Bosses Can Do More Than Just Pay Raises, They Can Also Be Kind Toward Their Employees and Reap Rewards, Here’s How

Acts of kindness caught on cam are a sure-fire way to become viral – these are fool-proof ways to make anyone’s day and will make them believe that faith should be restored in humanity. Others even believe that it is what makes the world go round. If that’s the case, then the same can be said in the workplace, whose environment is oftentimes stressful.

Role of Bosses

We all go through a lot of things every day, but they say you should leave your baggage at your house instead of bringing it to work. But is it really possible? On the other hand, the problems may arise in the office as there are a lot of people feeling the wrath of burnout arising from the pressures and stress. That said, employers have a bigger role than just making sure things go well, projects are submitted on time, and everyone does their job.

Random acts of kindness can greatly help another person

Bosses play a major role as to how an employee performs at work, a study has found. Specifically, acts of kindness, even the smallest ones, tend to boost a person’s morale. We tend to think that by being employers, we are burdened with the expectation that we are only being nice when we allow salary increase or approve leaves, but we can do so much more than these to help increase performance.

Bus Drivers’ Stress

According to research from Penn State University that was published in the International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, when the abovementioned solutions to making employees happy are not doable, small kind gestures can impact them so much. The researchers analyzed bus drivers in China because they have physically and mentally stressful work.

Bus drivers exceptionally experience mental and physical stress

The life of a bus driver is filled with no regular meal times, sedentary lifestyle since they sit for most of their shift, irregular working hours, and the vibration from the ride. So what employers did was to add fruits in the lunch of 86 drivers – they do provide lunch regularly but not with fruits, an increased cost of which is around 73 cents.

Throughout the experiment, the participants were given surveys from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess if the addition of the fruit affected their mental health. By the end, the researchers noted there was an improvement for those who had depression.

Adverse Effects of Stress

Stress from work doesn’t only affect our mental health but our physical wellbeing as well. Some of the short-term adverse effects of it are anxiety, breathing problems, headaches or migraines, and sleeping issues.

Those who are exposed to stressors in a prolonged time have the risk of it becoming chronic, which means more serious problems like depression, compromised immune system, heart disease, and muscle pains.

One of the short-term effects of stress is a headache

In the workplace, this can hamper the employees’ productivity because stress eventually causes the loss of focus and therefore, more mistakes. The research said that although these small acts of kindness may look unimportant, these do go a long way to help your employees fight stress and depression.