With summer coming to a halt and school starting back you may find many of your co-workers or employees to be extra stressed and begin to grow restless. Whether it’s the early school bus battles, evening dinner and homework stress or even missing having the kiddies around all the time, it’s completely natural to feel overwhelmed or depressed. To get employees out of the slump and back into a routine there are certain steps managers should take to ensure the work environment is intriguing for the next couple of weeks.
Add some competitive edge. With minds going a thousand mph it’s important to keep everyone focused on their job. A competitive work environment that offers incentive means everyone can focus, and work enough to keep their mind from wandering elsewhere. Overall you want a work-focused environment for everyone, no interference with home time or school time blues.
Recognize your employees. The start of school is usually stressful and hectic with a new routine happening, plenty of lunches left at home and plenty of phone calls from the school informing your employees their children are sick. It can all be so draining, to the point where parents begin to dislike their job because of the stress everywhere else. Don’t let it get to this point. Recognize that your employees may be struggling at home and again, offer incentives such as bonuses for good performances. Indulge their workplace with acknowledgments and kudos for quality work.
Be understanding. Take time out of the day and ask how everything is going at home? Don’t be offensive but be aware of what is happening with your employees and see if there is anything you can do to help. But with this, you need to be sure that if there is a problem it is not affecting the workplace or other employees.
Listen and respond accordingly. Especially when winter begins to approach, seasonal affective disorder starts to take place, which is a form of seasonal depression; have pep talks. It’s important to round up your employees and continue to encourage them to keep pushing. This is the time they will need it most. At the meetings take advice and listen to what your employees are saying. Do whatever you can to make the place more enjoyable.
Enjoy yourselves! When so much can be happening at home with the hectic school year schedules it’s important to make time for fun! Even if it’s an extra hour paid lunch for them to run errands and take care of personal errands, a break is nice. A fun group engaging activity always works well, too.
Employees who are dealing with the back to school stress just need help getting where they need to be at work. There many different ways of going about doing so. Just take charge and keep a peaceful, friendly workplace.