Many people manage their time poorly. The well-organized employee, like the well-organized student, can often accomplish twice as much as the person who is poorly organized. Time-management skills can help minimize procrastination by focusing efforts on immediate goals and boosting motivation even in the face of tasks that are less enjoyable.88

Physicians have recommended noncompetitive physical exercise, such as aerobics, walking, jogging, swimming, and riding a bicycle, as a way to deal with excessive stress levels. These activities decrease the detrimental physiological responses to stress and allow us to recover from stress more quickly.89

Individuals can teach themselves to reduce tension through relaxation techniques such as meditation, hypnosis, and deep breathing. The objective is to reach a state of deep physical relaxation, in which you focus all your energy on the release of muscle tension.90 Deep relaxation for 15 or 20 minutes a day releases strain and provides a pronounced sense of peacefulness, as well as significant changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and other physiological factors. A growing body of research shows that simply taking breaks from work at routine intervals can facilitate psychological recovery and reduce stress significantly and may improve job performance, and these effects are even greater if relaxation techniques are employed.91

As we have noted, friends, family, or work colleagues can provide an outlet when stress levels become excessive. Expanding your social support network provides someone to hear your problems and offer a more objective perspective on a stressful situation than your own.

Certain jobs are more stressful than others, but as we’ve seen, individuals differ in their response to stressful situations. We know individuals with little experience or an external locus of control tend to be more prone to stress. Obviously, management shouldn’t hire only experienced individuals with an internal locus, but such individuals may adapt better to high-stress jobs and perform those jobs more effectively. Similarly, training can increase an individual’s self-efficacy and thus lessen job strain.

As discussed in Chapter 7, individuals perform better when they have specific and challenging goals and receive feedback on their progress toward these goals. Goals can reduce stress as well as provide motivation.92 Employees who are highly committed to their goals and see purpose in their jobs experience less stress because they are more likely to perceive stressors as challenges rather than hindrances. Specific goals perceived as attainable clarify performance expectations. In addition, goal feedback reduces uncertainties about actual job performance. The result is less employee frustration, role ambiguity, and stress.

Redesigning jobs to give employees more responsibility, more meaningful work, more autonomy, and increased feedback can reduce stress because these factors give employees greater control over work activities and lessen dependence on others. But not all employees want enriched jobs. The right redesign for employees with a low need for growth might include less responsibility and increased specialization. If individuals prefer structure and routine, reducing skill variety should reduce uncertainties and stress levels.

Role stress is detrimental to a large extent because employees feel uncertain about goals, expectations, how they’ll be evaluated, and the like. By giving these employees a voice in the decisions that directly affect their job performance, management can increase employee control and reduce role stress. Thus, managers should consider increasing employee involvement in decision making because evidence clearly shows that increases in employee empowerment reduce psychological strain.93

Increasing formal organizational communication with employees reduces uncertainty by lessening role ambiguity and role conflict. Given the importance that perceptions play in moderating the stress–response relationship, manage­ment can also use effective communication as a means to shape employee perceptions. Remember that what employees categorize as demands, threats, or opportunities at work is an interpretation; that interpretation can be affected by the symbols and actions communicated by management.

Some employees need an occasional escape from the frenetic pace of their work. Companies including Genentech, American Express, Intel, General Mills, Microsoft, Morningstar, DreamWorks Animation, and Adobe Systems have begun to provide extended voluntary leaves.94 These sabbaticals—ranging in length from a few weeks to several months—can revive and rejuvenate workers who might otherwise be headed for burnout.

Our final suggestion is to create organizationally supported wellness programs. These typically provide workshops to help people quit smoking, control alcohol use, lose weight, eat better, and develop a regular exercise program; they focus on the employee’s total physical and mental condition.95 Some programs help employees improve their psychological health as well. A meta-analysis of 36 programs designed to reduce stress (including wellness programs) showed that interventions that helped employees reframe stressful situations and use active coping strategies appreciably reduced stress levels.96 Most wellness programs assume employees need to take personal responsibility for their physical and mental health and that the organization is merely a means to that end.

Most firms that have introduced wellness programs have observed significant benefits. Johnson & Johnson reported that their wellness program has saved the organization $250 million in health care costs in 10 years, and research has indicated that effective wellness programs significantly decreased turnover rates for most organizations.97 Other research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor and Department of Health and Human Services indicates that organizational wellness programs create healthier employees with fewer health risk factors.98