A large majority of issues facility managers deal with are the result of workplace stress.
From lack-of-productivity issues, issues caused by lack of performance, to staff absences and turnover, it all leads back to stress in the workplace.
Stress is a symptom of inefficiency.
Remove it, and you're on track to an effective and efficient operation.
But, how do facility managers get rid of workplace stress?
The question that needs to be asked is:
As a professional facility manager, how can you manage it so your staff can do their job better?
You're stressed enough by your responsibilities. So...
- How do you help your team through stress?
- How do you prevent stress from being the cause of incidents and issues?
Keep reading because we have your solution.
Now, we know stress is a severe risk.
It affects your operation and your staff.
If not handled, it can negatively affect staff performance, which leads to more significant concerns.
Let's think about this for a moment.
Much of your staff is overworked.
Many don't even have the necessary tools to complete their job – activities or tasks.
What happens?
You get errors, overlooked equipment, sick staff, and other significant problems that affect the welfare of your property.
There's no question of the severity here.
Now, are you ready for peace of mind?
Good.
When you combine a program initiative for reducing workplace stress with maintenance software, you will ease the stress of your whole property, from your staff to your boss, and yes, even you.
This is how you achieve peace of mind and ensure its longevity.
To Eradicate Stress, Facility Managers Must Create a Plan & Execute to the Fullest
It's essential to develop a strong plan for training and support.
This'll allow your staff the essential tools needed to do their job.
Not being able or uncertain on how to do their job is considerable stress for staff.
The means for managing stress has to start with you, the facility manager.
Define a plan of action that enhances awareness of the cause of dangerous workplace stress.
Be a proactive leader and define the ways stress will be stopped and how you can help your staff achieve peace of mind.
Here is an approach we recommend you take:
- Assess the environment and risk of stress for your property.
- Develop a training program and train your supervisors & management team to understand and recognize the risks and address them.
- Put your plan to paper. Make it official.
- Implement facility management software to supplement your initiative.
Assess the environment and risk of stress for your property.
Take the time to work through all of your processes.
Speak with your managers and staff to identify potential hazards.
What causes stress for your staff?
- Not having the resources and tools to execute operational activities and tasks?
- Running out of supplies when things need to be fixed?
- Having the ability only to be reactive, not proactive, when emergencies occur?
- Disjointed communication between technicians and engineers, which causes performing tasks twice or not at all?
It's essential to get feedback from all staff because they might view stress at your property differently than others.
Specific staff may have distinct forms of stress or are burdened with other variables outside of work.
Stress can surface from an inability to perform work effectively. Everyone wants to do a good job, and when there is a barrier that doesn't allow for an excellent job to be accomplished, it can cause stress.
Worse, it can turn into workforce apathy.
Some staff might even disregard performance issues or be too intimidated to mention their weaknesses.
As their leader, it's essential that you identify these needs.
Then, use this process to uncover the cause of the problem.
Develop a training program and train your supervisors & management team to understand and recognize the risks and address them.
Schedule workshops for your staff.
Spend time with your leadership team.
Teach them how to support engineers, technicians, and frontline staff to isolate potential concerns and confront them.
Training will enhance everyone's awareness of issues that cause stress.
Think about it; an entire team can see weaknesses in the process before they become a problem.
Extra training and support allow you to reduce the chances of unwanted stress. Stop it from quickly taking control of your operation.
Put your plan to paper. Make it official.
Produce firm policies that explain your property's mission to create a stress-free work environment for staff proactively.
We believe that communicating your awareness of the dangers and effects of stress in the workplace empowers your staff to perform well and gives them peace of mind.
Attacking stress head-on will build your team's confidence in you, their leader.
Then, as you spearhead these initiatives, fuel their confidence with more action and more results.
Results are crucial.
Talking about your plans to overcome stress doesn't provide the same impact as actually doing something about it.
Do something about it and reap the benefits.
Implement facility management software to supplement your initiative.
Eliminating the impact of unhealthy stress can be accomplished with the application of a software solution.
Use software to take the added steps and headaches out of tedious and routine activities and tasks.
Lower staff pressure to perform efficiently and effectively – with automation and less paperwork.
Innovative, easy-to-use software that helps you predict potential facility hazards removes the questions from your process and eliminates some of those 'emergencies' that impact schedules. It helps your staff do their job better.
When they can effectively and efficiently execute their responsibilities, the apparent result is a stress-free environment.
Are you ready to see how software can help your property become a low-stress setting that moves your maintenance from a cost center to a profit center?
Two Best-In-Class Maintenance Solutions Facility Managers Use for Easing Stress
A large part of the stress comes from your staff's inability to perform necessary activities as efficiently as possible.
What causes this?
Often, it's a lack of resources and tools.
We know that enhancing your total operation will gainfully influence your team.
Here are two maintenance solutions we urge you to implement at your property:
- Preventive Maintenance Software
- Inspection Software
You'll have all you need to empower your staff.
It's important to know that implementing software where it talks to one another is vital to your objective.
When you implement software that integrates, you get a seamless operation with fewer hiccups.
- No questions.
- Fewer errors.
- Reduced stress.
- Peace of mind!
The value associated with a proactive maintenance software solution is endless.
But today, we're going to focus on eight precise ways these two solutions can help all facility managers lower stress at their property.
With intuitive maintenance software that includes preventive maintenance and inspections, you can remove long-term complexity from your facility maintenance:
- No more work order reports with illegible handwritten notes piling up on your desk. Your team will be humming along as you create, track, edit, and automatically communicate work orders.
- Create a web form for your property so that staff can submit work orders for approval directly into the maintenance solution and have the system automatically alert the person who made the request with all the updates.
- Once work order requests come into your maintenance system, they'll enroll into your chain of command for an efficient line of approval. Establish who approves what types of works orders and for what amount. Spend less time worrying about planning the work you need to get done and get it done.
- Preventive maintenance moves your maintenance from a cost center to a profit center. Now use it to take your care from a high-stress environment to a stress-free one. First, create your maintenance activities and tasks with ease. Then, make the rest of the process even easier for your staff. Schedule everything on a calendar for routine tracking and execution. Preventive maintenance mitigates those disruptive and costly surprise emergencies.
- Produce and deliver digital checklists to your technicians. You have ultimate control and consistency of all maintenance activities occurring at your property. It's this consistency that helps to eliminate all those questions we mentioned above. Your staff will perform without hesitation.
- Using digital checklists, your inspections will remove the guesswork and accountability concerns from conducting inspections. In addition, inspection software increases your staff's efficiency. Using RFID technology, staff can quickly scan labels attached to equipment, review checklists, pass or fail an inspection, and attach associated pictures, video, audio, and verified signatures for future analysis.
- If someone on your staff finds a piece of faulty equipment, they can quickly generate a work order directly from the mobile handheld device of your inspection software. Original challenges posed by conducting equipment inspections are a thing of the past at this point. You'll finally have accurate and valuable documentation. Now you'll have peace of mind.
- We can't stress this enough. You can't manage what you don't measure. One of the biggest challenges in a stressful environment is being able to improve your operation. Reporting and analysis change that. Maintenance software that provides analytics is what you need. In your effort to ease stress, you now have valuable information.
Over to You
When you take the guesswork out of a job and give your staff the right tools and a clear path for action, they enjoy working and are happy. So put these steps in place so everyone can achieve peace of mind.
So, will you be taking steps to ease stress at your property soon?
Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.
