Work-related stress is inevitable, and it is vital for leaders to recognize their role in cultivating caring companies that can better support employees, according to Harvard Business Review. Building such a culture can lead to lower absenteeism and turnover, increased work satisfaction, better collaboration in work teams and greater customer satisfaction.
Harvard Business Review recommends leaders adopt the following four strategies when an employee is in distress.
- Focus on the person in distress. When responding to troubled employees, we often assume what helped us to overcome past distress will work for others experiencing similar challenges. However, if you are tempted to say, “Let me tell you about when that happened to me,” you should instead encourage the employee to share more about his or her specific experience. For example, you could say: “I can see how much this is affecting you. I want to hear more about it.”
- Validate the employee’s pain. People tend to underestimate the severity of their own past challenges and the difficulty involved in overcoming them. As a result, they may minimize others’ experiences, which can unintentionally cause more pain. Leaders should be careful not to judge employees and should acknowledge employees’ thoughts, feelings and behaviors as understandable. For example, you might say: “Given what you’ve been through, it makes complete sense that you’re feeling this way.”
- Ask questions. Take time to listen to the employee’s full story before trying to solve the problem. Ask questions about how you can help the employee. You could say: “How can we best support you in navigating this hard time?” Open-ended questions can reduce misunderstandings and help you respond better to the employee’s unique needs.
- Consider who can best help. Research published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior shows those who have endured a different type of distress are better positioned to offer compassion. So, leaders might want to consider pairing the employee in distress with a mentor who has not gone through a similar situation. For example, if the employee is being bullied at work, the individual could be paired with a mentor who has grieved the loss of a parent. This can be handled through avenues such as human resources mentoring programs or employee resource groups.
