Employee burnout is a critical problem faced by almost all companies. Employee burnout is not irreversible, nor is it inevitable. Employee burnout can be identified by these key signals: a lack of attention to details, avoiding or skipping meetings uncharacteristically, an upward trend of absenteeism and irritability at colleagues or customers, and an unwillingness to cooperate. Progress can be slow and eventually stalled when a company faces employee burnout. Asking the employees to achieve more with fewer resources can take its toll most of the time, and eventually reflect on the business. In most cases the employees that are prone to burnout turns out to be the best workers, and become invaluable to the company. These committed employees put in extra effort and time to make sure they get the job done and push on further. They are the most reliable in the company; however, they also run the risk of burning out.
A few ways to combat Employee Burnout are:
Acknowledging and communicating: When the company needs its employees to work longer and harder to get the job done, they are most likely to burn out. Acknowledging the signs of burnout instead of ignoring them can be fruitful. The next step is to let the employee know that the company understands their stress; this can effectively increase the morale in the workforce.
Creating a balance: It’s ideal for employees to have varied tasks, which are balanced properly between those that have more flexibility and less pressure with those that are urgent and stressful.
Providing training: To ensure higher productivity it is necessary to provide training to those employees who are unfamiliar with a new process or excess workload. Relegating employees to a single task is one of the ways to accelerate burnout, to prevent this, the workers should be given a diversity of duties, and this takes their minds off unnecessary pressure.
Excusing non-essential employees from critical meetings: Cancelling any non-critical meetings and not involving non-essential workers in critical meetings can save their time and prevent them from losing their concentration instead of diverting their attention to the meetings, a quick update to summarize the changes or updates should be considered.
Promoting the morale: An often undervalued and overlooked aspect is the morale of the staff when they are under excessive workload. Look for ways to add elements of fun and entertainment to the workplace, an impromptu break often adds a lot to their morale and urges them to push forward.
Strategic hiring. Productivity can often increase with hiring of new employees. It creates a better competition and fresh ideas can help motivate the entire workforce as well.
Extending deadlines and Encouraging breaks: Having a little break is always refreshing for the employees, an extension of the deadline can ease up their pressure and help them increase their productivity, it also gives them the time to focus and improve on the quality of their work
Managers should always look out for ways to make sure employees are not underutilized. It is important to help these employees integrate in the system and help ease pressure from other employees, these employees could be the key for critical roles through any future reorganization. It is important to connect with employees and assess their potential for new opportunities throughout the organization.
