Employer Series: Acing the Stress Test

It didn’t really start with a pandemic. Not with schools that were closed for indeterminate periods, not with schedules upended by remote work, not with once-in-a-generation inflation, not with the highest interest rates in a decade.

All of those factors, though, compounded a concern that employers have spent years trying to address in the name of staff well-being, workforce cohesion, and organizational efficiency. A cottage industry has grown up in the business-consulting space to help business owners, executives and HR teams craft innovative, effective strategies that will help members of the team cope with stresses.

And they are, like the sources of the stress themselves, wide-ranging. Consider: if capitalism itself is inherently grounded in competition, an element of pressure is baked into the cake for employers. But there are 168 hours in a week, not just the 40 someone spends in a cubicle. The potential harm to one’s mental health can come from family or finances. Perhaps clinical depression or substance abuse is at work. The threat of domestic violence may loom. Whatever the nature of the challenge employees face, they don’t deposit their demons at the entrance to their workplace lobby.

In response, employers invest heavily in strategies to de-stress the staff. And the best of those, with the most innovative and effective solutions, can be found among the nearly 250 enterprises recognized as Best Companies to Work For since Ingram’s introduced this annual feature in 2008. 

They offer guidance that can address the physical stress of working on a computer screen for extended hours, the mental stresses of deadlines, the career stress of training (or lack thereof), frustrations from interoffice personality clashes, the emotional stress of family issues, the financial stress of debt and raising families, for starters. 

A key to successful overall stress-management strategies is understanding that you may have a plan in place, but events will conspire to thwart your best intentions if you let them. Take the pandemic for example, when it hit in 2020, companies small and large pivoted quickly.

The experience of Olathe-based KCAS Bioanalytical and Biomarker Services exemplified that approach as it modified its benefit structures as conditions changed throughout the spring of 2020.

“Through April, May, and June, we brought in lunch once a week for on-site employees and provided ‘Feed the Family’ meals once per week for on-site employees to take home,” said Erin Page, talent brand manager. “We provided accommodation pay stipends for on-site staff, phone stipends for work-from-home staff, and offered mask reimbursements for the purchase of cloth masks. Our HR team ran weekly health-focused games and challenges, with prize drawings for the winners for items like an iWatch or a bike, to promote wellness during the stressful times.”  

So in some cases, employers can make a difference just by being an extra pair of hands in employees lives, especially at that intersection between off-hours and the start or end of a shift. That’s when the add-on chores often come into play—picking up the dry cleaning, stopping by the drug store, picking up pets at the vet, dropping the car off for repairs or detailing.

Mental health becomes a thornier issue because it crosses a line between work life and home life, with medical conditions and attendant privacy concerns as potential complicating factors. But large companies, especially, have developed robust employee assistance programs that can steer workers to resources for substance abuse, relationship and family counseling, debt-management services, resources for coping with school loans and more.

The lighter side of keeping morale up comes from the little touches that both signal an employer’s level of concern for well-being and strengthen corporate cultural bonds. Here, think of bringing on a masseuse on occasion to relieve muscular stresses, factor in space for things like game rooms (don’t forget the impact on staff time), beer Fridays, early-out Fridays (especially in summer months), and staff outings to sporting events, festivals or museums.

To help address the strain of family life, more companies are adding flexibility to time-off schedules with innovative concepts like unlimited vacation—that’s a label, not a literal thing—extended paid office shutdowns over the Christmas holidays, robust time off for a family addition, including adoptions (applicable on dad’s side, as well as mom’s), and bereavement leave that interfaces with other emotional-support programs.

This is where companies have shown real creativity. BARR Advisory, one of the region’s fastest-growing companies,
is a Fairway-based firm specializing in cloud-based cybersecurity and compliance consulting. In addition to unlimited PTO, it encourages a whopping 25 days off per year—even the few companies with five-week vacation allowances rarely dole that out before 10-15 years of tenure. On top of that, the company offers a paid sabbatical every five years. Centric, the general contractor, also offers 30-day sabbaticals under certain conditions. And Sun Life ensures that a health issue doesn’t induce stress from fear of losing a job, thanks to a remarkable 24 weeks—at least—of paid medical leave.

The best employers are almost always paying top-of-scale for talent, which makes sense—they tend to have the best talent on hand. But the range of potential stress-busting perks in the financial space is limited only by an executive’s imagination: Tuition reimbursement for employees to pursue additional skills, college savings plans, direct scholarships to employees’ college students, access to paid financial/retirement planning professionals, paid membership to retailers like Costco or Sam’s Club, as well as to gyms and health clubs.

Few tools can reduce the stress of career management quite the way a comprehensive training program can. More than just introducing new technical skills, these initiatives should incorporate employee surveys that at least annually assess the desires to enter leadership ranks, leadership development programming, basic upskilling programs, and, in the best cases, in-house “Company U” programs that create entire storehouses of how-to information for employees to access any time—on the clock or at home—to become more immersed in how the company works and how they can leverage that knowledge to help clear obstacles in their career path.

And don’t forget the role of physical space as a contributor to stress. The Overland Park law firm Erise IP, for example, crafted its office space to align with the technology clients it serves, as opposed to traditional law firms where senior attorneys are secluded in their own spaces. Like others, it also offers a casual dress code, snacks, a game room, and local beer and cold brew coffee on tap. Employees are also reimbursed for an off-site lunch once a week with at least three other co-workers to help fos-ter a team environment. 

Finally, consider the de-stressing that can come from employee associations outside the office, especially those grounded in common causes. Getting the staff out of the office for monthly backpack-stuffing or lunch-making to benefit K-12 students, assisting with non-profit galas and fund-raisers, or group volunteer activities like an annual day to work with Habitat for Humanity have proven popular with many employers.