After more than four months of working from home, employees are feeling burned out. It’s no surprise considering the World Health Organization formally classified burnout as an occupational hazard and phenomenon in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic. Some employees are concerned about having their hours reduced, being furloughed, or even laid off. Others are trying to juggle work and care giving responsibilities with schools and childcare programs closed. Burnout isn’t just typical stress, it’s chronic workplace stress that can lead to serious health issues and it can negatively impact engagement, productivity, and retention. It’s not just up to your employees to care for themselves, it’s part of your responsibility as well. What can you do as an employer, leader, or manager?
Recognizing the signs of burnout is critical in being able to help others. Significant signs include:
- Cynical/negative feelings toward the job or work
- Decreased energy (exhaustion)
- Decreased productivity/poor performance
- Depressed mood
- Disengagement in the work or lack of interest in the mission
- Increased irritability
- Increased sicks days/absenteeism
What’s worse is that you, as a manager, may be experiencing burnout yourself. Which means you may not have the ability or emotional energy to recognize your employees’ burnout.
Why does it happen? According to Gallup:
- Lack of clarity (especially role clarity)
- Lack of communication or support from supervisor/manager
- Unmanageable workload
- Unreasonable time pressures
- Unfair treatment
Additionally, because of the sudden shift in where and how we work due to Covid-19, workers may be having trouble adapting because of:
- Health concerns and health issues
- Isolation
- Lack of boundaries between work and home life
- Loss of child care/taking on the role of teacher
- Loss of other household income
- Loss of other ways to manage stress (going to the gym, having lunch with friends, going to a concert)
- Work and home life schedules are clashing
- Others within the household are also experiencing work stress
What to do when you recognize employee burnout?
- Have empathy and compassion for those who are struggling
- Have open and honest dialogue about what is happening and not happening, listen carefully to what they’re telling you
- Figure out how to resolve the issue together, which might include:
- Encourage taking time off (a day or two, maybe a week)
- Offer flexible scheduling, if feasible, so they can be attentive to their other needs at home
- Goal-plan together to give them a greater feeling of control which will influence them to be more motivated to commit to those goals
- Provide additional assistance and support from you or fellow team members
- Redistribution of work
- Explore more efficient/effective ways to work
- Partner them with a coworker who complements their work abilities so they can support one another
- Provide tools such as software or technology that might remove barriers to better performance and engagement
- Increase communication about what’s happening to decrease stress of the unknown:
- Conduct more frequent one-on-one video check-ins to increase face time, communication, and provide stability
- Conduct or encourage more frequent team meetings to increase team cohesiveness, social interaction, and morale
Prevention and Management:
- Prevention is always better than a cure, however, many employers and workers are past this point due to the swift changes in response to the Covid pandemic.
- A psychometrically-sound, reliable, and valid tool such as the Maslach Burnout Inventory measures and analyzes burnout. This should be be deployed by an experienced I/O psychologist or consulting agency and not by those within the organization who may lack training in measurement and assessment tools.
- Define burnout before asking employees to identify it using the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases
- Listen to what employees have to say and keep track of patterns or themes
- Regardless of outcomes, share the data with all of your employees. This increases both transparency and trust and tells employees that you care
- Measure on a regular basis to discover which interventions are working, which are not, and if there are patterns or cycles as to when burnout happen. Even when your organization’s burnout goals have been met, continue to measure
Ask us how we can help your organization with remote working roadblocks!