3 Guiding Principles To Get Ahead Of Burnout Before It’s Too Late

Empower managers to become their best professional selves

The manager’s role to assess and address employee burnout is critical. Yet many managers are not aware of what to look for, or how to mitigate burnout. In this first part of a three-part series focused on the HR Manager’s Guide to Burnout in the New Workplace, you’ll learn about the top three areas where greater attention should be given to ensure your management team is aware of burnout signs before it’s too late.
 

Remote and hybrid workplaces are a new reality for most organizations. The way employees work has become more digitized while opening doors to exciting opportunities that were not possible even a few years ago. But with the lines between workdays and time off — or even just time away from the office — increasingly blurred, combined with growing workloads and constant company change, employee burnout is on the rise.

According to a recent Gallup study, 28% of employees surveyed said they were burned out “very often” or “always” at work. This same study found that employees who frequently experience burnout are: 
 

• 63% more likely to take a sick day
• 23% more likely to visit the emergency room
• 2.6x as likely to be seeking a different job

Employee burnout and fatigue are detrimental to both your teams and your business. So what can you start doing right now to ensure employees stay balanced, healthy, and engaged? Here are three guiding principles you can implement to recognize and mitigate burnout before it’s too late.

1. Empower Management to Advocate for Employees

Workload balance naturally varies over time as projects, business cycles, and changes in team staffing levels ebb and flow. But, when heavy workloads are sustained over a significant period of time — or other factors impact an employee’s feelings of engagement and work satisfaction — burnout can quickly develop and take a serious toll on team morale and performance.

This is why managers play a critical role in assessing and addressing employee burnout within an organization. As an HR professional, consider meeting with managers on a regular basis to guide them in ways to best support their employees. Encourage managers to get to know each team member as an individual, and to conduct coaching conversations, celebrate accomplishments, discuss sources of stress and further understand work capacity. 

Be sure to provide frequent training opportunities for both new and established managers so that managers across the organization can be more capable of cultivating genuine and transparent relationships with their direct reports.

2. Identify (and Remove) Roadblocks Across Management Teams

Encourage managers to attend a monthly HR check-in to allow for broader discussions on what is going well and what can be improved in the work environment. This meeting can help surface sources of friction, resource gaps and process improvements that — when resolved — can help boost team productivity and satisfaction. 

Additionally, get managers to hold a Ways of Working Meeting with their teams. Whether in the office, fully distributed or hybrid, employees can benefit from openly discussing their working habits and aligning on expectations in order to elevate the entire team’s collaboration style, productivity and performance. 

This approach helps create a foundation for the entire team to more effectively work together in a way that is rooted in transparency and respect. After all, discussing working habits openly with the team ensures everyone can protect and respect the essential time individuals need to work on their own.

3. Advocate for the Resources Your Managers Need

Stay tuned in to your managers’ needs and steer them toward tools and solutions to make their jobs easier. HR Professionals play a significant role in helping every employee maintain a high level of performance, especially as teams deal with increased stress levels over an extended timeline that can produce burnout. That means it’s important to consider time-saving tools that provide a meaningful use case for the business. 

For example, assume a few managers mention that they’re worried about team burnout due to a recent increase in workload and departmental consolidations. You can help managers assess burnout by using a workforce analytics solution that collects and analyzes activity data to produce more robust burnout insights. When combined with complementing data such as employee sentiment, managers can gain a deeper understanding of burnout (i.e., causes, variability, and pervasiveness) before devising a solution for their teams. When a manager is given the tools to measure productive time, team working hours, burnout risk, break frequency and focus habits, they are empowered to understand the broader picture and make impactful changes across their team.

These are just three ways you can ensure your business — and management teams — stay proactive in addressing burnout. 

In part two of our series, we’ll walk through the six most common types of burnout, and reveal how to coach managers to effectively guide employees through the challenge.

Gabriela Mauch is the Head of Productivity Lab at ActivTrak Connect Gabriela Mauch