Have you ever thought that your well meaning communications actually don't reduce employees' stress, improve their health, or increase their productivity? In my many years of working with organizations in the corporate world, the military, and the health industry, I often have seen that gains following an intervention are not sustained. Why is that so?

We can glean some answers from research presented at the recent 11th International Conference on Occupational Stress and Health. It was convened by the American Psychological Association, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the Society for Occupational Health Psychology and held in May 2015.

It turns out that your tendency to top-down communication may cause interventions to be unsustainable. Do you do any of the following?:

Encourage employees to share information about the factors that increase stress in the workplace
Interview employees about the the causes of and solutions to problems
Partner with employees to find ways to monitor progress in alleviating the problems

If not, you have plenty of company. However, you can change things to do more of the above. It may even save you money by lessening the need to hire an expensive outside consultant. After all, employees generally know what problems there are in the workplace but usually are not consulted in most top-down communication organizations.. Bottom-up communication is less likely in most organizations. You ask, "How can I find out what is causing workplace stress?" Try the following:

Host an in-house workshop
Use interviews or anonymous surveys with employees
Hold focus groups
Use the information to structure an agenda for a leadership or team building intervention conducted by in-house personnel

The above steps worked well for me in developing an intervention for a military drug and alcohol treatment agency. That intervention resulted in greater team cohesion and improved patient care productivity sustained over several years. Would you not like to find ways to maximize your employees' sharing of in-house information in a more systematic and structured way? If you do, you will increase their commitment to new changes, save money, reduce stress, and increase productivity. Good luck, it's actually easier than it seems.

Dr. Paul G. Longobardi

For other valuable information on team leadership and development as well as stress reduction, please see: