Top Ways HR Leaders Can Help Employees Avoid Burnout

The Great Resignation hasn’t helped burnout

If you haven’t experienced work burnout first-hand, you’ve likely witnessed it with one of your coworkers at some point or another. A complete thief of productivity, energy and well-being, burnout is an emotional, mental, and physical reaction to chronic stress. While not a new issue, the pandemic certainly caused a whole new level of exhaustion and stress among many of today’s workers.
 

What’s worse? Nearly 70% of professionals feel their employers are not doing enough to prevent or alleviate burnout. At a time when companies are already struggling to attract and retain talent, here are four ways business and HR leaders can help reduce burnout and even drive retention.

1. Ensure Workloads are Actually Reasonable

The move to home working during the pandemic became a popular option for many, with some versions of it, like hybrid work, likely staying for the long haul. We’ve also learned that remote workers are spending more time in meetings, managing more emails, using more communication channels, and putting in longer hours than ever before. The ability to pop onto work at any hour on any day can easily lead to starting the workday earlier, ending later, working weekends, and so forth.

Remote employees are also having a harder time separating their work life from their private life. Sure, many digital workers were not strangers to taking work home on busier weeks pre-pandemic, but the physical distinction between work and home - once a place to rest and relax with family - was much more defined.

Employees could mentally check out from work when they left the corporate office, and more easily transition to their personal selves -- and vice versa. So, in addition to actually working longer hours, the mental toll of permanently making our homes the office has without a doubt contributed to increased levels of burnout.

One way to combat this is by making sure employees have manageable workloads that are achievable within reasonable hours each week. Whether the company has employees working fully remote, hybrid, or experimenting with the four-day workweek model, HR managers can do this by:
● During regular check-ins, simply ask how the team member feels about their workload and what tasks or projects require more time than originally expected;
● Leverage productivity tools – not to spy or break trust – but to gauge how much time is truly being spent outside of the standard workday, in meetings, responding to emails, etc. (e.g. Microsoft Viva);
●Engage in open conversations to identify whether the strained bandwidth is due to inefficient processes, poor time management, unclear priorities, or a gap in training/skills;
● Once you have determined an employee’s workload is too heavy, take action – redistribute the work to other team members that are able to absorb, utilize contingent work resources, or readjust your internal workforce plan.
 
Simply knowing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that the current state is not indefinite, will help employees power through unexpected spikes and surges in output demands - without jeopardizing potential burnout and retention.

2. Constantly Monitor Job Satisfaction

Another tried and true contributor to burnout is job satisfaction - or the lack thereof. Even when an employee has a manageable workload, if 80% of their job is draining, they’re going to burnout faster than someone with a higher workload that is enjoyable.

To stay ahead of this, the two questions I default to are:
●    What parts of your job lift you or give you energy?
●    What parts of your job drain your energy?

Framing the questions this way tends to make it easier for employees to articulate if and how they’re satisfied with their jobs. It opens up room for identifying solutions to stay engaged, happy and productive.

Rather than waiting to bring this up during the often dreaded annual performance review, check in with employees at least quarterly. Having regular meetings throughout the year helps keep issues from growing. This is especially important now with a more dispersed workforce, where we can’t as easily have impromptu conversations or observe potential conflicts arising when we were previously walking through the office.

HR leaders and managers need to proactively make the effort to reach out to employees’ satisfaction within their job functions, team, and the company. Continue to reach out over and over and over again. And most importantly, actually follow through with a plan so employees are truly supported and can show up to do their best work.

3. Ask Workers How the Work-Life Integration is Going with Offices Reopening

With more companies adopting hybrid work, this is a great time to see how employees' work-life transition is going as they head back to the office, even if just for a couple of days a week. Consider the last 2.5 years of work: we’ve essentially been working together out of each other's homes, which means working relationships have become far more personal. We’ve seen children crash into the middle of video calls, have “met” significant others and/or roommates, and have heard their dogs barking in the background.

As employees return to the office, simply ask if their workload and the work environment allow them to effectively take on their responsibilities at home. If they’re getting pulled down in their personal lives, it’ll inevitably bleed over into the work. In short, do not start ignoring the other half of their human being: their personal lives.

4. Initiate High-Frequency, High-Quality Connections with Employees

Leaders need to be much more intentional about connecting with their direct reports more frequently. Don’t just wonder why they missed that deadline or why their quality of work has slipped. Ask the questions: How are you doing? How are you feeling?

When I say “high frequency,” I’m not suggesting having hour-long meetings on an employee’s calendar every week. I’m talking about high quality, high quantity one-on-one meetings that can be done in 15-20 minutes each week. By focusing these meetings on what’s important to the employee, most surprises and blockers can often be avoided, and issues can be kept from festering.

To do this right, the organization needs to be structured in a way where teams are of a manageable size. If a manager has 25 direct reports, how often are they really going to be able to meet, and what is the quality of those meetings?

5. Monitor Changes to Individual Employee Norms

There are many warning signs of employee burnout, like decreased productivity, disengagement, more sick days taken, or even more sensitivity to feedback; however, it can really look different for each employee. With an appropriately sized team and quality, high-frequency check-ins, managers and HR leaders should be able to notice if something is out of the norm for an individual team member.

Keep an eye out for pendulum swings from what an employee traditionally does. For instance, if they were producing a certain quality of work and it all of a sudden changed, it’s good to ask what’s causing the shift. Or, if a typically social employee consistently stops showing up to team gatherings or meetings, that could be a red flag.

The Great Resignation Hasn’t Helped Burnout

The recent phenomenon of workers choosing to leave their jobs in droves, dubbed “the Great Resignation,” or more accurately “The Great Reshuffle,” has created a lot of challenges for organizations, but has also created many opportunities. On the one hand, there is a massive amount of volatility right now with a lot of turnovers. On the other hand, with so many employers embracing hybrid and flexible work options, the job marketplace has opened up quite a bit with people being considered and hired for jobs in different regions of the world.

The new world of work has also forced organizations to shift from the traditional mindset of doing employees a favor by giving them a job as they realize the value in prioritizing making the workplace somewhere people want to work and continue to work.

Today, business and HR leaders are in strong positions to really bolster their talent pool by providing a great workplace experience for their employees - wherever the work may take place. For those who don’t rise to the challenge, burnout and high turnover will continue to be an inevitable way of business.

Author Bio

Charity Hall, PHR, SHRM-SCP is the Director of People Operations at FM:Systems Connect Charity Hall