The Power of Burnout Response in the Workplace

Read Time: 4 Minutes

A big thanks to the People and well-being leaders in this community for their amazing focus on supporting their organizations that have brought this work to life.

It’s a collective effort to realize wellbeing in the workplace, promote mental and emotional health for performance, and end the culture of chronic stress and burnout. #Wellbeing is the new performance?

Join us on LinkedIn June 7, 2023 at 12PM PT / 3PM ET for our next Workplace Wellbeing, Performance, and Recovery Support for People Leaders

Key Highlights:

• Navigating financial anxiety during inflation
• Burnout responsiveness in the workplace

The theme for this week’s community support is burnout responsiveness.

Navigating Financial Anxiety During Inflation

We are navigating financial turbulent times as governments have continued to increase interest rates to curb inflation.

While that might sound like a macroeconomic tactic, its effects have been clear for businesses and employees.

At the individual level, this means the interest on large ticket items like mortgages, car loans, and existing consumer debt has silently taken more out of our monthly income.

Just like the loss of freedom and flexibility in the workplace is a cause of burnout, it can also relate to our financial situation.? This is especially true when salary doesn’t grow in proportion to expenses and leads us to a sense of helplessness.

Pay attention that those who are already being financially squeezed with increasing tension can turn anxiety into a chronic stress condition.

From a mental and emotional lens, processing fear and worst-case scenario thinking will be important to free up resources to help maneuver each individual situation.? The ultimate resource is resourcefulness.

As a business, resourcefulness also applies. Layoffs have been the short-term easy way out, but it compounds stress on your People with negative ripple effects.??

Instead, consider optimizing out inefficiencies that spend energy and resources by going more granular on your expenses and workflows.

• Can you cancel unused products/services?
• Can you automate or delegate to reduce costs?
• Can you delay payments?
• Can you utilize unused capacity?

Burnout Responsiveness in the Workplace

Being responsive means having the ability to systematically identify the current situation and apply a targeted measure and improve the situation with consistent and measured outcomes.

When we can’t identify and apply the correct interventions, that’s called being reactive, which by nature puts us into a fight and flight stress response and “hoping for the best”

Performing an energy audit is a good place to start when uncovering the net energy from underlying habits.

This protocol can be found here.

From a mental health perspective, addressing burnout operates along a spectrum.

1. Prevention, i.e. avoiding burnout, are strategies that help improve the baseline wellbeing of an individual.??

As a baseline means we’re feeling happy, engaged, physically healthy, well rested, and effectively self-regulating - even under stress. We might call this thriving.?

These strategies are primarily focused on growth and optimizing habits to maintain, enrich and amplify our available mental and emotional capacity, which can include:

self-care, developing resilience, values alignment, sleep optimization, increasing nutrient density, breathwork, building core strength, and flexibility?

2. Recovery are strategies for returning to mental and emotional self-regulation

Once we begin to exhibit symptoms of burnout like anxiety, fatigue and exhaustion, panic, hyper-vigilance, loss of passion and performance efficacy, disengagement, depression?

The goal is to begin stopping the habits that chronically drain our energy causing stress on the mind-body.

At the root cause, these could be compulsive thought patterns and beliefs, unprocessed suppressed emotions, and unresolved inner conflicts?

Depending on the severity of the symptoms and circumstances, we approach recovery in the areas of crisis management, relief, and systematic recovery

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. If you're still looking for personal recovery and support for your well-being, I'd recommend starting with this affordable course that's helped hundreds of people and their organizations, here.

2. If you’re struggling with a crisis of burnout and looking for an effective way to recover quickly, consider a life-transforming Burnout Retreat for your next vacation, here.

3. Build out Workplace Burnout Responsiveness and Recovery in your organization by booking a strategy call with me, here.