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How to Recognize Stress in the Workplace: 4 Signs You Need to Watch For

Managing a group of employees is never easy. While managing employees in the energy sector comes with a unique set of challenges, some management challenges are universal. As a manager, it’s your job to make sure that you are utilizing every employees’ skills appropriately, that your employees are working efficiently, and that each individual on your team achieves some sort of personal satisfaction and growth. Unfortunately, work-related stress can drastically reduce your employee productivity. Staff members who feel stressed are less likely to perform well. They’re also more likely to experience mood swings and anxiousness while at work. Most importantly, distraction can be a dangerous side-effect of stress and in the energy sector it is especially dangerous as it can quickly lead to accidents.

In order to get the most out of your workplace experience, it’s important that you pay attention to the stress levels of your employees. If you notice that your team members seem to be more upset and frustrated than usual, it may be time to take action. Unfortunately, you can’t actually take action to combat stress unless you can recognize it. If you pay attention, though, you’re sure to notice a few tell-tale signs.

 

1. Quiet employees

First off, employees who are stressed at work will be more stand-offish than usual. If your normally-boisterous employees have suddenly stopped chatting with other people or make an attempt to avoid group discussions, you may have a stress problem in your office.

2. Late staff members

When your staff members, who are normally all prompt, begin arriving late to work, there could be something wrong. Sure, there could also be stress from personal problems going on, but if your employees are stressed out at work, they aren’t going to want to come. This results in employees dragging their feet when it’s time for their workday to begin.

3. Mistakes in paperwork

When team members begin making repeated mistakes in paperwork, something is wrong. Instead of assuming that your staff members just don’t care about doing a good job, look a little deeper. Could there be something else going on? Could there be a bigger problem? When multiple team members begin to make basic mistakes, you need to start paying attention.

4. Aggressive emails

Memos are a normal part of any office, but aggressive emails are not. When you start to receive emails that are mean, hateful, or full of foul language, you have a serious stress problem in your workplace. Aggressive behavior is perhaps one of the biggest, most obvious signs of stress.

 

Identifying energy employees who are stressed is vital so that you can start to solve the problem and in the meantime take steps to prevent the stress from creating an environment that is more prone to accidents. Sometimes, an employee will bring personal problems to work that cause extra stress for everyone. Other times, the stress is related to something in the workplace. This could be too many meetings, too many long work hours, or rigid restrictions that make it difficult for employees to do their jobs. No matter what the problem might be, remember to communicate openly with your employees to find out what’s going on and what they think needs to happen to solve the problem.

Strategic Contract Resources can lessen the stress that comes with staffing a new facility by providing quality professionals in a timely manner. Whether providing project-to-project personnel or supporting a direct-hire search, we operate under the basic principles of finding the right candidates for our client’s needs. Through these principles we have established and maintained our reputation as a premier recruiting firm supporting our clients in the energy industry with all their personnel needs. Contact us today to learn how we can help your firm hire top talent in the petrochemical, LNG, oil and gas, power, renewable energy, and related process industries.

 

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