The Collaborative Knowledge How-To Article and Video Project. With your edits and uploads of articles and videos, we can help each other contribute to and share collective intelligence to solve problems and accomplish tasks. We need your help to build this free resource.
4 Easy Ways To Beat Stress At Work
By John Quan, 11 Feb 21:17
Feel like you're working in a pressure cooker? Here's how to manage when you're feeling overwhelmed. Plus, 10 wackiest coffee-break stunts.
(Fortune) -- Why did you quit your last job - assuming you left voluntarily? According to a recent study of 93 big companies by human-resources consultants Watson Wyatt (www.watsonwyatt.com), the No. 1 reason why people quit is excessive stress. Yet employers seem unaware of this, or in denial: When asked why they thought employees were leaving, most HR managers gave insufficient pay and lack of career development, including promotions, as the main reasons.
When it comes to dealing with stress on the job, you're on your own, says Tevis Gale, a career coach and head of a consulting firm called Balance Integration (www.balanceintegration.com).
"That study makes clear that you can't wait for your employer to 'get' just how big a problem your stress level is," notes Gale. "You have to take responsibility for managing it yourself, and do it now."
On top of the usual stressors - ever-higher productivity targets, only 24 hours in a day, and the struggle to carve out some kind of life outside of work - economic uncertainty adds "the fear of layoffs and feelings of powerlessness," says Gale.
If you're overwhelmed by it all, try these four stress-fighting tactics:
Make a long-term to-do list. Think about all the small, incremental things you can do to build career success over the course of a year, or five years - tak
Tags: stress, stress-relief, pressure, stress-fighting, workplace survival