How to Avoid the Next Waves of Burnout and Resignations

Ready for the new wave of burnout effects?

Ready for the “Even Greater Resignation” or "Great Resignation 2.0" or whatever else "catchy" title the papers will give it?

No, no one is, but they’re both coming. As is a wave of “I deserve better” generalised self-respecting attitude of the workers that refuse to be the next victims of burnout and that take their demands for humanity with if they change jobs. So, it’s not avoidable. That we fundamentally change and normalise the openness towards the human topics. If, in the same breath, we could go a step further and mandate the human work we would ironically probably avoid the brunt of the two big dangers above.

?So yes, if you want to avoid the waves you have to make the Human Work mandatory. You heard right. Not even suggested, possible, supported or elective – mandatory. Not in an "or else" fashion. Just in an "this is not the fluffy end of Friday stuff anymore, this is Monday right after stand-up and every retro/team meeting work, it is that important" way.

Don’t stop there of course, augment it with awareness regarding the “why” and offer tools that will help make it part of their every day so it sticks to make it last and make it become part of the everyday work but make some type of human work, the habit of thinking and caring about emotions and of discussing them a reality by asking that it mandatorily happens. ??

Reason with your people first to justify and clarify the need:

?“Look, we have a lot of this HumanDebt thing. It holds us back big time. We're sorry it happened on our watch. We do apologise for how that affects you. We know you can feel it too. It's heavy, it makes us dread instead of enjoy, makes us sluggish, disengaged and it disallows us from being our best. The guys who have less or none are flying. They make 40% more money, retain 30% more of their people, are 20% more productive and have less safety incidents. Chances are their people are much happier, have joy, flow and no fear. The main thing they do different? They put this stuff first and they put in the work consistently. The self-work and the teamwork. Ahead of the ops and daily work. They put it first. It allows them to be resilient and collaborate and we need both in spades. We won’t be able to make it in this day and age of technology if we don’t do that as well. Can we please try to make it happen? We'll give you time, pay you for this and offer any support and education you may feel the need for. We'll make sure you are genuinely empowered and unencumbered with command and control. Tell us how to better help and empower you and please take on this work for all our sakes.”

Why bother bringing everyone along if it’s mandatory? It is especially if we make the work mandatory that we need to reason and resonate with everyone and have enough buy-in first.?

That is because, if we had managed to instil enough faith in the belief that the powers-that-be want this work, that they mandated it, that they find it necessary to be competitive in the present environment of work, then we will see people make room for it in their days and even demand that whoever is in charge of WIP leaves space for it.

Only then will we see our employees believe it that we want the best for them and that this previously shunned work is now elevated and important which is why we are outsourcing it to the best specialist there are – themselves. They are the only ones able to carry this and able to execute on it in meaningful ways.

Whether the work is individual (self-care) or as a group (team actions or exercises to better the team dynamic) it can not be externally-driven. There can be prompts, facilitation, coaching, support, plays, and so much more but they are all tools to help the team accomplish all this themselves, they aren’t replacing the fact that the work can only happen internally at the team/bubble level.

The awareness-building part is the only part of the human work that is external, that comes from others, that can be accomplished by our usual traditional L&D mechanisms – should we get enough talks, webinars, workshops in, then yes, if they are messaged correctly, they will achieve clarity around the need but that’s the sole component that can be delivered by others. Everything else needs our people on board. Everything else needs them to be ever so hungry for growth and self-improvement and sick of feeling like a small and insignificant cog that is indeed a resource not a human.

Empower them to know they can and should do the work. As an organisation you have to provide them with:

• ?Clarity around the need through science and an expression of boundless support aka “organisational permission”
• An understanding of what the work consists of – what are the individual goals of self-care and how we expect to support employees through accomplishing them and what are the actions that teams can take to modify their behaviours to better align to the habits of high performing teams in particular Psychological Safety;
• ?The space to do this work. This is the bulk of what you need to line up and it consists of two elements: firstly:giving them the tool to hold the space in (such as our Dashboard but others exist) and secondly: the carved out time of their week to do the work;
• ?Trust - No command&control sneaking in to stifle the work and reverse all the autonomy we tried to instil in our teams;
• Zero fear – a climate of extreme openness, inclusivity, experimentation and genuine collaboration with no risk of repercussions;
• Respect and gratitude - include the work in performance reviews and handsomely remunerate people for doing it - for being courageous and consistent enough to do it.

The final goal? Habit formation. Having arrived at a place where the need for working with emotions and behaviours is not questioned by either the enterprise or the employees – resistance zero – all working on their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their team every day in some way and every week collectively.

None of this will materialise without leadership knowing in their hearts of heart that the work they do on culture and people is the biggest and most important piece of work. That the need for getting resilience, empathy, servant leadership and Psychological Safety inside the organisation and fast is imperative as it speaks to both competitiveness and sustainability.

And that can only be clear to leaders who are so intensely emotionally invested that it overrides their fears and makes them fight for their people at risk of life and limb. How many places have them? These Human Work Superheroes that are high enough in the organisational chart, brave enough, action-driven enough and obstinate enough to fight for what’s right and demand the focus to stay on people? That they are in a position where they can instigate and lead change. How common are they??

The answer of course, sadly for us, is that they are rare. Few and far between. Often silenced or made to pay through ruthless politics, these extraordinary leaders will put up a brave fight to repeat the need for the people work ad nausea and they may have been the architects of honest audits of the Human Debt and of initiatives to fix it in places, but all too often, they are the very protagonists of the Great Resignation when the cape fatigue finally gets to them.

That in itself is a type of talent bleed we haven’t even named yet. When you haemorrhage Human Work Superheroes you’re in much more trouble than if you lose Java developers because only one of those two is teachable.

If companies find themselves losing leaders who had previously been seen as mavericks or uncomfortable devil’s advocates and incessant change makers, they should truly worry. How would people with that much courage and heart be replaceable? How would we even look for and select others who will feel the same? We won’t. Truth is, some people are irreplaceable, those are the people who care most.

Without them, what chance do we have to elevate the entire culture to a place of acceptance and execution of the human work?

Come back tomorrow to hear some of our ideas on how to transform your leaders into HumanWork Superheroes and then keep them.

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At?PeopleNotTech?we make?software?that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams, come see a DEMO.

“Nothing other than sustained, habitual, EQed people work at the team level aka “the human work” done BY THE TEAM will improve any organisation’s level of Psychological Safety and therefore drop their levels of HumanDebt?.”

To order the "People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age" book go to this Amazon?link