How do you react to stress in the workplace? If you reach for the coffee and grab a cigarette, the chances are you’ve got a lot to learn about mastering obstacles and taking charge of your life. If you’re plagued by headaches and get flustered every time your boss gives you a new task to complete, a few simple steps can put you on the road to both efficiency and relaxation.

Stress is a major hazard in the workplace, and employees in some industries are absent at least once every two months because of stress-related complaints. Russia’s workforce is so stressed-out that experts say the problem costs industry $114 billion a year in absenteeism, diminished productivity and employee turnover.

The figures are impressive, but the problem of workplace stress is disregarded by many executives. All too often, management ignores the issue and, whenever the problem surfaces, claims that it’s a temporary blip for a normally smooth-running company.

Even worse, many companies are simply unaware that stress is a problem in their corporations. Managers judge employees by their own standards, and senior managers are often unaware of the stress that the average worker undergoes.

One explanation for that ignorance may be that it’s often hard to differentiate workplace stress from personal stress. For an employer keen to solve the problem, the best way to start addressing workplace stress is to admit that it is a business issue and start providing support to employees.

Executives should first "do the acid test" on themselves. This means asking them to identify the most stressful aspect of their work, why it is stressful, what it costs them and how many other people it affects in the organization.

To assess the level of stress in the rest of the workforce, companies should measure whether essential work is being completed, whether workforce levels are sufficient, whether they are losing people and whether projects are failing.

If those answers paint a gloomy picture, companies need to ask themselves what high levels of stress will cost them in lost business or employee attrition, and they’ll see the need to turn the situation around.

Giving employees more control over their work is considered to be a great stress reliever. If an individual has that kind of control at work, it will help give him the flexibility needed to deal with stressful problems outside of work and eliminate general stress.

That’s why it’s important that companies assess the work environment. A company needs to ask whether its work environment emphasizes common goals or competition. Also, does the company offer employee-friendly work schedules, are employees well-compensated and treated professionally and do employees have concerns about job security?

The most effective way to reduce workplace stress is to identify the stress factors and make organizational changes. In general, workplace stress is a combination of high demands in a job and a low amount of control over the situation. Stress in the workplace can have many origins or come from a single event. Workload, pace, shift, isolation, level of responsibility, career development opportunities, communication patterns and the physical environment can act as negative stressors.

If these factors are causing problems, managers should try to keep the workload in line with an employee’s capabilities, design stimulating and meaningful jobs, clearly define employees’ roles and responsibilities, give them the opportunity to participate in decision-making, improve communications, and design work-schedules that are compatible with the demands and responsibilities an employee may have outside the job.

Through these steps, executives can successfully eliminate the level of stress their employees undergo at work — and as a result reach higher productivity in their business processes.

Every employee experiences stress from time to time, and some stress is even helpful. It motivates us to do what we need to do. But it’s highly important for an individual to learn how to eliminate stress, especially when stress levels become so great that a person experiences anxiety.

While you cannot always eliminate the pressures in your life, you can successfully reduce stress. The way I think of it, pressure is the direct result of what is happening to you, but stress is how you react to those pressures. So, you can keep the pressure and get rid of the stress.

A good example of this comes from the study of stress in executives. Several studies have shown that low- and middle-level executives exhibit many stress symptoms, like ulcers, high blood pressure, tension, burnout and so on. Top executives, however, as a group show far fewer stress signs.

Why do bigwigs show fewer signs of stress? It could be that they are either naturally stress-resistant or have learned how to handle the pressure without letting it eat them up. It’s like the old saying: "If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Fortunately, stress management is largely a learnable skill. Most people can learn how to take the heat in their lives.
Laughing is one of the easiest and best ways to reduce stress. Share a joke with a co-worker, watch a funny movie at home with some friends and try to see the humor in your predicament.

Take charge of your situation by taking 10 minutes at the beginning of each day to prioritize and organize your day.

Be honest with your colleagues, but be constructive and make practical suggestions. Be realistic about what you can change.

These steps can be mastered easily, and often work very well. In the long run, however, it’s better to learn how to avoid getting stressed out in the first place. So how do you do that? Well, the clue is cognitive psychology. Thinking peaceful thoughts makes you feel relaxed. In other words, the reason we get stressed-out is not what is happening to us, but rather how we perceive what is happening. Peaceful thoughts cause relaxation and stressful thoughts cause stress. This is a really neat idea because it means we hold power over ourselves, so we don’t have to be victims of present circumstances.