5 Training Techniques to Empower Frantic Employees and Reduce Stress

Dealing with frantic employees can be overwhelming for managers, admins, and owners, and detrimental to the entire team. However, with effective training techniques, you can empower employees to do their job and help them flourish.

Let’s discuss some common behaviors of frantic employees. You’ve likely seen these in the workplace: lack of focus, stress, and disorganization. These all impact the workplace environment and those around the person. They interrupt others with questions or searching for items. Their tension and stress become palpable in the whole office. Their lack of focus creates frustration for the rest of the team because they observe these behaviors too. This is why it is so important to take care of employees who become frantic and help them get back to a productive state.

Here are some strategies and techniques for training frantic employees.

1: Effective Job Descriptions.

Job Descriptions create clarity for the tasks assigned to each new employee. Breakdowns of what they are supposed to do and how they’re supposed to do it give a framework within which to work.

Employees want to help. They want to be productive… but when they’re not sure what needs to be done, or how to do it, that makes it extra difficult. It also starts to undermine their confidence, which in turn makes it more difficult to get through the project and the outcome that you’re looking for.

So the more that you can fine-tune their job descriptions and help them craft a daily, weekly, and monthly task list so they know when they need to get tasks done, the better they’re going to be at having clarity in their position.

2: Team Communication Guidelines.

These are the policies and procedures for the whole team on who they talk to and in what manner, and on what platforms. What do I mean by this?

Well, when do they use Slack or Teams to communicate with team members? When do they go into their office or pick up a phone? When do they text or send a WhatsApp or some other message system? When do they get on a Zoom call?

By documenting the communication hierarchies, the team can work within those guidelines and get more done.

Next, you create protocols to train the person to search the policies and procedures manual first, to see if anything exists, before they interrupt another team member.

This alone can reduce the additional toll on the rest of the team, but more importantly, it trains the person to problem solve on their own first. Then, if there is nothing there, they can batch their questions together (more on that in a moment) and go and talk to the best knowledgeable person, learn how to do the task and create that new policy and procedure so that it’s documented how it should be done.

Plus, when people must document the procedure or create a video about what they just learned, it anchors in that learning, and it’s going to make them 20% faster in doing that task. So not only will we help the business by creating these policies and procedures, but we are also helping this person anchor in and get faster and more productive in what they do.

3: Time Management Tips.

This is where you give them lots of support. This is one of the places you can tap into great online resources like Upleveling Your Business to give them the tools, the checklist, the time management tips, and efficiency tips.

Consider how much stronger they could be with some mini-lessons like the following:
How to batch their activities and reduce the mental energy jumping from project to project
How to take one large project and break it down into smaller bite-sized pieces so that they feel productive at the end of the day
How to create tactical steps so they can see their progression and feel good at the end of the day”,

Training and tips like the above can have a huge impact on supporting the person with some new techniques and can help them flourish.

4: Stress Management Techniques.

This is important. We all need a little love and care at times and reminders to take care of ourselves. Even the simplest reminders to breathe, stretch, and take a walk, can help a person reset. Often small steps like this can also help the team be more productive the rest of the day.

Let me share a story of how this worked in real life in my law firm ownership days. I had an experienced paralegal who started in my law firm, and by about 7-8 days in, she was absolutely frantic. And we were thinking, “What is going on?” We quickly realized that she was in over her head and we needed to train her up more. And so we backed up and we started again with her onboarding and really trained her up. It was so invigorating to see an employee flourish after that transformation from being frantic to productive after receiving the right training and support. We want our team to feel good about completing their tasks and recognizing their productivity is helping the whole team move forward.

The great news is, that it is not just the employee that is flourishing. The people around them who are training and helping, they will flourish as well. So in conclusion, this is why I’m so adamant about helping business owners train their teams. I’ve been there firsthand. The importance of investing in your team to give them the training, to empower them, is not only going to help that individual, but it will also improve team dynamics and boost overall productivity, which is vital to the success of the business.

Share your own experiences below with training employees or helping a team member to flourish or subscribe for more tips on effective leadership and team management.