How To Create A Stress-free Workplace For Interns

Internship is the nascent stage of professional life; if completed successfully, it acts as a springboard for upcoming future success and achievements for interns. This is the time when people are most passionate, energetic as well as volatile in their life.

When students start off their careers as trainees and interns, they are faced with many new challenges. Apart from getting exposure to more opportunities and options, they are equally prone to extreme levels of stress. All of a sudden they might go through jam-packed weeks, prepare for important presentations, or directly confront with clients or customers.

Such a situation, especially in the lives of interns is an unfortunate recipe for stress that can lead to very negative results.

So being a business owner, you might have welcomed some fresh interns at your workplace or thinking of employing a few. In any case, have you incorporated right practices for these trainees to flourish and to contribute towards your business’s success? Are your interns properly handling the stressful situations and happily learning new things?

If this is not the case, we have following tips for you to help your interns handle stress:

Effective communication

When it comes to new employees, particularly interns, communication becomes very important on both sides – employee’s side and management’s side. It acts as an ice-breaker for interns to familiarise with company norms, processes, culture, and people.

A healthy and meaningful communication in the beginning will make them informed, confident and motivated. Once they start working on unknown projects for the very first time, it is natural that they will have difficulty in understanding them; so it is important for you to meet them and talk to them face to face.

This form of personalised communication will eliminate misunderstanding, steer them towards right direction, and most importantly, help them beat any kind of stress.

Offer empowerment opportunities

The performance of interns depends a lot on how they are engaged at work, and when they feel that they can grow further. So providing professional growth opportunities to them is one of the highest drivers of their engagement as well.

Since stress can strike at anytime to their careers, but being preoccupied with growth prospects because of your encouragement in the form of opportunities, they are more likely to manage the stress.

When your interns start believing that there is an opportunity for advancement while working on something substantial, they will definitely be charged to prove their worth. In a hope to achieve personal and professional growth, when they make their own decisions, they will more effectively manage their stress as well.

Recognise their efforts

Don’t let your interns get disappoint every now and then, which might develop stress in them. Disappointment also comes when they work hard on something – with successful results or not – but not recognised for their efforts.

This might push them toward more stress, which is why incentives and awards become key factors for motivating them. When you incentivise the good performance of your interns, they will find themselves at ease and therefore will be motivated to perform even more outstandingly.

In order for them to handle stress, you can organise office parties and other activities where you can offer them party beverages and drinks, or you can give them gifts that contain motivational favour labels. The point is happy, healthy and motivated people at workplace are better equipped for managing heightened stress levels.

Emphasise teamwork

Make your interns an integral part of your team and work culture even if they are with you for a short duration of time. When they are taught the value of working in a team, they become hopeful and confident of even seemingly impossible tasks.

Such a move will eliminate unnecessary stress from their lives. Teamwork brings a sense of unity, creates enthusiasm for common interests, and encourages a dedication to perform better.

Don’t let them work in isolation since working individually is essentially limiting one’s capability to compete and learn. Moreover, working in a team distributes stress equally among the team players.

Let them disengage sometimes

Many interns suddenly feel like they are working round the clock because the amount of work they are given seems too difficult to complete. Just to make them more productive, you cannot pressurise them or throw more work at them.

This makes employees feel extremely harassed and stressed, rather than feel motivated. Hence, you should allow them to disengage often times so that they can focus on their personal lives, pursue their hobbies and engage in their favourite activities. This will help them manage stress in a better way.

To conclude:

Internship is a stage when a person dreams big, sets future goals and steps in a completely uncharted territory. But interns are also susceptible to stress that creeps in their professional lives. Therefore, they have to be ready handle such a situation; and their employers should also play a pivotal role in that.

Inspiring Interns is a recruitment agency specialising in all the internships and graduate jobs London has to offer.