Strategies to Effectively Address Employee Burnout
No matter your industry, company size, or location, employee burnout is a significant issue for leaders. One recent study found that 65% of employees experience burnout in their jobs, a statistic that has remained consistent over the last several years.
It goes without saying that burnout can negatively affect individuals, teams, and organizations as a whole. Burnout has many contributing factors, and each person suffering from it will have a unique experience. Regardless of the cause or specific case, leaders are responsible for addressing burnout. The best case scenario is always prevention, but once you notice burnout has set in on your team or your organization, it’s time to take swift, decisive action to fix it.
Alleviating burnout is an essential part of sustaining a healthy workplace, managing energy levels, and supporting employees’ mental well-being.
Let’s explore common causes and solutions to employee burnout.
Unrealistically High Workload
Organizations must often manage a complex set of ever-changing workplace dynamics, including turnover, restructuring, and a competitive talent marketplace. The domino effect is that teams are often asked to do more with less. Unfortunately, this can create unsustainable workloads and cause people to work long hours, give up their weekends, and sacrifice vacations.
The Solution: Implement decision-making and prioritization frameworks, such as the Eisenhower Matrix, to determine your most urgent and important set of tasks, then build a timeline for those items deemed less important and not as urgent. Leaders should also re-evaluate and recalibrate their strategic plan according to available resources. When possible, automate the mundane or repetitive tasks that take a lot of time but don’t add much value.
Lack of Control Over Decisions
Autonomy at work is a key factor in ensuring employees can thrive. Being micromanaged is a demotivating experience that can often lead to deteriorated relationships. While leaders might feel it necessary to control when and how work gets done, we know this only leads to poor team performance.
The Solution: First, leaders who tend to micromanage should address this with a leadership coach. Organizations can create an environment of empowerment and autonomy by allowing for flexible work arrangements, providing project leadership opportunities, and soliciting and acting on feedback on improving their work experience.
No Sense of Belonging or Community
Teams thrive when people have strong relationships with their colleagues and leaders. In environments where this sense of community is lacking, employees often do not feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work, they are less creative, and are not as likely to innovate and openly share ideas. In short, they lack psychological safety. While you don’t necessarily need to have a best friend at work, creating an environment of belonging is important to individual and team success.
The Solution: Create opportunities for team members to get to know each other. The decline of forced fun as been heralded by many employees who tired of team happy hours and birthday celebrations. While it might be a welcome relief to ditch the awkward icebreakers, you should still find ways to meaningfully connect. Opportunities to give back to the community as a team are one way to do this. People often find fulfillment when they are doing something that positively impacts others, and organizing team events with this in mind can help strengthen bonds while investing in a worthwhile cause.
These are just a few causes and solutions to employee burnout. Learn how you can sustain a workplace environment focused on well-being by reading Make Work Healthy or getting in touch with me for a coaching chemistry call.