What is understanding anxiety?
Anxiety disorders affect adults and result in changes in brain chemistry. It is a wide-ranging disease, depending on the severity of an individual. Employers fail to recognize the anxiety relating to restlessness, sleeplessness, irritability, or concentration issues in their employees. It needs addressing to stay in control.
10 Reasons Employers Do Not Recognize Anxiety as a Disability
Employers must see anxiety as a mental illness when it becomes a disability, affecting daily activities. The anxiety factors in a workplace may be due to high workloads, workplace stress, performance worries, colleague conflict, and, so on. It results in a drop in performance, an increase in sick leave, eating habits change, more drinking or smoking, and a struggle with decisions.
1. Open Policy
Employees experience anxiety and hesitate to talk to seniors in the office. There should be an open policy for employees to speak comfortably to their employers about work issues. Speaking openly about the issues at the workplace encourages productivity and ethics.
2. Offer training
Provide training to support mental health and the required tools to handle workplace stigma. Let them seek training and education to manage anxiety. An in-house comprehensive training program helps employees.
3. A Friendly EnvironmentÂ
The working environment dictates the employee’s mood. Anxiety disorders become more in toxic work environments. It can stem from poor relationships at the workplace, negative culture, or some tough processes. Employers should recognize and provide a supportive stance. Demonstrate support and work through their challenges offering a friendly environment.
4. Set Boundaries
Employees should know the employer’s work-life balance strategy. It helps the employees also to set their boundaries. It promotes time management and teaches adhering to a working schedule to not checking email after off hours. Thus, the anxiety is under check.
5. Promote Flexibility
Anxiety is a situation addressed by employers. Offering a flexible working style gives employees enough time to complete the workload. Ensure employers communicate flexibility on a limited basis it helps in maintaining focus and concentration. Reasonable adjustments are enough.
6. Constructive Feedback
Feedback is crucial in the workplace. Giving constructive feedback to anxiety-suffering employees helps to manage their goals better. It promotes brand awareness, and meeting expectations with support in improvement areas gives positive results.
7. Regular conversation
Communicating is crucial to get the best of anything from anyone. Your employees are convinced their employers are aware of their anxiety triggers and will receive support. Conversation with such employees works like the reassurance of receiving full support. It raises confidentiality, resulting in good action plans.
8. Stay supportive during transition times
Workplace anxiety is not new, but long absence due to reasons calls for anxiety. Returning from onsite work or even after remotely working for a long period returning to office hours is anxiety. Employers give them time to ease gradually into the workflow. Stay supportive.
9. Make reasonable workplace accommodations
Making workplace accommodations is to provide childcare assistance to employees struggling with childcare. Announce flexible working hours and allow the employees to skip a few meetings as a breather, if essential. Allow modifying workloads. They will stay with you for a longer time.
10. Manage Expectations
Managing the anxiety of employees is by not letting them down. It is about being thoughtful while experiencing severe anxiety by not raising targets, time management, or forcing challenging expectations.
Wrapping Up
Encouraging employees and spending time together builds meaningful connections. Make your workplace a place for creativity and collaboration, and highlight the accomplishments. Workplace accommodations help in managing anxiety in employees throughout the process.
