Burnout is nothing new to working professionals. Constant anxiety and tension can make fighting burnout and achieving a work-life balance challenging, and leaving it unchecked only makes negative feelings snowball. Effective workforce management strategies play a crucial role in addressing burnout, as they help distribute workload efficiently and promote a healthier work environment.
In this article, we’ll shed some light on the symptoms, causes and consequences of burnout, and offer tips to help you achieve a healthier, less-stressed workstyle.
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Types of Burnout
You might have a basic sense of what burnout is — the feelings of exhaustion, lack of engagement, loss in productivity — but the way it manifests can vary. Burnout typically happens in three different ways:
1. Overload
This type of burnout is caused by stress resulting from having an excessive workload, working long hours without sufficient breaks or dealing with unrealistic job expectations. It’s a chronic feeling of being overwhelmed, accompanied by a lack of motivation, difficulty concentrating and decreased productivity.
2. Under-Challenge
This refers to when employees experience burnout from a lack of stimulation or meaningful engagement. When they consistently deal with tasks that are below their competencies and skill levels, they lose a sense of purpose and become bored at work.
3. Neglect
This results from a lack of guidance in the workplace. When employees don’t have a sense of direction or structure for how to do their jobs, they may feel helpless and frustrated. They struggle to actively meet demands and follow processes, leading them to ignore or miss tasks and perform poorly.
Symptoms
Job burnout can have a detrimental effect on both your physical and mental well-being. Consider how to notice if you have burnout and what you can do to address it.
Ask yourself:
- Have you developed a pessimistic or skeptical approach to your work?
- Do you push yourself hard to work and struggle to begin?
- Have your workmates, clients or consumers become agitated around you or anxious about your performance?
- Do you feel mentally and physically exhausted by the thought of starting a task?
- Do you find it difficult to be consistently resourceful?
- Do you have trouble concentrating?
- Do you feel unsatisfied with your accomplishments?
- Do you have difficulty engaging in social activities?
- Have you noticed a decline in your productivity levels?
- Do you have a negative attitude toward your job?
- Do you use food, drugs or intoxicants to feel a little better or merely to avoid feeling?
- Have your sleeping habits altered?
- Do you suffer from unspecified headaches, cognitive difficulties, brain fog, bowel or gastrointestinal issues, or other physical issues?
If your response is yes to any of the following questions, you may suffer from job burnout. Same for your employees. Consider consulting a physician or a mental health professional because these signs can be associated with medical illnesses such as depression. Recommend resources to your employees so they can seek guidance if they’re facing any of the aforementioned indicators.
Possible Causes
A variety of factors cause job burnout, both at the workplace and outside of it. Working to minimize causes can lead to a more productive staff and improved output. But you need to know what causes burnout to address it.
Based on a Gallup report, 59% of employees are not engaged at work. This has consequences that expand way beyond your workplace’s productivity — it also costs the global economy $8.8 trillion, which accounts for 9% of the global GDP.
Excessive workload, lack of control and support, and insufficient training are among the contributing factors of negative stress at work. Mitigating these factors promotes employee well-being, which is now among the top HR priorities.
Let’s look at some causes of burnout and how you can address them effectively.
Lack of Control
Inability to control job-related decision-making, such as your routine, assignments or work pressure, may result in burnout. A scarcity of resources to complete your tasks could also be an issue.
Providing employees with autonomy whenever and wherever possible gives them a greater sense of control over their daily work lives. Increasing individuals’ control can help reduce burnout.
Ambiguous Job Expectations
You are unlikely to enjoy yourself at work if you are unsure of your power level or what your manager or others desire from you. As a manager, you must ensure that your employees have clarity about their roles and responsibilities.
Toxic Workplace Dynamics
Perhaps your employees perform with a workplace bully, feel intimidated by coworkers, or deal with managers micromanaging their tasks. All of this can exacerbate job stress and cause burnout.
Dispelling toxic behavior in the workplace goes a long way in reducing burnout for employees.
Extremes of Activities
When someone works in a dull or chaotic environment, the person needs consistent energy to remain focused, leading to fatigue and burnout.
It would be best to make things interesting for your employees and motivate them constantly. Providing your employees with a healthy work environment can make a lot of difference.
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Inadequate Social Support
We’re social animals. If your employees don’t engage with each other frequently, they’re likely to feel disconnected – not only from the office environment, but also from their work. Alienation can trigger feelings of distrust and hesitation, and eventual burnout due to social isolation.
Creating social events for employees, like team-building exercises, office parties, festival celebrations and other informal gatherings, helps build a close-knit community at the workplace.
If they’re working in a remote or hybrid setting, you can host online group activities like book clubs, chat rooms and online games through video conferencing tools to boost employee morale and build stronger relationships.
Unnecessary Work-Life Conflict
In a Future Forum report, executives reported a 20% decline in their work-life balance and 40% more work-related stress and anxiety in 2022. Employees may burn out faster if their work consumes a significant portion of their time and energy and they don’t have the fuel to connect with friends and family – leading to a work-life conflict. You need to give employees space and time to balance their work-life and regularly interact with family and friends.
Pessimistic Thinking
In David Miller’s words, “Thoughts are the most effective weapon in the human arsenal.”
Cynicism as a consequence of a stressful work environment can quickly lead to mental exhaustion, resulting in burnout. When employees don’t have the mind space to cultivate healthy thought processes, they fail to bring innovative ideas to the table and perform well at their jobs.
You can invite staff members to participate in team-building activities, provide informal mentorship and give constructive feedback to create a positive office culture. It helps keep employees motivated, engaged and driven to build a favorable environment for positive and creative thinking.
Risk Factors
The following aspects are potential risks of eventual job burnout among your employees:
- They have a lot of work to do, but not enough time, resulting in frequent overtime at the office.
- They have difficulty balancing their personal and professional lives.
- They work in a field that is mentally exhausting and perceive themselves to have little control over their profession.
Consequences
Dismissing or ignoring burnout can have serious direct and indirect repercussions in terms of mental and physical well-being, including:
- Excessive anxiety
- Fatigue
- Irritability
- Lack of sleep or insomnia
- Pessimistic thinking
- Sadness, frustration, anger or irritation
- Alcohol or substance abuse
- Cardiovascular disease
- High blood pressure
- Diabetes
- Illness susceptibility
Fighting Burnout
Think about your options with an open mind. Try not to let a stressful or unsatisfying job affect your employees’ mental or physical health. Some of the tips mentioned below are things you can implement yourself to nurture a healthier and happier workforce, while others you can simply educate your employees on.
The right strategies can help in handling job burnout. Make an effort to act. To begin, follow these steps:
Encourage Strategic Thinking
The first step to addressing a problem is recognizing it. Encourage employees to take time to process and understand how they’re feeling mentally and physically, and how it’s impacting their work-life balance. You can do this by providing them occasional time off, reducing workload or providing professional counseling sessions.
Evaluate Options
Discuss specific issues with your employees, especially those they bring to your attention. Perhaps you can suggest collaborations to change perceptions, reach a middle ground or find solutions. Set clear targets for what needs to be done and what can wait.
Provide Assistance
Support and close cooperation may help your employees deal with job burnout better. If you don’t work with confidential or sensitive data, suggest they reach out to workmates, friends and dear ones to discuss stress factors. Provide assistance programs whenever possible so employees have resources they can leverage whenever needed.
Implement Stress-Relieving Activities
Encourage self-care activities such as yoga, journaling, games, meditation or workouts to rejuvenate your employees’ mental and physical well-being. Regular exercise is a healthy distraction from excess work pressure and can assist your workers in coping with stress better.
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Practice Relaxation
Relaxation often appears to be something we can’t always accommodate into our hectic schedules. In reality, incorporating relaxation into your daily life can be one of the best things you can do to fight burnout.
Reducing after-hours work and implementing guided relaxation techniques or unguided relaxation time in your workforce can pay off in the end. Reducing employee stress can lead to improved work outcomes and lower burnout-induced turnover rates.
A few benefits of relaxation are listed below:
- Reduced heart and breathing rate
- Lower blood pressure levels and increased blood flow
- Reduced anxiety, stress, insomnia and depression
- Relaxed muscles
- Improved pain relief
- Increased energy and improved sleep cycles
- Increased sense of peace and assurance
- Enhanced stress management
Get Some Rest
Good sleep improves healing and promotes health and well-being.
While you can’t dictate how much sleep your employees get or personal life factors that impact their sleep schedules, you can educate them on the importance of getting a full night of sleep. Another way of making sure they’re well rested is encouraging them to go offline after office hours. It helps them recharge and destress without having to juggle work and personal life.
Promote Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the process of concentrating on your actions and being cognisant of what you’re perceiving and feeling in each moment, without interpretation or judgment. This practice entails approaching situations with inclusivity, patience and determination in the workplace.
This can be a two-pronged approach. You can practice mindfulness in your daily life while encouraging your employees to do the same.
Take Advantage of Workforce Automation
Workforce automation is a simple method of reducing burnout by streamlining time-consuming tasks. As a result, many companies resort to workforce management software to optimize their workflows and free up skilled employees for other jobs.
Plan Strategies Effectively
Good planning is the key to running a successful business. You must know where you want to take yourself and your company, your targets, and how you intend to achieve them. This entails developing a strategy for all aspects of your company.
Upgrade your company’s human resource mechanisms or incorporate robust workforce management software to ensure better workforce planning.
Wrapping Up
People who cannot figure out how to deal with work pressure are at a high risk of burnout. Burnout can leave individuals tired, lonely and powerless to cope with life’s requirements.
Fighting burnout is ultimately a joint effort between employees and employers. While it requires conscious effort in and out of the workplace, workforce management solutions can help.
If you’re looking to implement a new platform to help fight burnout or simply manage your workforce better, check out our workforce management requirements template to determine your needs. Once your requirements are set, you can start shortlisting vendors using our free comparison report.
What steps do you take to fight burnout for yourself or your employees? Let us know in the comments below!