Tip of the Week: How to Minimize Employee Burnout

Workplace burnout is a serious issue that can have far-reaching impacts in your business. Therefore, it is critical that you can identify when one of your team members is starting to feel it, and know what you can do to help reduce it. Let’s go over what can lead to burnout, as well as a few ways to remediate it.

What Leads to Burnout?

There are a lot of different factors that can contribute to your team members experiencing burnout:

Too Much Work

It shouldn’t be any surprise that having too much on their plate will wear your team members down… especially if this situation is the standard in the office. Overwork not only diminishes how effective your team can be, it can have significant impacts on their health and wellness. How significant? Well, according to the World Health Organization, long working hours contributed to 745,000 deaths in 2016 through a variety of factors.

Clearly, overwork is a significant issue, so if you can identify that it is affecting your team, you need to do what you can to rectify that.

Lack of Workplace Recognition

In addition to paying employees what they are worth to your company through their contributions as a form of recognition, they will also want to see that recognition come more directly from both management and their peers. Otherwise, there’s little to motivate them to accomplish all they can.

Lack of Control

People like to have some level of self-determination at work, so if that’s missing in the work environment they can quickly lose their motivation. Micromanaging and overly restrictive scheduling for the sake of oversight can help to fan the flames of burnout. How would you feel if someone was constantly hovering over your shoulder and judging every move you make? Put your employees in the same shoes, and it isn’t hard to imagine that they may not be all that motivated as a result,

Unfair Treatment

At this point, it should be clear that the workplace environment itself is a major contributor to burnout, more than the work itself usually is. If there are inherent discrepancies in how different employees are treated—even if they are only perceived—problems will come about. Of course, other forms of bias and discrimination is even worse, and needs to be rooted out as well.

Poor Workplace Relationships

Let’s look at things from your perspective again: how motivated would you be to spend hours of your day with people you hardly know (or worse, don’t particularly care for), having to work with them to accomplish a common goal? Your employees will feel the same way. After a while, this kind of environment will sap their motivation to do anything over the bare minimum.

What Can You Do to Minimize the Frequency of Burnout?

Now that we’ve identified some of the causes of burnout in your employees, let’s go over a few ways you can help them bounce back.

Know the Signs

The first thing you need to know to help minimize the burnout your team experiences is that your team members are burnt out in the first place. Are your employees having issues concentrating? Acting irritable with their coworkers? Complaining about aches and pains, or not sleeping well? Are they less likely to feel proud of what they’ve accomplished?

If so, they’re likely suffering from some level of burnout, making your ability to spot these signs as they persist absolutely crucial.

Identify Where It Comes From

So, let’s assume you’ve spotted some of the warning signs in one of your team members. The next step to resolving burnout is to figure out where the stress that is contributing to their feelings comes from. This kind of stress can come from a wide swath of sources—work concerns, health matters, family drama, anything that produces agita. Figuring out if it is something internal to your business tells you if there is something you can do about it.

Give Your Team Back Control

Once you’ve determined that your team’s burnout is caused by a work-related issue, you’ll know that there are things you can do to directly help diminish it. A big part of this is allowing your team a little more autonomy over their daily agenda. Allowing them to work on certain tasks at the time that suits their needs and abilities can help greatly reduce their feelings of burnout.

We Can Help Your Team Make the Most of Their Time

Let’s own up to something right now: as useful as a lot of the solutions and software we offer are in terms of supporting your business productivity, they only work if your team is on their game. However, there are a lot of ways that we can also help your business function as well as it can despite your employees feeling burnout. From automated solutions to our managed services, there are many ways that we can take the onus off your employees, limiting the damage their burnout can cause. Find out more by calling 607.433.2200.