Whether you’re in charge of a busy team, dealing with your own workload, or helping troubleshoot long-standing issues within your company – effective stress management is essential. Taking the time to understand the issues that cause stress can help bring benefits throughout your business but being able to enact them successfully can be difficult.

So, how exactly can time management help with controlling stress and what simple actions can you and your teams take to keep things under control?

What is stress management?

A real and present threat to every employee, stress can cause significant harm throughout your business. Overworked employees can make mistakes, pursue time off work, or even end up causing themselves long-term damage.

While every business has a responsibility to watch its bottom line, it is essential that you take every opportunity to manage your worker’s stress. This can involve enacting steps and processes that help prevent problems before they start, allow employees avenues to talk, or take part in programs and activities to help cut back on stress throughout the working week.

Doing so can help with morale, ensure that your employees are healthy and happy, and ensure that your teams produce the best results possible in every given scenario.

How does managing your time help?

When it comes to actively tackling stress in the workplace, one of the most common complaints is lack of time to complete a task. This can result in rushed work, errors, or even failure to deliver – quickly resulting in a snowball effect that compounds the issue. Work can be taken home or result in the individual experiencing further stress and feeling that their job is at risk.

Taking the time to embed time management best-practice throughout your business will allow your employees the opportunity to prevent stress before it becomes an issue. This can be as simple as giving employees access to tools, formal training, or changing your business infrastructure to help ensure employees have somewhere to turn if they are struggling with their workload.

This can also act as a powerful force multiplier, allowing your teams to capture information about how stress and workloads are being shared throughout the business. Choosing the right time management solution, or combination of options, can help you draw benefits throughout your business.

What tips should I follow?

If you are considering changes to your approach to time management, some popular options include – 

Timeboxing: Teaching employees the fundamentals of timeboxing can help all aspects of their approach to work. This involves breaking their daily work into segments that are 25 minutes long and then, once complete, taking a break for two minutes then starting again. This can help team members retain focus even when working through demanding projects and help give them a sense of how long certain tasks take to complete. Doing so helps give a greater sense of control and allows for a greater capacity to plan their work correctly and raise the issue in advance if they think they are unable to complete it in time.

Teamwork: It is essential to remember that stress management is – at its core – a mental health issue. Embedded pathways for employees to discus their stress and what is causing it can be great for your team members and your business at large. This allows individuals to get the help they need and allow your company to identify pain points to tackle in the future – preventing similar problems from arising again.

Software: When it comes to managing time, software is continuously proving to be a popular and highly effective solution. A solid platform will allow you to help manage your team’s workload, budget time for projects, and check the day-to-day progress with ease. This also allows you to harvest key data and analytics for future projects and – in addition to keeping tabs on ongoing projects – ensure that your teams are able to work efficiently and correctly for the foreseeable future.

What next?

If you want to learn more about how software can help with your time management tasks, our team at Practical Software is here to help. With many years’ experience providing care for a range of clients, we work with you to supply a solution that cares for your team’s mental health and saves on stress without compromising efficiency. You can view our full list of software and services from here. Or if you have specific questions, queries, or requirements, please do not hesitate to get in touch directly and let our in-house team know exactly what you need to take the stress out of your daily working practice.