Same goes for administration work, be it a hospital or an educational facility, administering people and resources is stressful, and if you are not properly trained on how to become a hospital administrator, or a school administrator, then you need to start learning.
The most effective techniques that can help you in both roles are to connect, to give as well as receive feedback, and to communicate in an easy-to-understand manner. Encourage feedback and discuss problems openly, so that everyone feels comfortable speaking to you when necessary. Communication problems are the single biggest cause behind project delays, workplace-related anxiety and stress, and a high churn rate among employees.
- Do exercises
Exercise is a great way to relieve stress. Stress wreaks havoc on your physical, emotional, and mental well-being. By exercising, you will promote the release of endorphins—natural painkillers and feel-good hormones produced by the body after exercise. Levels of serotonin also rise after exercise, which is a hormone that boosts mood. Exercise helps in regulating your body temperature and leads to better cardiovascular health.
- Eat right
Eating good, healthy foods will keep you active throughout the day. So instead of taking a slice of pizza or two, why not reach out for those salads and fruits. You will feel a lot less lazy after eating a salad. There are many foods that can help keep you energized throughout the day and improve your health. Make sure you don’t skip the most important meal of the day: breakfast. Eating a healthy and filling breakfast in the morning before work will provide you energy to stay focused for most of the day, and might even help you skip on lunch altogether.
- Treat yourself with respect
One of the most important things you can do for your mental health, job stress or not, is to treat yourself with respect. The more respect you have for yourself, the more others will be inspired by you and will treat you in a similar way. Treating yourself with respect means not looking down upon yourself for making a few mistakes at work or to beat yourself constantly for past mistakes. But if you do commit mistakes, own up to them without deflecting blame, and ask for help, if necessary, in setting things right.
When co-workers offer you a compliment, accept it graciously without belittling your achievements in attempts at being humble. By treating yourself with respect, you will attract same kind of respect from others. When stress starts getting to you, self-respect will help you stay on top of it.
- Do planning and prioritize things
Planning is the key to good time management. If you plan out your day or week ahead of time, then it would be easier for you to manage your tasks and you won’t have to feel bogged down when the work starts piling. Planning will also help you in submitting tasks well before the deadlines.
Planning requires breaking up of activities into achievable chunks. Set required time frames along with each task by which you should aim to accomplish it. Prioritizing is important in differentiating between activities. Some closely align with your goals while others may not, so a clear understanding of your priorities leads to less waste of time and resources.
- Organize your inbox
We’ve all experienced the uneasy feeling when our inboxes become too messy to remain functional. Recovering a piece of information from an unorganized inbox is like going through a haystack looking for a needle.
If your inbox looks like that because you receive a lot of general messages from a variety of sources, create subfolders within your inbox for each type or category of mails. You can even sub categorize by sorting your mail into meeting invitations, document sent or received, or other types of messgaes that you frequently receive.
- Take regular breaks from work
When thinking of work-life balance, people often forget the importance of having day offs from work where they can unwind. If you work as an administrator or a manager, then your responsibilities include ensuring that every thing is properly working and that tasks are properly taken care of. Taking time off from work can actually improve employee productivity, and who better to benefit from a little vacation time than administrators and managers who work tirelessly to ensure that business operations are running smooth.
Conclusion
Administrators and managers help elevate employee morale, make sure KPIs are met, and business operations are on track. They do all this under extreme pressure, which makes them the most stressed out employees in the corporate world. The tips given above will help managers and administrators discover healthy ways to cope with their stress.
Keeping healthy communication between employers and employees not only makes sure that both have each others’ backs but also helps in reducing tensions and stress at workplace. Exercise and eating well go a long way in maintaining your energy levels, self-respect builds proper personal boundaries, while taking time offs can help you build boundaries between work and personal life. Lastly, you should always manage and organize your workplace, as a distraction-free work station, an organized inbox, and a decluttered calendar, all lead to lesser job stress.
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