 Preventing workplace stress is in everyone's interests. Per AXA Insurance Company, work-related stress costs the UK economy £28 billion per year, with around 23.3 million sick days taken. If you or your team members are not able to work, you or they can't contribute to company success. And a certain level of stress is good for productivity as it motivates us to be better and deliver more. Some stress is good. Once you go past the OK level of stress, mental and physical health problems develop over time. Without good health, so many aspects of your life are limited. Keeping your stress levels at or below an OK level for you and your team means more time at work and more capacity to do great work, as well as having a much more enjoyable time at work. These four big causes of stress in the workplace are worth learning how to avoid or at least reduce for you personally and for your team members. Firstly, being poor at saying no. Secondly, having difficult relationships with your boss or colleagues. Third, not getting the support and help you need to do your job well. And fourth, suffering organisational conflicts. I'll be explaining why each is a big cause of stress at work and how to deal with stress at work caused by each of these as an individual. I also provide suggestions for managers to reduce the impact of stress on your team caused by each of these two. My name is Jess Coles and if you're new here, Enhance.training shares people management expertise, resources and courses teaching you how to build higher performing teams. I've included links to additional videos and resources in the description below, as well as a video timestamp. So do take a look at these. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. So let's talk about how to deal with stress at work. One of the biggest causes of stress at work is being poor at saying no. Being overworked or unable to complete all the work you've agreed to do is very stressful. Nobody wants to be always working late or letting colleagues and bosses down. Neither are good for us personally. The teams where we work in or ultimately our companies. When you are poor at saying no, you are always going to be overworked. It is that simple. All companies I've worked in have more work to do than people available to do it. How to handle stress at work effectively starts with getting better at diplomatically saying no. Becoming good at saying no starts has been clear what is important to the team, your boss and the company. Prioritise saying yes to the important work and practise saying no as much as possible to the unimportant work. Companies, strategy and functional and team objectives are both good places to start to work out what is important. Next, ask your boss in what are the top five areas you need me to focus on over the next month. Keep asking until you get specific answers which ideally align with the strategy and objectives. Keep your focus on five areas or less. Pay attention to what your boss focuses on, what they ask questions about and demonstrate interest in. Learning how to say no diplomatically is so useful in how to deal with stress at work. How you say no is important. Always provide the reason why you can't do something you are being asked to do and ensure the why is clearly business related and not personal. An example might be I'm very sorry I can't add that to my list right now as I have five other deadlines which I believe are more important and these are and you can explain what they are. As a manager it is just as important for you to say no on behalf of your team as it is for you to get good at saying no on your own behalf. Stay close enough to your team so that you know and understand how much spare capacity they have at any time and how important what they're currently working on is. Both actions are vital in judging when to say no and how to say no on behalf of your team. Being good at saying no diplomatically is one of the best ways for how to manage stress at work. The second major cause of stress at work is having a difficult relationship with your boss or colleagues. Your relationship with your boss is the most important relationship you have at work because of the daily influence they have on what you work on and how your career progresses. Have a difficult relationship with your boss and your stress levels will be a lot higher and dealing with stress at work a lot harder. Reduce your stress at work by proactively managing your relationship with your boss. Even if they're a nightmare boss the following actions will help improve your relationship. Firstly work out how you're going to help your boss. This starts with your mindset. Then actively seek out what they are focused on stressing about or struggling with and work out how you can help them even if it's just a small bit of help. Secondly focus as much of your work as possible on areas that best help your boss meet their personal and team objectives. Speak to your boss and find out what they really want you to work on. Third train yourself to actively look for areas that you admire about your boss. No matter how horrible they are they will have good points find them focus on these areas and compliment them for what they do well. Be genuine and honest rather than trying to suck up. Fourth work on finding out your boss's interests and passions and get them talking about them. Do some research so that you can contribute to the conversation even if it's just demonstrating a desire to learn more. Fifth be a good team player and help the team do better in any way you can sensibly can. Every boss likes team players who are trying to push team members to hit team goals. A great way to reduce stress at work is to work on improving your relationship with your boss. Many of the approaches we have been through work equally well for improving relationships with colleagues. Work consistently and expect the improvements in relationships to take a little bit of time. The third big cause of workplace stress is not getting support and help to do your job well. Yet I've worked in single swim environments and I know how stressful it can be to trying to deliver on your job without very much support or help. Getting support and help to do your job well comes in many forms including if firstly understanding what exactly is expected of you and having clear direction. Secondly having clear job responsibilities and boundaries. Third being protected from interdepartmental politics and the maneuverings of those more senior than you. Fourth getting helpful and considered answers to questions that you have. Fifth being listened to and actions taken to sort out problems that you're experiencing. Sixth working in a team in which team members help each other out and work together towards common goals. Seventh being coached through dealing with the many people challenges that all managers face. And then eighth being given the right resources at the right time. Trying to learn and do your job well by trial and error takes a lot of time is stressful and usually gets you to okay rather than great. And there are lots of sources of help outside the digital route of speaking to your manager which covers much of the list that we've just gone through such as books, courses, mentors and coaches. You should absolutely help yourself rather than expecting to be spoon fed. For example you could write your own job description and agree it with your manager. You could set your own objectives aligned with the team or functional goals and agree then with your manager and so on. Proactively take steps to get help from any areas outside and inside of work. Yes your company should be helping you but if they aren't why go through all the stress of not getting help from elsewhere? When you are managing a team try to provide as much support and help to your team members as possible and do this as proactively as possible. They will experience a lot less stress and be able to handle stress at work that much better. The fourth major cause of stress at work is suffering organizational conflicts. Organizational conflicts are fairly common. A classic example of organizational conflict could be the sales team are targeted with increasing sales and the finance team are targeted with increasing profit. With very different goals the two teams are going to experience conflict with each other. How to manage stress at work in this situation might be to task both teams to work together to grow gross profit. Differences in goals at team, functional and business unit level create conflicts. For managers the best way to reduce conflict is to work on creating more aligned goals. The stress levels will drop and team working will increase which will increase performance. Alignment of goals within a business reduces conflict and stress and increases the effectiveness of teams. Competition for the limited resources within a business inevitably create conflict and stress at work. Managers are best placed to negotiate on behalf of their teams and should focus on what use of resources is best to reach business goals. Different processes create conflicts and stress at work when they are not aligned to goals or seek to achieve conflicting results. In an example might be processes and systems to standardise contractual terms so the business can scale more easily conflicting with sales teams processes to promote contract flexibility which helps drive higher sales. When you spot organisational conflicts or are on the receiving end of conflicts either negotiate changes to the source of the conflict or highlight to your boss the conflicts. Explain why they are happening. Ask your boss to take action to minimise the conflict. This will reduce the workplace stress experienced by everyone. And managers should be on the lookout for organisational conflicts and minimise the workplace stress caused by changing or minimising the cause of the conflict wherever possible. So in summary there are lots of reasons that workplace stress does arise. How to deal with stress at work is important particularly when it's outside your personal control. Practise saying no on your own behalf and then on your team's behalf. Say no diplomatically and always provide the business reasons why you are saying no. Take proactive steps to improve the relationship you have with your boss and your colleagues. There is a lot of actions you can take that will make a big difference quickly. Improve these relationships and you'll have a lot less stress at work. And when dealing with stress at work think about what help and support you need and how you might get help earlier when stress levels are low rather than later when stress levels have got too high. And finally look out for organisational conflicts which are causing workplace stress for multiple people or teams. Change the causes of stress at work by minimising or removing these conflicts. If you have any questions on preventing workplace stress for major causes of stress and what to do please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.