It's Stress Awareness Month. How is Your Team Coping?

How’s life?

It's a simple question, but ask it of someone and, if they’re answering honestly, you’ll likely get a roll of the eyes and the answer: “Busy!” or "Stresssful!" Dashing around with a long to-do list and juggling competing demands is the reality of day-to-day life for most of us. To a certain extent, we need this pressure to motivate us and help us get things done. But, when healthy pressure becomes unhealthy stress, that’s when the problems start – and we see this a lot in busy finance teams under the weight of a heavy workload.

Stress Awareness Month aims is to increase public awareness about stress, its causes, its negative effects, and how to relieve it. For both employers and employees it’s a valuable opportunity to stop, take stock, and start to tackle the problem.

According to the American Psychological Association, 61% of Americans cite work as a significant stressor in their lives. That can translate into significant health issues and productivity losses. As The Harvard Gazette reports: "Nearly half (44%) of working adults say that their current job affects their overall health." What's more, "36% of workers suffer from work-related stress that costs U.S. businesses $30 billion a year in lost workdays."

So if stress is affecting you, what can you do about it?

Assess Your Stress Pain Points

The first step is to identify what is causing you stress. For business owners and finance managers, number crunching and poor processes are likely to be big sources of stress.

• Do you have the visibility around the numbers that you and the business need or are you in the dark about where the business is financially?
• Are your processes overwhelming you because they’re too cumbersome, manual, and error-prone for the size of business you’ve become?
• Are phone calls from angry suppliers about late payments becoming more frequent because your accounts payable system is all over the place?
• Do employees consistently not follow travel and expense policies and you find yourself spending a disproportionate amount of time trying to correct claims and educate employees?

Facing reality and taking steps to get control back will not only make you healthier it will make the business healthier, too. Once you’ve identified any key stressors, put an action plan in place to take the next steps to make workflow changes. You’ll feel so much better for making a positive move in the right direction.

Manage Your Health and Well-being

While tackling the causes of stress is incredibly important, taking good care of yourself is vital as well – a healthy body is better able to cope with the demands you place on it.

• Do you eat a healthy diet?
• Do you take time for regular exercise or is running up the stairs to deal with another crisis as good as it gets?
• Do you enjoy a good night’s sleep or is it hard to remember the last time you woke up feeling refreshed and ready to go?
• Are you able to make time to relax with friends and family, or do an activity you love?

You’ve heard it all before, but these things really do make a difference.

Create a Positive Working Environment for Everyone

As well as taking care of your own stress levels, managers also need to take care of those on their teams. And, if you’re an employer, you have a duty to maintain a safe and healthy workplace for your employees.

• Is your team able to cope with the demands of their jobs?
• Are they able to control the way they do their work?
• Do they receive all the information and support they need?

Putting strategies in place to protect your team from stress will not only help you meet your obligations, it will also strengthen your business.

If you’re keen to tackle stress in your workplace, take a look at some tips from the American Psychological Association or the Mayo Clinic.

If you’ve think a bad expense or invoice process could behind many of your work woes, learn more about SAP Concur's expense and invoice solutions.