De-stress Your Office.

>>First you cut back on overtime and office supplies, and then you move the annual party from a resort to the lunchroom. After a few layoffs, your employees are walking on eggshells.

Although some anxiety can keep an organization motivated, a stressed-out staff can undermine a company. Can you repair the mood and restore productivity on your tighter budget? Nationally known organizational engineer Jeffrey A. Miller thinks so and offers six such strategies in The Anxious Organization, 2nd Edition: Why Smart Companies Do Dumb Things.

To see if the advice applies locally, we took his tips to Suzanne Ramey, president of Human Resource Concepts in Fort Myers, and Nanci Smaby, a life coach in Naples.

Tip 1: Strive to be predictable.

Miller, who has experience as a family therapist, management consultant and executive coach, believes that the most successful companies are run by leaders with predictable behavior who stay true to the "rational system" of the company.

Ramey agrees. "Anxiety in the workplace has hit an all-time high," she says. "Everything that was predictable in the workplace is not predictable now." Regular meetings and constant communication are ways to keep staff "resilient" and informed.

Tip 2: Map the anxiety in your situation.

You know there’s a wave of nervousness in the office but you don’t know where it’s coming from. Miller advises drawing circles that represent you and your employees and arrows to map the path of the anxiety. The source might not be at the office; it could originate with an employee’s worried spouse or someone else.

It’s a "valid idea," says Ramey, as long as the boss doesn’t dig too much into the staff’s personal issues and knows when to bring in a conflict mediator or an HR specialist. "The worst thing that leaders can do is start analyzing and going beyond their expertise," she says.

Tip 3: Learn to take an "I-position."