Over three-fourths of employees face burnout. Less than a quarter of employees strongly believe their employer cares about their mental health. And 47% of employees believe the majority of their stress comes solely from the workplace, according to the American Institute of Stress.
For David Ko, CEO of Calm, a subscription-based meditation and wellness platform, managing workplace stress is not only at the top of the brand’s mind but also for himself as a leader. “I’m very humbled to work at this company. I’m also pretty stressed by working at this company because every second of every day, someone is using our product,” he tells Fortune.
Leaders, he says, can do a better job of managing workplace stress if they stop making this one major mistake.
“The number one thing that I’ve seen that leads to workplace stress is workload management,” he says.
When someone is juggling too many things at once, mistakes are more likely to happen. Moreover, their time management, productivity, and stress can all be shot.
“We, as leaders, don’t do a very good job of understanding [employees’] entire workload,” Ko says. “You may say to someone, ‘This is really important. It’s got to be done within the next 48 hours.’ But do you, as a leader, take the time to understand all the other priorities that they may be working on?”
Leaders need to do a better job of assessing the load, he says, asking what other priorities have been added to their plate, and pivoting accordingly.
“What are you going to take away?” Ko says. “I often ask leaders today, if you’re going to give someone something to go do, are you taking the time to go say, maybe, though, that seventh, eighth, ninth priority, that can wait?”
Leaders should also make sure their teams understand the reasons behind a shift in priorities or why a new task takes precedence over others. “We assume most employees understand why we’re giving them more work to go do, but too often, we don’t explain the why,” Ko says.
Make employees feel a part of the conversation about what they think they can accomplish in a given time, Ko adds. “It’s a two-way dialogue, not a one-way dialogue,” he says.
For more on workplace wellness:
- 3 tips to managing ambition in a burned-out workplace, according to Calm CEO
- Gen Z and millennial workers would accept lower salaries in exchange for this one thing from their employers
- Here are the top 10 best and worst states for older adults in the workplace
- Workplace well-being is at an all-time low. Here are 5 ways employers can actually help