Employee Burnout: Yet another issue amidst Pandemic

There still exist the typical ‘Seth’ owned small, medium and large organisations in this part of the world who would ensure to take out 200% out of the employees against the remuneration paid, working 6-7 days a week with long hours and what not, regardless of pandemic or otherwise. They seem least bothered about the catchy terms viz.:  employee engagement and burnout. 

During the next few minutes, let’s try to analyse and understand what causes employee burnout and what remedial measures organisational leaders can adopt the fix the situation. 

Work pressures have been and will be there in any business organisation. Some fall in trap of working long hours, even in WFH regime, taking extra pressure, getting stressed. If constant stress that makes your employees feel helpless, disillusioned, and completely exhausted, they may be on the road to burnout. Learn what you can do to help the, regain their balance and feel positive and hopeful again. Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when employees feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands. As the stress continues, they begin to lose interest and motivation that led them to take on a certain role in the first place.

As employers and leaders, let's remember that burnout reduces productivity and saps employees’ energy, leaving them feeling increasingly helpless, hopeless, cynical, and resentful. Eventually, they may feel like you have nothing more to give.

The negative effects of burnout spill over into every area of life—including your home, work, and social life. Burnout can also cause long-term changes to your body that make you vulnerable to illnesses like colds and flu. Because of its many consequences, it’s important to deal with burnout right away.

Employee burnout hurts the business

For employers, employee burnout means decreased productivity, high turnover and increased healthcare costs. For the affected employee, burnout can cause numerous health issues, including heart disease and gastrointestinal problems as well as poor mental health.

Employee burnout is bad for both the businesses and the employees, because it can affect every aspect of your organization. According to When I Work, burnout results in lost productivity, high turnover and $125 to $190 billion per year in healthcare costs, all of which can have serious negative effects on your business's bottom line. According to a Harvard Business School study, work-related stress contributes to over 120,000 American deaths per year. Related article: Workplace Burnout Now a Syndrome.

Stress and Burnout are not the same

Burnout may be the result of unrelenting stress, but it isn’t the same as too much stress. Stress, by and large, involves too many pressures that demand too much of you physically and mentally. However, stressed people can still imagine that if they can just get everything under control, they’ll feel better.

Burnout, on the other hand, is about not enough. Being burned out means feeling empty and mentally exhausted, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. People experiencing burnout often don’t see any hope of positive change in their situations. If excessive stress feels like you’re drowning in responsibilities, burnout is a sense of being all dried up. And while you’re usually aware of being under a lot of stress, you don’t always notice burnout.

Causes of employee burnout

Burnout often stems from your job. But anyone who feels overworked and undervalued is at risk for burnout, from the hardworking office worker who hasn’t had a vacation in years, to the frazzled stay-at-home mom tending to kids, housework, and an aging parent.

But burnout is not caused solely by stressful work or too many responsibilities. Other factors contribute to burnout, including your lifestyle and personality traits. In fact, what you do in your downtime and how you look at the world can play just as big of a role in causing overwhelming stress as work or home demands.

There could be several contributing factors of employee burnout, a Gallup study identified the five main causes of employee burnout:

• Unfair treatment
• Unmanageable workload
• Lack of role clarity 
• Unreasonable time pressure 

The ‘3R’ approach 

Now is the time to pause and change direction by learning how you can help yourself overcome burnout and feel healthy and positive again.

Recognize: Watch for the warning signs of burnout.

Reverse: Undo the damage by seeking support and managing stress.

Resilience: Build your resilience to stress by taking care of your physical and emotional health.

How to help employees come out of burn out regime? 

As a leader in your company, you must be able to recognise the signs and have a plan in place to help and support employees who may be experiencing burnout. The following remedies for preventing or dealing with burnout can help you cope with symptoms and regain your energy, focus, and sense of well-being.

1. Take mental health seriously

There has been a rise in mental health awareness and discussion of its effects on the workplace, which means many employees are feeling more comfortable talking about these issues at work. These are some ways you can make mental health a priority in your workplace:

• Take frequent anonymous surveys, asking employees to rate their mental health as it relates to work.
• Educate yourself and your employees on mental health issues and how to spot them.
• Keep any conversations about an employee's mental health private and confidential.

2. Show your employees you value them

A major cause of burnout is employees feeling undervalued and unappreciated, so sometimes you need to go the extra mile to show appreciation. You can offer small things like gift cards or a free lunch as a reward at the end of a difficult project, bonus paid time off, extra break time, or acknowledgments of an employee's hard work to others in the company as a sign of your appreciation.

2. Do't glorify the hunter 

Tell yourself very clearly that your employees are grown up professionals and they don’t need to be pushed again and again for any reason whatsoever. Many employees experiencing workplace burnout struggle to come to terms with it themselves, let alone tell their manager. This is an issue when all a manager sees is a previously high-performing employee suddenly being unproductive and negative. Without context, the manager might then take punitive measures, like a performance improvement plan, or lecture the employee, which only exacerbates the burnout.

Before you resort to punishment, ask yourself a couple questions:

• Is this a typical behaviour for this employee?
• Have their workload or expectations changed?

3. Be sensitive to employees welfare

While this may seem obvious, it can be easy to forget your employees have lives outside of work, and sometimes personal obligations overshadow those at work. As a manager, you should do your best to know what is going on in your employees' home lives so you can adjust their workload if needed, and have a basis of understanding if something personal comes up that impacts their work.

4. Workplace culture matters the most 

You can support burnt-out employees by taking mental health seriously, showing employees you value them and keeping tabs on your workplace culture. Part of your job as a manager is to stay abreast of your company culture and how your employees interact with each other. Workplace culture can play a huge role in burnout, so you should be aware of any conflicts, workload changes and the general morale. 

Key Takeaways

• Burnout is when employees are in a state of extreme emotional, mental and physical exhaustion.
• The three main areas of burnout are physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism and detachment, and feelings of ineffectiveness or lack of accomplishment.
• To support burnt-out employees, managers must take mental health seriously, show staff they are valued, and stay up to date on workplace culture.

Learn how sometimes smaller things in our lives make huge impact and you can take some learnings on a personal and professional level by following me on LinkedIn and on our official website. Also follow us on social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Muhammad Sajwani is the Founder, Managing Director and Principal Consultant at Evolve HR which aims at transforming, enriching and evolving Human Capital of Pakistan. At Evolve HR, him and his team thrives in challenging assumptions that hinder organisational aspirations, by creating innovative solutions that yield maximum impact, scalability & benefit to a wider base of stakeholders. As a Business Coach and Organisational Consultant, Sajwani knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.