12 Techniques of CBT That Are Changing Workplace Dynamics

And I knew exactly what to do. But in a much more real sense, I had no idea what to do. – Michael Scott, The Office, Season 5, Episode, "Stress Relief."

This is a reality that most working adults can relate to when it comes to taking on new responsibilities actively at work with no prior experience. But, although common, the level of stress employees deal with as they learn new things at work is enormous.

A 2023 study suggests that about 77 percent of workers experienced work-related stress in a particular month. Additionally, another 57 percent of employees reported burnout at work. If your employees often feel overwhelmed at work, they are not alone.

Or, if you are crumbling down due to stress, you, my friend, are not alone, and there are various solutions to tackle your situation.

Most days, even I feel cramped up emotionally and mentally during stressful situations. And before I realize it, my mind is on the trail of negative thoughts, which hampers my work performance.

Amid the chaos, I started doing something unknowingly that is part of a popular technique that mental health professionals make use of. Not long before now, I came across this technique called "CBT" or "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy."

CBT technique is a widely popular approach that most psychologists use to help individuals change thought processes, beliefs, and attitudes that bring out irrational and harmful behaviors.

In relation to this, I have covered this blog, which will give you insights into incorporating CBT in the workplace.

What is CBT, and how can it help employees at work?

CBT is a problem-specific and goal-oriented approach. This therapy helps people to reduce stress, depression, grief, or regret. It focuses on solving present-day challenges by providing simpler solutions to climb the ladder of success.

CBT offers structured techniques to help alter one's behavioral patterns and conscious and unconscious beliefs, including attitudes and thoughts causing severe problems. It is a form of talking therapy that comprises evidence-based treatments.

For better outcomes or results, CBT requires active and constant involvement of the individual.

What is the Approach of Cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques?

CBT is a cognitive model. It is how cognition is conceptualized. Beck (1976) outlined three levels of understanding:

• Core beliefs
• Dysfunctional assumptions
• Negative automatic thoughts

Here is how the CBT techniques work:

• Helps individuals identify problems or issues in their daily lives more effectively.
• Raises awareness of negative thinking patterns and their impact on overall well-being.
• Identifies unproductive thoughts and reshapes them into healthier ones.
• Alters the way individuals perceive and respond to certain situations.
• Teaches new behaviors and encourages their application in real-life scenarios.
• Promotes better thinking, improved actions, and overall well-being.

Benefits of CBT in the Workplace

CBT is all about counseling stressed-out individuals. If the professional carries out the CBT techniques correctly, they should be able to dismantle the patient's problem into five divisions:

• Situations
• Thoughts
• Emotions
• Physical feelings
• Actions

As I mentioned earlier, the techniques used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy primarily involve fixing negative thought patterns and behaviors. Successful CBT integration can help employees deal with stressful situations better and build emotional resilience and confidence at work.

12 CBT Techniques for your employees' mental health

Here are the techniques and tools that might help your employees at work:

1. Cognitive Restructuring

When you discover a destructive or harmful belief, you start to challenge it. Cognitive restructuring identifies those distortions that hold a person back. Then, it helps to explore how those distortion patterns are rooted in finding new ways to solve them.

It also involves unlearning the dysfunctional thought patterns and discovering more rational ways of understanding them. Cognitive restructuring helps track down thoughts and involves the practice of intellectual wellness activities to improve the quality of thought.

It also includes the following aspects like:

• Tracking behaviors during difficult situations
• Identifying the cause of trouble or disruptive thoughts
• Engaging in behavioral experiments to test out whether your beliefs are true.
• Also, it helps discover alternative perspectives.

CBT is an easy technique that HR can encourage employees to take up. Undergoing cognitive restructuring will assist employees in marking up their difficulties and performing better on the job.

2. Graded Exposure Technique

The graded exposure technique helps people understand what causes fear, which makes them avoid certain situations.
Fear and anxiety in most workplaces are the cause of lower esteem, productivity, and retention.

Systematic exposure helps employees overcome such situations by tackling those fears. It is one of the most effective psychological treatments that exist with a 90% of effectiveness rate.

Graded exposure technique seems complicated, but it's simple. It involves listing situations that you usually avoid—for example, someone with severe social anxiety disorder, leading to absenteeism at work.

Graded exposure helps to rate and rank anxiety situations according to their distress rating. This technique will enable employees to recognize the most significant causes of distress and sort them out.

3. Journaling

Journaling is an excellent way of assembling memories. Journals open the portal for people to explore all kinds of feelings and thoughts.

Journaling in CBT is associated with brainstorming. It involves writing the time of a thought, its sources, the extent or intensity, and how we react, among all other factors.

Journaling helps individuals to identify their thoughts and emotions and describe and change them for good.

This CBT technique locates and understands the cause of negative thoughts. It helps to counteract those negative patterns of thoughts that hamper your well-being.

HR can boost employees' mental health by encouraging them to adopt this method. They can also provide journals for every employee with a simple message: "We care."

4. Mindfulness Meditation

Practicing meditation improves concentration and infuses perfection into the mind. It is a unique CBT technique that heals the mind and relaxes.

Mindfulness meditation is an ancient Buddhist technique that guides the mind against all odds. It allows the practitioner to be present at the moment.

Mindfulness meditation involves breathing practices to calm the mind. As a result, it helps to reduce stress, anxiety and improve retention at work. At the same time, it counterbalances those challenges that include overthinking and distractions at work.

Practicing mindfulness meditation prompts improvements in leadership trust indices and employee engagement. It also significantly improves behavioral health and mental health.

Every organization must motivate its employees to practice mindfulness to create a positive work culture.

5. Cognitive Distortions

Cognitive distortions are like habitual errors in thinking. They involve thoughts like "I am not good enough," "People hate me." It is a common problem these days. Some distortions levy mental health and increase the level of stress, anxiety, or depression.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) identifies cognitive distortions to treat them effectively. But, unfortunately, these distorted thinking patterns affect health and wellness, which can also lead to substance abuse.

Cognitive Distortions includes issues like:

• Polarized thinking, or black-white thinking
• Overthinking and overgeneralizing
• Jumping to conclusions
• Magnifying problems
• Fallacious thinking
• Counting more on negative thoughts
• Blaming and mislabeling
• More dependency on emotional reasoning, etc

HR can help employees to get over distortions by creating a positive work environment. They can also provide free online or offline counseling to employees.

6. Exposure Tool

The exposure tool accumulates three different techniques.

The exposure tool includes:

• Interactive and nightmare technique
• Rescripting technique
• Response prevention technique

It treats anxiety and helps those who are suffering from nightmares. In addition, it enables affected employees to overcome specific behavioral and thought patterns.

Exposure and response prevention techniques treat those who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorders, commonly known as OCD.

Organizations can help their employees by encouraging them to participate in various activities. It can involve both indoor and outdoor fun activities.

Note: CBT experts share worksheets with their patients as part of their recovery process. The worksheets are simply a questionnaire that will help them identify the negative trail of thoughts and retrack them.

7. Role-Playing

Role-playing encourages employees to adopt positive behaviors in potentially tricky situations.

Role-play can be used to support your employees in modifying their core beliefs, discovering automatic thoughts, practicing new responses, etc.

It treats dysfunctional and maladaptive behavioral patterns that hold them back.

Role-play can lessen fear and can also help to:

• Improve problem-solving skills
• Gain confidence in certain situations
• Practice better social skills
• Assertiveness training
• Improve communication skills
• Gain familiarity with situations

8. Mood Tracking

Mood-tracking promotes self-regulation that assists in staying emotionally healthy. Tracking your mood over time can show how well you're doing by managing your mood.
It's a primary indicator of how well you're performing to achieve your goals.

How is it done?

A mood tracker can be a planner or bullet journal. It allows you to track your feelings like happiness, sadness, anger, etc.

You can create a monthly mood tracker by jotting down the days of the month. And, add a color key with the moods you want to track and fill it every day.
Each day, choose the mood color that has dominated your day. Also, use the same color to fill in the box of the corresponding day.

Organizations can also encourage their employees to track their moods through the Vantage fit app.

9. Positive Thinking

A positive attitude only comes with positive thinking. Positive thinking aids in innovation, creativity, retention, productivity, etc. It highly contributes to employees' performances at work.
A happy and healthy work environment can only be created by encouraging positivity at work.

Here are the benefits of positive thinking:

• Improves relationship at work
• Improves focus
• Improves productivity
• Reduces absenteeism
• Promotes a healthier and happier workplace
• Improves intellectual wellness
• Improves psychological health
• Improves behavioral health
• Improves decision making

Also Read: 21 Positive Thinking Ideas For A Workplace To Encourage

10. Activity Scheduling

The activity scheduling technique has been designed to help improve the individual's gloomy behaviors. Scheduling activities allows one to take part in more passive activities and exercises.

It identifies and schedules helpful behaviors like exercising, following new hobbies or passions. Activity scheduling increases the likelihood of getting things done quickly.

This technique is helpful for people who do not engage in any activities due to depression and carry a procrastinating behavior.

HR can organize events where employees can participate and mingle with each other. Doing so will help employees to focus on increasing activities with a sense of mastery or accomplishment. Ensuring their participation will boost their mood and create a happy workplace.

11. Credit List Technique

The credit list technique can be an excellent technique for employees. It is a simple tool that can bring powerful outcomes in the workplace.

Employees can be credited through rewards and recognition programs.

Crediting is an excellent way of encouraging employees to improve productivity at work. It also enhances their confidence and abilities to do better at work.

Crediting the person who deserves it adds a positive impact to their lives. It is also a significant part of work culture.

This technique will help employees to recognize their potential and progress at work.

12. Imagery Graded Exposure

Research suggests when a person repeatedly reruns a tough time mentally, they build emotional resilience. This technique is used as part of imagery-graded exposure.

It involves mentally recalling a situation that brings about negative emotions and analyzing the same. On recalling such an episode, the counselor asks the patient to label down the feelings and urges attached to the memory.

Conclusion

CBT is a highly effective approach to address and resolve issues linked to stress and anxiety among employees. Employers must focus on offering professional help who will deliver structured programs.

Lastly, I can say that proper implementation of a proper wellness program that offers CBT techniques in the workplace can help leaders build a healthy and prosperous organization from all angles.

Frequently Asked Questions:

How can employers offer CBT to staff?

Employers can offer CBT to their staff, starting with an introductory survey to learn about their well-being. It also gives health professionals a kick-start to do their groundwork for CBT.

After evaluation, the next step involves hiring a qualified CBT provider. Employers should also consider training their management team and introducing a comprehensive wellness program to enhance employee wellness.

Are there any potential downsides or risks to offering CBT in the workplace?

Yes, there are some downsides to offering CBT in the workplace. Employees may hesitate about the confidentiality of the process. They also may struggle to share their troubles in the presence of a co-worker if it's a group therapy session.

Other than the above, offering CBT in the workplace may not be a cost-effective approach for employers.