How can I reduce stress for myself and my employees?

Just as you take on stress from working with children and families, your employees do as well.  Caring for children, while rewarding and heartwarming, can be exhausting and overwhelming work.  As the business leader, there are some things you can do to help your staff manage the stress load of this work.  Here are four questions that can help you think about how you can help staff manage their stress:

• Have I checked in with my staff recently?

• Are there changes I can make during the workday?

• What incentives and rewards can I provide?

• How can I encourage staff to enjoy time outside of work?

Checking in with staff members

One of the best and easiest ways to lower stress in the workplace is to encourage your staff to talk to you and to each other.  Checking in regularly with each staff member allows you to learn of issues quickly.  Checking in doesn’t have to be lengthy or formal; however, brief, regular interactions communicate to your staff that you care about their well-being and are invested in their success. Be sure to ask them how they are feeling and doing as well as inquire about what’s causing them stress in their day.  Staying open and genuinely curious will allow them to share with you their stressors creating an opportunity for you to find solutions together.

Staying connected with co-workers and even friends outside of work can reduce workplace stress also.  Encourage your staff to work together and create space where they can get to know one another.  When people feel as if they have others who they can rely on at work, they feel more connected to their work and are more likely to stay engaged.  Friendships and laughter are natural stress relievers, so encourage them in your business!

Changes to the workday

As a business leader, there are small adjustments that you can make to the workday that can have a huge impact on your employee’s well-being. Here are a couple of ideas to consider:

• Establish a regular schedule. Routines and predictability are beneficial to everyone – your staff members, families, and children.  By setting a regular schedule, staff members can plan around their work hours.  Talk with your staff members to make sure that the work schedule they’ve been assigned works for them as well.  You could have one staff member struggling to arrive early and another challenged with staying later in the day.  By swapping their schedules, both staff members have less stress and are content with schedules that better meet their needs. 

• Encourage everyone to take a break. This is sometimes hard to do, especially when you are understaffed.  Staff members need a moment to step out of the space they share with children to make a phone call, walk outside, or check out silly memes on their phones just to disconnect for a moment from the demanding work of caring for children.  Make this a priority for your program.  Your staff members will benefit and the children will benefit from rested staff members.

• Include time for group relaxation. You may find a brief time either before or after work where you can gather a group of your staff together for some group stretching activities, breathing exercises, or even a brief exercise session.  You may even have a group that wants to walk around the playground together.  This time together doesn’t have to be expensive or led by a paid instructor. There are free-of-charge yoga and stretching videos on YouTube and low-cost apps like Headspace or Calm that can lead your group through a 10 or 15 guided meditation. The benefit of these experiences is the togetherness around a shared calming activity.  By connecting with each other and moving or breathing together, your staff is reducing their overall stress levels.

• Promote using paid time off. Although having enough staff can be challenging some days, encourage and support your staff in using their paid time off.  They need time away from work to take care of themselves.  Sometimes your most dedicated employees won’t take time off from work, often to their detriment.  You want well-rested healthy staff members to care for the children and families in your business, so take care of them by insisting they take care of themselves.

Offering incentives and rewards

Traditionally as a child care provider, you have an extremely tight budget, making it difficult to provide extra incentives or rewards to your staff members.  Here are a couple of lesser expensive options that can motivate your staff and ease stress.

•  Simple, cost-effective gestures. Providing incentives and rewards doesn’t have to be large expensive productions.  Perhaps you can have a monthly potluck where you provide the main dish and invite your employees to provide side dishes or buy pizza for the staff one day at lunch. Another idea could be to raffle off a DoorDash certificate or a local restaurant gift card once a week or month, so your staff member gets a break from cooking at home. Even a candy bar on payday can be a sweet treat to show that you notice and appreciate them.

• Learning through professional development.  A way to ward off stress is by learning something new.  Connecting your staff members with high-quality professional development experiences can encourage them and communicates to them that you are invested in their success. The Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA) administers the T.E.A.C.H. program which is an excellent opportunity for staff to continue their education. There are other professional learning experiences to check out through WEESSN as well.

Suggestions for time outside of work

As you look closer at ways to reduce stress within your workday, another consideration is how you spend your time outside of work.  Perhaps sharing these tidbits through a staff email, newsletter, bulletin board, or sharing at a staff meeting will help your staff think of ways they can lessen their work-related stress levels.

• Limit your consumption of news and social media. Study after study has shown how social media and negative news consumption can affect your mental health. Perhaps encourage your staff to reexamine their social media usage and reconsider the reason why they are engaging so frequently.

• Highlight the power of routines.  Just like children find comfort in the regularity of a well-thought-out schedule, adults too find comfort in routine.  Invite your staff to reflect on ways they can establish routines at home to lessen their stress levels.  By providing an opportunity for staff members to share their experiences with home routines, they can glean valuable information from each other which leads to reduced stress levels.

• Encourage hobbies and other recreational activities. Stress relief comes in all shapes and sizes and by encouraging your staff to reconnect with a beloved hobby or other recreational activity you are assisting them to find a pathway to stress relief.