Steps I can take to manage my stress throughout my career will be critical to preserve my longevity and health while I am working. My dad is working in the same field as I am entering into, and he has gave me plenty of advice as far as managing stress. The biggest thing I learned from him was the importance of bonding with the people you’re working with. If you enjoy who you are doing your job with every day, it doesn’t matter how terrible the project is because you’re surrounded by great people. When I was interviewing for full time positions, I was less concerned with the type of work I was doing, but rather who I was doing it with. Looking at the workplace stress guidelines and tips from OSHA. The first step employers should take is to acknowledge the stressors that are affecting their employees. You can’t fix any problems if you don’t understand what they are first. Next, employers need to provide both the flexibility to let employees take care of themselves and give them access to resources to support their stress and mental health. Obviously these are just guidelines and not an example of what a company actually does, and let’s be honest, the only companies actually providing “mental health services” are tech giants like google or Microsoft. I have personally never heard of a company within my field providing mental health services or mentioned managing stress. Maybe the construction world is behind with even acknowledging mental health, which would make sense. It’s interesting because from my internship experiences, the craft workers have more support than the office guys. Maybe in the next coming decades that can also be applied to the office workers.
(Just to note, the quizzes we had to take were extremely unhelpful and I felt did not help my understanding of my personal stress levels)
