The State Of Burnout ??

Burnout is hard to spot since it's often confused with anxiety and stress. Because of this, EMOTAI in 2022 decided to give access to a FREE Burnout Test on our website where over 200 people tested if they were at risk of burnout and what were the main causes.

In addition, we also asked people if they were working remotely, hybrid, or from home. During the pandemic, many reports stated that working remotely was driving the increase in burnout. Now that the pandemic has subsided, does working remotely increase the risk of burnout? (Find out in our FREE State Of Burnout).

If burnout is a concern for you or your company, continue reading to learn more about its symptoms and how to prevent it:

What is Burnout?

Burnout is a state of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion caused by prolonged and excessive stress. It can result from both personal and professional experiences.

According to?WHO, when burnout is left untreated, it can lead to serious physical and psychological illnesses such as depression, heart disease, and diabetes.

Burnout and the pandemic

The pandemic has increased remote work, which many thought exacerbated the impact of burnout on individuals. However, the pandemic subsided, people are hanging out with their friends, they have child care and the world just seems to be less bad… Rates of burnout were supposed to get lower right? It hasn’t and it keeps getting worse… Compared to 2019, Glassdoor data shows mentions of burnout are up over 40 percent in 2022.

Workloads are still too high and employers don’t know how to help their employees. Apart from having a very negative effect on an employee's personal and work life, burnout can also have a detrimental effect on the employer. When people are burned out, they're less productive, more likely to quit, and less likely to be engaged in their work.

How to spot burnout in your employees?

Typically work burnout manifests itself in 3 main ways: physical and emotional impairment, mental distance, and exhaustion (find out which one is the most common one in our State of Burnout 2022 Report). Here are a few indicators:

1. Your employee starts acting distant like showing up late to meetings or not responding to messages;
2. Your employee’s work quality starts decreasing. This might not happen because a person loses competency… but because their perception of a task gets so negative, that they need to spend more energy and time to do the same quality of work as before.
3. Your employee is exhibiting negative behavioral changes. They might seem more cynical, and irritable than usual or they might lash out at colleagues or managers.

How to prevent burnout in your company?

According to Gallup, the main steps to prevent burnout in the workplace are to have positive experiences for your employees, provide stress-reducing resources, communicate and set goals effectively and create an open culture where everyone feels like they are working towards the same goal.

However, different types of burnout will require different actions. If the main type of burnout in your company is exhaustion, this may come from an excessive workload or long working hours. Would you like to know what is the main cause of burnout in your company? Request our free anonymous burnout test for organizations here.

Different types of burnout will also happen more frequently depending the employee is working remotely or not (learn more in our State of Burnout Report).

Remember, everyone, experiences burnout differently. From detecting the symptoms to providing tools to help your employees, it’s important to always assess case-by-case.

EMOTAI Team.