Vaccinated Workers Unprotected From Burnout

3 ways employers, HR professionals and managers can address mental health in the workplace

Employers recognize that their employees have been put through the wringer during the past 16 months. They also understand that people are their most important resource. As employers start bringing people back to brick and mortar offices after more than a year of isolation, one challenge is top of mind – employee mental health.

While many employees have been inoculated against Covid-19, they are not protected from exhaustion, burnout and the additional stress of returning to the office. The physical and mental ramifications of the pandemic may persist but they can be addressed with the skills of resilience, which helps people manage stress, bounce back from adversity, move forward and thrive.

The past year and a half of rapid and disruptive change put immense stress on the global workforce. As we all turn our attention to what steps to take to ensure the mental health of our workers, it is increasingly clear that people and organizations must develop resilience in order to withstand unpredictable threats and emerge stronger.

meQuilibrium has assessed the resilience and tracked the progress of more than 500,000 individuals around the world, amassing 50billion data points. This customer data consistently shows that businesses with the most resilient employees outperform the market. Among meQuilibrium’s largest publicly traded customers, companies with the highest resilience scores at baseline outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Index by 116% over a 24 month period.

By June 2020, meQuilibrium data showed our members reporting 34% increased work stress and a 9% increase in burnout, which increased another 52% by December. Our data also found that women and workers under 40 have been the hardest hit, impacting motivation, focus, sleep. Women suffered a 10X greater increase in stress than men.
It is projected that twenty percent of workers will suffer from PTSD due to the trauma of the pandemic. The question is no longer why or whether we need to be resilient, but how to build resilience in the workplace.

Resilience is like a muscle, it can be strengthened with exercise. And the payoff is that those with high resilience are less likely to suffer burnout from increased work stress and anxiety and less likely to quit their job.

Every employer, HR professional and manager today is concerned about two trends -- overload and transformation -- both contributors to the workplace mental health problems. We must focus on helping people gain the skills to recognize and address the symptoms of burnout and other mental health issues - practically, proactively and preventively.   
Three ways employers, HR professionals and managers can address mental health in the workplace include:
 

• Instill resilience in people and organizations as it is an effective first line of defense.
• Provide managers with the insights and know-how to address fear, uncertainty, overload and burnout among their teams.
• Make mental health support tools practical, accessible, engaging, and asynchronous.

To succeed in an environment of rapid change and disruption, organizations and their employees need to achieve a new level of resilience. It’s no longer simply how well a person can perform in a structured, familiar situation, but how people react and adapt to new challenges and circumstances. These are the critical skills of the workforce of today and tomorrow.