Li Yuan (a pseudonym), who graduated with a master’s degree last year and works for a state-owned enterprise in Shanghai, noticed that her line manager arrives at the office ten minutes early every day. She wanted to get into the office early to make a good impression and show her enthusiasm for her work with plenty of energy. But after “fighting” for more than an hour in the morning rush of subway and bus transfers, she often arrived at the office already exhausted.
This experience is common to many people in the workplace in big cities. According to the latest research report released by Jiulian Recruitment and Peking University Social Research Center, the average commute to and from work in China takes 0.96 hours. The average commute to work in Beijing is the longest in the country, at 1.32 hours, followed by Shanghai at 1.17 hours and Tianjin at 1.15 hours, and Hangzhou and Shenzhen at 0.86 hours and 0.87 hours, respectively.
The helpless Li Yuan had to tease herself with the “inspirational quote” on tiktok: “Every morning I wake up and look at the rich list, and if my name is not on it, I go to work.”
Searching for stressors
The latest information from the World Health Organization shows that the risk of mental illness is rising around the world, with the most common types of anxiety and depression plaguing about 120 million people worldwide. In China, a survey shows that more than 50% of the occupational population in China has varying degrees of depression and anxiety symptoms.
The long journey to work brings anxiety to the workplace as part of the anxiety brought about by the work environment, Hu Pengling, a consultant at CIIC Human Resource Management Consulting Co., Ltd, told the First Financial Daily (tiktok) that this can lead to increased psychological stress, poor sleep and reduced social activities.
Not only that, Zhang Haoyin, chief operating officer of psychological service provider Xinrong Group, said that workplace anxiety actually comes from multiple sources. The first is from the work itself, especially in big cities, large enterprises, there is competition among peers and colleagues, and each company has its own performance targets, but because of market saturation or the decision itself, employees feel that they can not do anything even if they try harder, they will feel “stressed out.
Interpersonal pressure and irreconcilable values in the workplace are another kind of pressure on people in the workplace. The company’s main focus is on the development of a new product, which is a new product. Hu Pengling also found that some “post-80s” and “post-90s” interns and freshmen are very confused by their own inaccurate positioning and lack of reasonable career goals.
What’s especially important for companies to note is that Zhang Haoyin said employees who seem outgoing and like stressful, competitive, fast-paced work appear to be the ones who are under more pressure, but in fact such people tend to have stronger self-esteem, and may explode more intensely once the pressure accumulates to a certain level. Corporate executives tend to be anxious, high-pressure people as well, and they usually have a stronger sense of responsibility and care more about what others think.
Another source of anxiety and stress that cannot be ignored is family and life. If the workaholic type of employee is conflicted by work neglecting parent-child relationships, husband-wife relationships, etc., it may also affect productivity.
Managing and relieving stress
What’s worse, personal malaise can spread through the office like the flu. For companies, they are the ultimate victims of “out of shape” employees.
In fact, there is an inverted U-shaped curve between stress and performance and health, where appropriate stress increases performance before the threshold and decreases performance and health after the threshold.
So what can companies do to manage and relieve employee anxiety?
Epsychologist Zhao Peng said that first of all, HR needs to have some knowledge of psychology to understand where the main sources of stress are coming from, so they can better relieve the stress of employees.
Second, it’s important to give employees some career planning and training, as well as provide a reasonable compensation system and set reasonable KPI indicators. Otherwise, employees may become “fleas” in the workplace, changing jobs in two to three years, which makes not only employees anxious, but also bosses.
At the same time, companies need to build a culture of fairness, cooperation, and acceptance. The company’s culture is inhumane and can directly cause anxiety among employees.
In her own work, a typical case that Zhang Hoyin encountered was female employees’ anxiety about pregnancy. In her opinion, in fact, if the boss does a good job of channeling the relevant emotions of female employees and does not put labor-management relations in opposition, in fact, pregnant female employees do not bring a reduction in performance, but rather identify more with the company’s culture and are more loyal to the company, and the company’s humane approach to the employee will also affect other employees.
For employees in their 30s and 40s who have older and younger children and are under greater stress, Hu Pengling believes that companies should encourage a balance between family and work, and that employees will be creative only if they are happy, not just passive. When companies arrange company trips, they can arrange to bring their families, or arrange family days for employees, etc.
Because bad moods can be contagious like dominoes, most companies abroad offer their employees benefits in terms of EAP for managing and solving personal problems, thus improving employee and corporate performance. Some data show that in Europe and the United States, 100% of the Fortune 500 companies provide this benefit to their employees, while 95% of companies with more than 400 employees provide EAP benefits, and for companies with more than 100 employees, the figure is 90%. In China, in addition to foreign companies, only a few large state-owned enterprises offer these benefits.