Employee Burnout: 3 Tell-Tale Signs

Self-care is one of the burnout’s most powerful antidotes

Human resources, this is your time. While other professionals may struggle to find meaning and purpose, your purpose has never been more urgent, pervasive, or sharply defined. Your purpose is to eradicate employee burnout. 

Does anyone doubt that burnout poses serious, global threats? 

Even before the World Health Organization (WHO) first classified burnout as an occupational phenomenon in 2019, the financial and human toll of burnout were staggering—yet somehow still accepted. 

A few sample statistics:
 

• According to a 2017 article in Harvard Business Review, the annual healthcare costs of burnout in the United States alone ranged from $125 billion to $190 billion. 
• A 2018 Gallup study found that more than one out of five workers (23%) reported feeling burned out at work very often or always. 
• According to this same study, burned-out employees were 63% more likely to call in sick, 23% more likely to visit the emergency room, and 2.6 times as likely to leave their employer. 

Yet if the statistics of burnout were staggering before the scourge of Covid-19, the collective human suffering, lost productivity, and lost potential from burnout must now become intolerable. To be burned out is to be less than fully engaged, less than fully alive.

This is why the world needs HR. Though all of us play a role in eradicating burnout, HR is uniquely positioned to wield the weapons that will defeat burnout; namely:
 

• Education and training of both managers and staff; e.g., exposing the false dichotomy between burnout and productivity
• Giving employees more autonomy and flexibility, which allows them to bring more creativity and commitment to their work
• Policies that prevent burnout (mandatory planned time off, anyone?)
• A seismic shift in organizational culture so that burnout is no longer permissible, let alone encouraged, celebrated or required
• An example of self-care worth following

That last one. It doesn’t require perfection, but it does require wholehearted effort. Self-care is one of the burnout’s most powerful antidotes. Most people underestimate how much they need it. 

Modeling a life free of burnout can add strength and credibility to all your other organizational efforts. Just as stress is contagious, so are the habits that combat stress.

This is how a friend of mine, a full-time teacher at a children’s hospital, summed it up when she was waiting to be called back to work:  

“I'll be realistic about my contribution. I'm guilty of pouring so much into my work, loving what I have the privilege of doing, but developing a false sense that only I can do the job and without my contribution; the office/department/institution would collapse. The reality is that no matter how outstanding my work is, a business can and will go on without me. I'll continue to give my best, but I'll do so with an extra measure of humility.”

How much burnout could be avoided, how much human suffering relieved—not only for ourselves but those we serve and work with—if companies encouraged all employees to give their best while staying realistic about their contribution.

Three Classic Signs of Employee Burnout 

When you see these signs of employee burnout, resist the tendency to simply chalk them up to Covid-19, or worse, minimize them. Yes, these symptoms are normal—but we must not let them become standard operating practices.

1. Fatigue

According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, about one in five adults fails to get sufficient sleep (approximately seven to eight hours per night). Here’s a helpful diagram that shows how lack of sleep affects our bodies. 

Does your organizational culture encourage employees to make time for proper rest? To unplug from work at a certain time each day? Or, for example, are employees expected to send and respond to emails at all hours? (This, by the way, is a recipe for burnout.)

If you want to boost morale and productivity, start by becoming an advocate for your employees’ physical well-being. And if you want to improve employees’ physical well-being dramatically, become an advocate for their getting sufficient sleep. 

2. Apathy

When you sense that employees no longer care about their jobs, their colleagues, or the quality of their work, you can bet that burnout has already taken root. Apathy may be employees’ best attempt to protect themselves from further pain or disappointment. 

What apathetic employees need is not “attitude” training but a chance to be heard. What’s driving the apathy? Often it comes from one or more of these patterns in the workplace: 
 

• Lack of clear expectations 
• Work overload (especially of high performers)
• Lack of communication and support from managers (for a humorous look at managerial lack of support, watch “Manager Coach” [Season 2, Episode 8 of Cheers], when Coach manages a Little League team)
• Collaboration on steroids; i.e., endless meetings and conference calls, when fewer would not only suffice but allow more work to get done and morale to increase

Include your employees in the decisions that affect them. For example, encourage managers to cut back on meetings wherever possible, and solicit staff ideas for how best to do so. 

People are hungry to contribute and be heard. They also buy into what they help create—all the more reason to give employees a voice, even when you can’t or choose not to give them a vote. 

3. Anger/Sadness

One of my grad school professors said something in class one day I’ll always remember; namely, that anger is culturally prescribed for men, and sadness is culturally prescribed for women. 

Simply put, some men express sadness as anger, and some women express anger as sadness. A pattern of either emotion among your employees (or even one employee) could signal burnout. Better to intervene while the problem is comparatively small. 

Meet angry or frustrated employees with compassion and respect, and you will soften defenses, strengthen collaboration, and open up new ways of dealing with the problem.

Conclusion

There’s no vaccine for burnout—yet that doesn’t mean we have to accept it. On the contrary, it is time to send the message to managers and staff that burnout simply costs too much, in every sense of the word. 

Thankfully, most of the tools to prevent burnout are already in our hands. The question is, will we have the courage and commitment to using them—to make them the new normal, not for a season but for the rest of our lives and future generations. Make it yes.

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