Your team is showing signs of burnout. How can you prevent it from spiraling out of control?

Navigating through the murky waters of team burnout requires the precision of a seasoned detective ???♂?. Kickstart your investigation with a blend of surveys, feedback sessions, and one-on-one meetings. It’s like holding up a mirror to the team's soul, reflecting back on the workload woes, priority puzzles, and challenge chasms. Listening is your superpower here; it transforms frustration into actionable intel. Pinpoint the stress culprits—be it the ghost of unclear expectations, the spectre of conflicting demands, the drought of resources, or the fog of poor communication. Recognizing these foes is the first step in crafting a shield to protect your team from the burnout blaze.

To prevent team burnout, prioritize realistic workloads and promote open communication, allowing team members to express concerns and discuss individual work pressures. Establish a supportive culture that encourages breaks and values mental well-being, providing resources for stress management skills. Lead by example, demonstrating a healthy work-life balance and emphasizing the importance of taking breaks. Additionally, foster team cohesion through frequent collaborations and get-togethers, such as company lunches or barbecues, creating opportunities for team bonding and relaxation. This social aspect contributes to a positive work environment, enhancing camaraderie and further preventing burnout.

As a professional in mental health with a strong corporate/business background, I strongly advise HR professionals to ask for in-depth clinical evaluations to identify causes. Sometimes the causes are related to organizational climate, but in many cases it's the unregulated nervous system that respond to stressfull triggers in unhealthy ways.

Techniques such as resource-levelling are important tools that can be leveraged to help address the issue. Apart from spreading the workload, the Project Manager must play the role of buffer. Stopping certain activities, starting others and reprioritising work will undoubtedly create concern with some stakeholders. The Project Manager must be prepared to shield the team as much as possible by explaining and justifying these adjustments. This gives the team the space and time to recover and embark on a more sustainable path of quality delivery.

Adjusting the workload represents a natural measure in order to decrease the pressure and stress. Apart from work related aspects, burnout is much more than an occupational syndrome - it's the beginning of a profound intervention (coaching and therapy).

Once the HR professionals will understand deeply mental health aspects and have strong backgrounds in clinical psychology and psychotherapy, the complexity of the projects named "Mental health in organizations" will enhance.

Cultivating well-being will set the ground for professional performance as well as work-life balance, on long-term basis. Emotional health focused on self-care will drive physical care (nutrition, fitness) as well as mental clarity.

The top leaders should be persons with high emotional intelligence capable to appreciate their team' members and ensure psychological safety in a consistent way.

Once a leader becomes mindfull and has the capacity to observe his/her own thoughts, emotions, behaviours, it will apply the same skills within organizations.

The most important thing is to adapt work policies and processes to mitigate the risk factors identified. All the research in the world is not helpful unless it is backed by a commitment to act. Specific measures include adding team wellbeing-related KPIs in performance management discussions, creating policies around respecting personal boundaries and investing in creating a clear purpose.

In the last 25 years, I confronted with several burnout episodes, in different life contexts (MBA student with a full time job, corporate manager, Psychologist/Psychotherapist). In every stage, I looked for the right tools to diminish the symptoms and use my internal resources in the best way. 25 years of self discovery offered me the opportunity to master a full range of tools (coaching, psychotherapy techniques from Mindfulness, Brief Therapies, Cognitive Behavioural Therapies to EMDR).

Some great insights shared here already, so I’ll come at this from a different angle in order to emphasise the need for acting on some of these suggestions: What I see very often, sequentially, is this: - team showing signs of burnout - team and leadership keep doing the same action - 1 person takes leave due to symptoms of burnout - now the team showing signs of burnout is one member down, and the strategy I see often implemented…wait for it…INCREASE the rest of the team‘s workload, to make up for the employee that has burnt out! (Tragiccomedy?)