Burn out or shine bright?

'Burn out' is not a personal issue it's an organisational one

This topic is one close to mine and my team's hearts for a number of reasons. If you've been following our posts, you've heard us talk about the shadow pandemic and how we are not paying enough attention to the impending mental and emotional challenges we and our teams' are yet to face. As workload continues to increase and our personal and working lives continue to be blurred together, many of us are running on empty. But we can fill our cups.

Much of what might come is preventable if we are willing and focused enough to prioritize it. In an article by the OCR register show:

The top causes of burnout among employees polled are their workload (45%), trying to juggle their professional and personal life (35%), a lack of communication (32%) and time pressures (30%).

Much can be done by companies, employees and leaders to rectify some of these challenges, we can't just rely on the resilience of the individual. Somewhere the business needs to meet its employees in the middle. Whether it's by investing in their 'mental fitness' or alleviating some of the workload pressures - ideally both.

“The mistake many leaders make is treating burnout as a personnel issue when it’s really an organizational issue,” Eagle Hill President and CEO Melissa Jezior, said. “It’s incumbent on employers to create an organizational culture that supports employees during times of crisis and avoids burnout when we’re not facing an emergency.”

We know this, but what's more worrying about the insight is that:

More than a third (36%) of employees surveyed say their company is not taking action to combat employee burnout and only 20% say they are provided with mental and physical wellness resources.

What are you doing to actively support your people? Business needs to be part of the solution. governments are overloaded dealing with the physical pandemic, but it's down to business to support and upskill their people to not only be resilient to the current challenges we face but to increase their mental agility and adaptability for the future that is yet to come. That doesn't have to be a scary thing, this indeed is actually a fantastic opportunity. Who doesn't want a more adaptable workforce? And how do you create it? Well, it starts with the individual, it starts with our inner game and our mindset, self-awareness, self-regulation and all of the other great components of emotional & social intelligence. If ever there was a time to invest in these skills it's now. The ground was already fertile as the predictions for industry 4.0 spotlighted Emotional & Social Intelligence as one of the key differentiators and skillsets most needed for the future of work. In the hangover of the pandemic, these skills are even more essential for managing our new insular and disconnected worlds, for effectively handling stress, pressure, and uncertainty. But of course, as the future comes racing at us it is our 'inner game' that will act as both our anchor and our compass. We just need to strengthen it through practice, insight and action. The challenge is, that many leaders don't know how to help their teams do this. Beyond the mandatory resilience training and the well-being webinars. Well, we have an interesting alternative for you here.