The Role of Leaders in Helping Their Employees Manage Stress

The Role of Leaders in Helping Their Employees Manage Stress 

Employers and managers as leaders have a role to play in installing ethical leadership by precept and example. Their leadership role should encompass more than prevention of harassment, discrimination, and matters whistleblowing; they should incorporate this ethical concern with the ability to help their employees cope with pressure arising from these forms of harassments.

The leader should ensure that a risk management framework is established to manage risk among employees. The frameworks should be organized to assume an organizational and individual approach in handling stress. Some of the organizational approaches include conducive work climate, work culture and supportive management (Deakin University, 2018). At a personal level, initiatives such as resilience training, counseling, relaxation training, and time and stress management skills can be availed to empower the employee (Deakin University, 2018). Therefore, therapy and treatment plans or rehabilitation and reinstatement can be pursued where necessary.

While these are examples of response measures, it is important that the organization establish measures to prevent the occurrence of the stress factor. Some of the procedures adopted to prevent psychological trauma include identification of factors that can cause stress, assessing the possibility and extent of those impacts on the workers, development, and implementation of initiatives to control the factors that can cause psychological damage and monitoring the progress of the implementation process (Deakin University, 2018).

The framework is important because some leaders fail to respond to employees having stress issues for various reasons. They include:

They lack sufficient information about the issue 

They are reluctant to accept that their leadership style is contributing to the stress in employee(s). 

There is a difference in response attitude thus assuming that the stress is the employee's problem thus avoiding involvement in the employee's affairs (Deakin University, 2018) 

The factors create several kinds of responses from managers such as avoiding the situation, hesitating, confrontation, forcing matters, or discussing the issue (Deakin University, 2018). Therefore, the leadership should be equipped with skills on how to handle pressure arising from these elements.

References

Deakin University (2018). Manager’s role in workplace stress risk management. Retrieved from http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/health-and-wellbeing/occupational-health-and-safety/health-and-wellbeing/work-related-stress/managers-role-in-the-risk-management-of-workplace-stress