Employee exhaustion is a real and unsustainable threat

By Jasmin Pillay – HR Director, Microsoft South Africa

When Microsoft recently published its annual Work Trend Index: “The Next Great Disruption is Hybrid Work – Are We Ready?”, it made for fascinating reading. As an HR professional it also gave me pause for thought about how we reframe our expectations for our employees, and also how we should consider the ongoing support of our workforce as a new ‘shape’ of work forms.

Two findings really stood out for me. The first is that flexible, or hybrid, work is here to stay – but we cannot regard this as business as usual. The move to hybrid work will require us to rethink longstanding assumptions about our workplaces. Employees want extreme flexibility, and they expect companies to provide options of when, where and how they work. Enabling flexible work will impact everything from culture and innovation to how we attract and retain top talent.

The second finding that really resonated with me as an HR practitioner, and as a person, is that high productivity is masking an exhausted workforce. The report noted that while self-assessed productivity has remained the same or higher for many employees over the past year, it has come at a real human cost. Nearly one in five global survey respondents say their employer does not care about their work-life balance. Fifty-four percent feel overworked. Thirty-nine percent feel exhausted. Those are sobering numbers.

According to Dr. Mary Donohue, Founder of The Digital Wellness Center, the exhaustion we are feeling can be blamed on the speed and urgency of virtual work. In-person conversations give our brains a chance to assess things like tone, social cues, and body language to make meaning. But technology can create digital static: “the gap between what you try to communicate online and what the person receiving the message understands.” And as that digital static increases, so does employee fatigue, anxiety, and burnout rates — while motivation and engagement decline.

The 2021 Annual Work Trend Index found that the digital intensity of workers’ days has increased substantially, with the average number of meeting and chats steadily increasing since last year. Time spent in Microsoft Teams meetings globally has more than doubled and, aside from a holiday dip in December, continues to climb. The average meeting is 10 minutes longer, increasing from 35 to 45 minutes.

Microsoft undertook a study of brain wave activity that confirmed what many employees will tell you anecdotally – back-to-back virtual meetings are stressful. But the research also points to a simple remedy – short breaks. The research showed that breaks between meetings allow the brain to ‘reset’, and it also found that your brain works differently when you take breaks. Taking time out between virtual meetings – even as little as five minutes – prevents cumulative stress from building up.

The counterpoint to this is that back-to-back meetings can decrease an employee’s ability to focus and engage with the meeting content. So, although it may feel more productive to power through meetings, on the contrary, scheduling breaks is not only good for wellbeing, but also improves participants’ performance in those meetings and should be regarded as an essential part of the workday.

The research also found that what employees do in those breaks also plays a part in minimising stress. Mediation is one effective way to recharge between meetings, but a physical act such as walking is also helpful, and even something as simple as doodling can offer benefits. Anything that takes employees away from work-related tasks can help them start their next meeting feeling refreshed and recharged. The takeaway from this research is that breaks, even short ones, are important to make the transition between meetings feel less stressful.

While we can – and must – continue to emphasise the importance of self-care and holistic employee wellness, it is reassuring to know that something that is relatively simple to implement can help to reduce stress. In fact, Microsoft is introducing a feature on Outlook that allows the automatic adjustment of meeting lengths to allow for breaks between meetings. I will be interested to see how this new function is adopted, not only at Microsoft, but across other organisations and industries, and whether this results in a tangible long-term improvement in stress levels for. Now is the time for organisations to re-evaluate meeting norms and to make changes that make the shift to hybrid work sustainable for everyone.