Workplace Mental Health: Strategies for Stress and Anxiety Relief

Transcript

Michael Griffin
Principal, Seattle 

Hi everyone, I'm Mike Griffin. I am a principal in the Seattle office of Jackson Lewis. I'm here today with my good friend and colleague, Michael Thomas, in our Orange County office. We're going to talk with you briefly about stress and anxiety in the workplace. Basically, why this is important to us and why we're passionate about it is because it's something we all deal with on a daily basis. We really want to try to help continue the conversation and raise awareness, so that, maybe in a small way, alleviate some of the stigma that might come along with experiencing stress and anxiety in the workplace.  

Michael, what would you say about that?

Michael Thomas
Principal, Orange County

Thank you for listening. I always enjoy spending time with my colleague, Mike Griffin. I'll just highlight, really briefly, why stress and anxiety are important to me. Part of it is just wanting to show up authentically with myself in the workplace and not feel anxious about whether I belong or whether I'm being judged for any given reason. Part of that is just checking on my own well-being, like how am I experiencing stress? How am I experiencing anxiety? How am I showing up authentically? 

One of the things that we want to talk about to kick this conversation off is why employers should really care about this issue. Why is this a concern for employers? We’ll talk about this topic in greater detail, but there's increased demand in the workplace. There's a lot that's going on outside of the workplace and also inside the workplace that creates more stress and anxiety for your employees. Employers are seeing a really sharp increase in burnout and stress-related accommodation requests. Also, many employers are having some challenges struggling with how to actually navigate or respond to these types of different requests. Understanding your legal obligations, implementing proactive strategies, and even fostering a culture, which I'll talk about briefly, called psychological safety, are really key components to creating a healthy workplace, mitigating litigation risk, and mitigating some costly issues or risks that could come up in the workplace. 

I'll turn it back to you, Mike, just to really kick us off by defining what stress and anxiety we're talking about.

Griffin

Thanks, Michael. If you think about it in its most basic sense, stress is what arises in us when something we care about is at stake. Emotional, physical, and mental strain that, in this context, can be associated with work expectations or experience. We care about work and our reputation as an employee, as a manager, whatever role we have, is at stake. Stress and anxiety can arise in response to those workplace demands, especially when they feel overwhelming. Short-term stress is normal and necessary. Everyday stress we experience, like getting up on time, getting a project done on time, making sure I get to work on time, things like that. To accomplish goals, that's normal, okay, and not necessarily unhealthy.

When stress or anxiety becomes unhealthy, it is chronic. When it's something that doesn't go away. We don't get relief from those feelings and the ways in which they can manifest themselves. This is not news to anyone, I'm sure: increased heart rate, physical clenching of the jaw, and tightening of the shoulders. I don't know about folks who are listening, but I know that at times when I'm stressed out, I find myself really tightening my shoulders or hunching them over. I catch myself and try and relax a little bit. You can have an upset stomach, poor sleep, be short-tempered, which of course can have some other workplace implications – poor posture, and ultimately a weakened immune system. There are a lot of ways in which this stress and anxiety can manifest themselves in negative ways at work. 

I’m wondering, Michael, if you can talk a little bit about just how to identify the sources of our stress and anxiety.

Thomas

Thank you for highlighting all the different symptoms because we all experience stress and anxiety at different points throughout our day, but we don't actually label it that way. When you say, my breath becomes short, I get that, or my heart rate increases in different moments, things like that, you can identify. 

Your sources of stress and anxiety are going to fall into two different buckets. One is the stuff that does occur within the workplace, and there's other stuff that occurs outside of the workplace that makes its way into the workplace. I'll mention what I mean by that in a second. 

The stuff that occurs in the workplace are things that Mike mentioned, long hours, heavy workload, lack of job security, or even changes within the organization or work duties can create a certain amount of stress and anxiety. The economic insecurity that many people might be feeling right now. Other things that we see in our line of work that create stress and anxiety, like harassment and discrimination in the workplace, or even just poor management-employee relationships that often involve a union coming in, and things like that. All those different things can create stress and anxiety that occur within the workplace. 

Then, there's everything that's outside the workplace that makes its way into the workplace. Things like a bombardment of news can create stress and anxiety. This feeling that the workplace in our nation is more polarized creates stress and anxiety. More information about violence, either around the world or within schools or the workplace, having more exposure to that kind of stuff creates more stress and anxiety. Even just as an employer, when your employees are showing up, they're showing up with all of that stuff. A simple example is that kids have recently returned to school. A lot of parents have heard a lot about school violence, and some have experienced it themselves, and they're worried about their kids. They are checking their phones throughout the day. Again, these are things that are outside of the workplace that actually make their way into the workplace, which involve stress and anxiety. 

Michael, I'll kick it back to you to talk about what some legal obligations are that an employer should think about, and what risks they should consider in terms of managing stress and anxiety.

Griffin

There are quite a few. I'll talk generally about them. Think about it this way: increased stress and anxiety among workers in the workplace can lead to increased requests for accommodation for mental health support. I practice in this area quite a bit and provide a lot of advice, counsel, and training. I've seen an increase, probably every single year for the past decade, in the number of requests employers are getting for accommodations based on stress-related conditions. Now those conditions, of course, may qualify as disabilities under both the federal law, the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the equivalent state law. Obligations kick in right away to engage in a good-faith interactive process. Typically, it's when the employee requests an accommodation of some sort or time off, but in some states, like my state, Washington, the obligation for an employer to engage and to initiate that process is a bit heightened. That’s probably not news to folks. 

Failing to provide reasonable accommodations can lead to things like internal or external complaints from employees who have made such a request or a mishandled request. Legal action not only includes charges but also lawsuits. Outside those legal risks, you have some reputational risks. This can damage the brand. It's not surprising that folks feel more emboldened these days to talk on social media and review websites about their experience at work. Failing to identify and address these risks can increase those concerns as well. A lot of concerns arise in this area, whether employers are addressing stress and anxiety-related conditions appropriately. 

Michael, can you talk about some best practices for dealing with this?

Thomas

That's a great question, Mike. Certainly, practically addressing stress accommodations, as Mike pointed out, is not just about compliance, although complying with the law is incredibly important. It's really about building a sustainable and supportive workplace and workplace culture. There are five tips that I'll go through to I think to help you do that. 

The first is really recognizing that stress is a legitimate workplace challenge. Understanding that chronic stress is a valid reason for an accommodation request and should be taken seriously whenever an employee actually makes it. It should be treated as a disability accommodation that I think we're all familiar with. 

The second tip is that you really want to implement a clear and compassionate process for mental health accommodations. Proactively train your managers to be able to identify and handle stress-related accommodation requests appropriately. As Mike pointed out, sometimes it's difficult for someone to actually be able to identify that a stress-related accommodation might be needed. As an employer, you have that obligation to engage in an interactive process. Properly training your managers and being very clear, concise, and compassionate about those processes and policies for mental health and stress-related accommodations becomes incredibly important. 

Number three, there are other reasonable combinations of stress and burnout accommodations that you should consider. Some of those examples could be flexible work schedules, like adjusted work hours, possibly hybrid or remote options if that's available for the industry, or modified workloads, depending on, again, what your industry is. Reducing non-essential tasks, things like that, reassigning responsibilities, and mental health breaks. One way that you can use PTO or have employee wellness days, like that's one way of kind of providing a reasonable accommodation. Making sure that employees have awareness and access to your employee assistant programs, or making sure that you actually have employee assistant programs, becomes really important as well. Realizing that there is a variety of different things that you can do that actually is a reasonable combination for these requests for stress and anxiety combinations. 

Number four is creating that culture of psychological safety. I mentioned that a little bit earlier. That's really creating an environment that encourages conversations about stress and burnout without someone feeling like they're going to be retaliated against for really asking for help. Creating that culture where you reduce the stigma of having conversations about stress, anxiety, burnout, or even mental health in some ways. 

Then, the last thing that I would point out is, be really proactive if you're working in a high-stress work environment. For example, like a law firm, where we work long hours and we have a lot of stress, implementing these tools and reducing that stigma becomes really important to be proactive about it, versus waiting for someone to ask for help. Sometimes, by the time someone asks for help, some of that harm or that damage that Mike talked about, like your increased blood pressure and all those different kinds of things, have already occurred.

Those five tips in terms of how the employer as an organization can respond to these increased requests for stress and anxiety, accommodations, and so forth are good from an organizational perspective. 

Mike, I want to turn it back to you because we're not just talking about the organization and how they respond to stress and anxiety. How do individuals, as they show up to the organization, manage their own personal stress, anxiety, and sense of wellness?

Griffin

It's such an important question, Michael, and what I'm going to talk about are some techniques for managing coping with stress and anxiety that are not going to be groundbreaking or shocking to anyone, I don't think. It's helpful to just be reminded of some effective coping mechanisms, because there are plenty of coping mechanisms that are unhealthy and ineffective.

Before I talk about these, I just want to briefly jump back to what I was talking about earlier in the legal risks. I don’t want to give the impression that employees have a legal right to a stress-free workplace. That issue has been litigated and has come up quite a bit. No one's really entitled to that under the law. What's more common and what I see are stress-related conditions like generalized anxiety disorder or depression, things like that, that clearly do qualify as disabilities.

In terms of techniques for coping and managing stress, one key to keep in mind is that avoidance doesn't work. Avoid avoidance basically. How do we avoid stress and anxiety, and how do people avoid them? They mask it. They cover it with, oftentimes, substance or other addictive behaviors that don't really help; generally speaking, the research shows that they exacerbate the issues. Quality sleep is, I can't overstate how important that is, based on just my limited amount of research on this and very personal. It's incredibly important; more research shows that sleep is probably the single most important healthy activity we can engage in. 

Of course, regular aerobic exercise is a tremendous benefit. It seems like every other week, there's a new study reminding us of why it is. Also, in that vein, relaxation techniques like yoga, meditation, and breath work. There is an enormous amount of resources online for free that can teach you very basic meditation and breath work techniques that are very helpful. I used them this week, as a matter of fact, when I had a difficult day. 

Limiting our exposure to social media and news, probably also not very shocking to everyone. That can tend to cause us stress and anxiety. Really important to take breaks during the day. One thing that has worked for me on a personal level is if I've had a stressful situation, just walking out of my office, going outside, walking around the block and coming back up. Simply getting your body moving in some positive way can really help cope. Obviously, eating healthy and limiting substances that affect our sleep and our well-being generally. Limiting alcohol and other substances. 

The last thing I want to mention is something I learned from a book I'm going to recommend after I finish this little discussion here, which is focusing on your resources. Your family, your friends, and your work resources, rather than the challenge that you're facing right now. Whatever that stimulus is, that's causing you stress, you're going to necessarily devote some mental energy to that. If you can, in the same experience, focus on how I am going to resolve this and what resources I have to resolve it. Studies have shown that that really does help alleviate the anxiety. The last point I'll make on this coping technique topic is that you are not alone. You have resources, family, friends, and colleagues who care about you. Tapping into those resources can be a tremendously helpful benefit. 

Before I turn it over to Michael to take us home, I just want to make a couple of quick recommendations, reading suggestions or listening suggestions if you do e-books. The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal is a fascinating book. Research, she highlights, essentially explaining, generally speaking, how we think about stress can determine whether or not we develop chronic anxiety and stress or whether we use it in a more positive way. Really interesting book. Two others I would recommend, a book called Breath by James Nestor and a book called Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, a researcher at Berkeley. Changed my whole perspective on sleep and just how important it is, and it caused me to regret some earlier years of my life when I thought sleep wasn't that important. 

Thanks for listening. Michael, I'll turn it over to you to take us home. 

Thomas

Mike, it's always a pleasure spending time with you. A lot of what we're talking about is part of the employer's basic obligations to create a safe work environment for their employees. In our modern culture, we hear more about stress and anxiety. We experience more stress and anxiety, which is likely to continue into the future. Really supporting your employees who are either facing burnout, stress, or increased anxiety, in some ways, is no longer really optional. It really is an essential part of creating both an inclusive and legally compliant work environment. Employers really should commit themselves to proactively addressing these types of accommodation requests and implementing practices that really create a sustainable workplace and foster a culture where all your employees really feel like they belong and can thrive. 

That's all that we have for this podcast. Mike, always a pleasure, and it was great having a conversation with you. I got some reading homework from you, so I partially appreciate that. Maybe that makes me a little bit more stressed.

We also want to thank you all for taking time out of your busy day and your busy lives and sharing a little bit of your time with us. Thank you, and stay tuned for more information from our firm.