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Stress Relief in the Workplace

How can I Reduce Stress for my Team and Myself?

Learning ways to cope with stress in the workplace during the pandemic and beyond.


Child care can be a rewarding career that enables providers to affect the lives of children and ultimately make their world a better place. However, child care also comes with a great deal of stress. Positions are typically underpaid with long hours and there is a need to be extremely attentive and deeply invested at all times. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, the stress has been particularly acute as providers and teachers need to remain constantly vigilant to ensure the heightened health and safety of themselves, their staff, and the children in their care on top of their normal responsibilities. With the additional economic strain impacting child care workers, personally and professionally, many of its staff are finding the stress to be too much to bear.

This guide presents some ways to help you and your staff mitigate that stress and make your way through pandemic, healthy, safe, and ready for the recovery.

Before delving into some of the strategies to reduce stress, we want to make sure readers are clear of the limitations of this document. By no means does this replace counseling or the need for immediate interventions. For example, if a staff member is under extreme stress and showing signs that they need stronger support, or if staff members are facing extreme economic hardships, such as not having access to enough food, you should immediately call your local 211 line. These lines are available throughout Texas and can help connect you with the emergency services and professional support that may be needed in more extreme cases. The strategies suggested here are ways to mitigate stress, but do not supersede the necessity at times for more professional and intensive support.

How can I recognize stress in myself and employees?

Child care is a rewarding field, but also one that normally comes with stress. But in the pandemic, we need to recognize that there's even greater stress put upon child care staff and owners. These stressors manifest themselves in behavior you can see in your staff. According to the Centers for Disease Control here are some warning signs that you should watch out for:

  • Display irritation, anger, or denial that they're even upset.
  • Appear uncertain, anxious, or nervous.
  • Express feeling tired, overwhelmed, that they aren’t motivated.
  • Communicate that they are “burnt out”.
  • Reports of trouble with sleeping or focusing.
  • Appear sad or depressed.

It's important to know that many of these signs can come on slowly over time. A given staff member may seem a little sad one day, but the rest of the week be fine, and then over time it's two days, then three days, and then before you know it, every day. It’s important to watch for these signs, not only at one point in time, but how they may change and grow as the pandemic continues.

What can I do to alleviate stress for myself and my employees?

Ask yourself these 4 questions:

  • Do I check in with my staff enough?
  • Are there changes I can make during the workday?
  • What incentives and rewards can I provide?
  • Can I encourage staff to enjoy time outside of work?

Checking in with Staff

One of the best ways to start reducing stress among your staff is to talk more. Talk more with your staff members, but also encourage them to talk with each other. Some of the important questions you may want to answer are:

  • Are they showing signs of stress?
  • How acute are those signs?
  • Are there ways that you can start offering them suggestions on reducing stress?

We’ll share more about ways to reduce stress later in this document. But as a starting point, even in these conversations, showing that you care and that you're concerned becomes a valuable way to start improving the situation for your employees. Ask them:

  • How they’re feeling and doing
  • What is causing the greatest stress for them in their day
  • How to mitigate the challenges causing stress
  • If they have ideas about how to reduce stress

Prioritizing supportive connections both in and outside of the workplace is also a way to help your staff stay positive.

  • Encourage staff to talk with each other and uplift their peers. For example, go to one of your employees and say: “Louisa is having a pretty tough day today, do you mind taking a few minutes to just say hello to her and how much you appreciate the work she does for the children?” Something as simple as this reinforces to the employee that people are listening, that they care, and that they are not alone in these challenges.
  • Encourage communication beyond the workplace. It can be very helpful to encourage your staff to keep in touch with their relatives, their families, and other supportive people in their lives, reminding them that when they're outside of work, these conversations, these connections, can be vital to reducing their stress and mitigating the effects that the pandemic is having on their mental health.

Workday Changes

There are also ways to help mitigate stress during the workday that do not take a huge amount of time or effort but can have such a positive impact on staff's outlook.

  • Set regular schedules. First and foremost, ensuring that teachers have regular schedules can be so important to their workday and reducing stress. This allows them to effectively plan around their work. If possible, the more that their work schedule can reflect the pre-pandemic schedule, the better. This reinforces a sense of normalcy and structure that can help providers navigate this troubling time.
  • Take breaks. You can also encourage staff members to use their break time. It can be difficult at times when you're understaffed to do this but taking a break to have a few minutes to stretch or walk outside and get some fresh air can help reduce stress.
  • Build in Group Relaxation. Additionally, within the workplace, you may want to find opportunities for small groups or even the whole team to get together right before or at the end of a workday or mid-day to do some group activities, like a quick yoga or an exercise session, or even a mindfulness meditation to just relax for a few minutes and breathe together. These activities do not mean that you have to bring in a paid instructor from the outside. It could be as simple as jumping on a quick YouTube instruction, free of charge, practicing yoga or using a low-cost phone app like Headspace or Calm to take your team through a guided meditation just for 10 or 15 minutes to relax them further.
  • Use Paid Time Off. You can also encourage your team to take paid time off. Again, this is particularly difficult when so many child care businesses are understaffed, but this time away from work is also crucial for keeping their time at work most effective and healthy.

Incentives and Rewards

Normally, child care providers face extremely tight profit margins, and these have become even tighter in the pandemic. As a result, it's often difficult to provide additional financial incentives and rewards, but two key factors are important to keep in mind when it comes to incentives and rewards that could help motivate your staff.

  • Simple, Cost-Effective Gestures. Many of these incentives and rewards don't need to be large or cost-prohibitive. It could be as simple as a monthly or weekly pizza party during the week or providing some DoorDash gift cards once a week or month to your employees, so that they can get a night off from having to cook at home for their family and take a few extra minutes to relax and unwind after the day.
  • Opportunities to Learn. Through the Texas AEYC Teach program, www.texasaeyc.org/programs/teach, your staff can get scholarships and support to increase their education and feel the rewards of improving themselves in their career. Again, these incentives are ones that can have a tangible benefit on the individual's self-esteem, self-worth, and in turn their morale.

It's also important to keep in mind that with additional funding flowing into the child care system, like those dollars coming in from the Child Care Relief Fund from TWC, these can be used to provide incentives. In another document, we talk about how you can provide temporary pay increases or bonuses, which show a great deal of recognition and appreciation for the extra effort your staff is putting in during this time. You can learn more about them here.

These additional funds could also be used for substitutes or temporary staff members to provide mental health days on a rotating basis for your staff, or to compensate your fees when you close an extra day, to allow staff to have that day off that isn't vacation, isn't sick leave, but just a day to collect themselves and get back into stride in such a challenging time.

Times Outside of Work

It can also benefit your staff to know, and have reinforced ways, that they could use their time outside of work most productively.

  • Suggest Breaks from the News. The CDC and other sources have shown that repeatedly hearing, reading, and watching the news, on television or social media which can often be very disheartening about the pandemic, can further erode the positive disposition of your staff.
  • Emphasize Consistent Home Schedules. You may also want to encourage them, similarly to what we described for the work day, to create a schedule at home, something that provides regularity and includes time with family, one that has time outdoors if possible, to get fresh air and see everything offered in the outdoors, which has been shown as a good way to reduce stress.
  • Continue Hobbies or Other Activities. Encourage staff to continue their hobbies or other activities that they enjoyed pre-pandemic that help them relieve stress. First and foremost for these schedules, as with the ones at work, we suggest that they try to be as normal as they can, as pre-pandemic as they can, to ensure that there is some sense of what was normal and typical before the pandemic, every day and every week.

Getting Help

It's important to remember that the pandemic is causing stress for everyone. You, your staff, the families you serve, even the children. It's also important to know that as great as these stresses are on individuals, they're even more difficult, or have an even greater impact on those with existing, chronic, mental health problems. It's important as you look at your staff and even your own behaviors, to note signs that go beyond typical stress, including the misuse or abuse of alcohol or other drugs as a mean of coping, or other behaviors that are self-harmful that belie the need for even stronger supports. If you do see this need, you should call 211 and they will be able to connect you with the professional supports that will be able to meet these challenges.

 

Disclaimer

The information contained here has been prepared by Civitas Strategies and is not intended to constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. The Civitas Strategies team has used reasonable efforts in collecting, preparing, and providing this information, but does not guarantee its accuracy, completeness, adequacy, or currency. The publication and distribution of this information are not intended to create, and receipt does not constitute, an attorney-client or any other advisory relationship. Reproduction of this information is expressly prohibited. Only noncommercial uses of this work are permitted.

Copyright © 2023 Civitas Strategies, LLC

For other issues or questions, don't ever hesitate to reach out to your Texas child care business coach team at Coaching@ECEBizCoach.org.

Questions? Email us at Coaching@ECEBizCoach.org