Did Getting COVID Help Me Prevent Burnout?

I recently woke up and immediately felt that something was off. My breathing felt labored. My body ached. Sounds and lights hurt my brain. A fever was on the rise. Even before my taste and smell disappeared, I instinctively already knew — I had COVID. ??

So for days, I lay in bed and rested, as most people would do when they get sick. Rest lets us devote more of our energy and resources toward fighting our illness so we can bounce back quickly. Not resting, on the other hand, can cause burnout and exacerbate symptoms.?

Before the pandemic, people were already on the brink of burnout, but organizations were doing little to implement solutions. Then COVID hit, and even more people were burning out. Company leaders started paying more attention to the rising risks of burnout for business and began implementing changes.?

It shouldn’t take a global pandemic for leaders to understand the importance of keeping everyone on our team healthy – and it shouldn’t take getting sick for us to take a break.?

Burnout is Bad for Business

Workplace burnout is at an all-time high across professions. It can start as energy depletion and exhaustion and end with destructive attitudes towards a company. Burnout drives down productivity, hurts employee retention, and eventually cuts at the company's bottom line.

But burnout can also be deadly. A 2021 World Health Organization and International Labor Organization study linked working long hours with “745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016, a 29% increase since 2000.” Now, with so many more people working longer hours, the WHO Director-General highlighted the increased risk of premature death with burnout we may see from COVID “blurring the boundaries between home and work.”

It Took a Pandemic for Us To Realize

Burnout was already a risk before COVID, but fewer people were addressing it. In a 2018 Deloitte survey, 77 percent of respondents reported experiencing burnout, but “nearly 70 percent [felt] their employers are not doing enough to prevent or alleviate burnout within their organization.”

When COVID accelerated rates of workplace burnout, more companies saw the urgency. They started looking for new ways to prioritize employee well-being: more paid time off, flexible work schedules, or after-school tutoring and childcare services.

In 2022, Deloitte's survey on younger professionals found that half of respondents felt their employers had made well-being a higher workplace priority since the start of the pandemic. But reviews about the resulting success have been mixed. Many cited burnout as one of the top reasons why they left their jobs in the past two years.

We Have a Long Way To Go

To stay ahead of burnout, we need to prioritize rest alongside high productivity. In response to the pandemic, strategic design firm, Smart Design, began a policy of midday mental breaks for employees. Mozilla implemented time off for “Wellness Week” leading into the Fourth of July weekend and a “Wellness Day” once a month for the rest of the year.?

As we move ahead post-COVID, employers should continue to pay attention: Invite employees to express their evolving needs and respond with flexibility. We also need to lead by example. COVID forced me to take a week off. I was sick and all I could do was rest to recover, but I felt that added value to my mind and body. After a week of recovery, I returned to work more fired up than ever to kill it with my team. By letting everyone rest, everyone benefits.

--

Tom Popomaronis is Executive Vice President of Innovation at Massive Alliance, a global executive branding agency. Tom co-founded Massive's Executive Leadership Branding program – which transforms world-class executives into contributing authors at leading publications.

Interested in expanding your own thought leadership footprint? Apply to contribute to Strixus – an exclusive community of visionary leaders.