This week is International Stress Awareness Week. The global event aims to reduce the taboos associated with stress and mental health, and promote ways of looking after your own mental health.
We will be participating in Stress Awareness Week here at Ant, and we have given each member of the Ant team their own Ant Marketing stress ball. We also had a visit from Account Manager Holly Fordham’s new puppy, Rufus! (Is there any better way to de-stress than playing with a puppy)?
The causes of stress are often unavoidable in the workplace, however there are stress management techniques you can employ to help you cope with pressures, and overcome them with minimal affect to your mental health. Here are some of the pieces of advice we have selected from the NHS resource on “stress busters”…
Stay Active
While exercise won’t eliminate stress completely, you can reduce some of the intensity in your emotions by simply stepping outside and keeping active. We try to encourage physical activity where possible and staged our own series of weekly sports day events to help build morale, strengthen team spirit and alleviate stress.
Take Control and Connect
It’s important to feel in control of stress, and recognising when you are feeling pressure or anxiety, and being able to take a step back from a stressful situation is useful. We offer a support network to all of our employees and encourage anyone who feels stressed to talk to their team leader, or a senior member of staff so that we can provide them with help and the right support. Talking to people helps remove some of the burden from yourself, and can lead to a solution to the problems you may be facing.
Challenge Yourself
“Challenge yourself” doesn’t mean adding on to your work load or placing more pressure on yourself to hit targets. By setting goals you can help to build confidence once you reach them, which in turn provides a sense of accomplishment. This may include breaking down large tasks into smaller, manageable goals, or could be something more simple, such as setting yourself the aim of learning something new every day.
For the full list of stress busting tips, head over to the NHS website.