Innovation and employee efficiency are critical in today’s fast-paced business landscapes. What you must truly prioritize, however, is your workers’ well-being, as they ensure your organization’s success.
The drive for productivity and results, however, can push people beyond their limits, leading to a significant yet silent threat to your company: burnout.
Being a prominent reason for turnover, recognizing its early manifestations lets you find ways to uplift employee welfare. Although this poses some challenges, certain tools and measures can aid your efforts.
To give you a firm grasp of the subject, we’ll explore what burnout is, its effects on your company, and what you can do to detect and prevent it before it gets out of hand.
What is burnout?
Burnout is a state of chronic physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that results from prolonged stress or overwork. Typical manifestations include a lack of motivation, feelings of helplessness, or even cynicism towards one’s job.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it’s a phenomenon particularly tied to one’s occupation and workplace, meaning it shouldn’t be used to describe life experiences in areas beyond it. Burnout also has three distinguishing aspects:
- Feelings of fatigue
- A heightened mental separation from work or negative sentiments towards it
- Reduced professional effectiveness
How does burnout affect your employees and organization?
Burnout, meanwhile, can negatively impact your workforce and company in several ways:
Lowers productivity
Workers experiencing burnout struggle with efficiency, thus failing to accomplish tasks, meet deadlines, and maintain their work quality.
Your underperforming employees, meanwhile, don’t only mean a dip in productivity for individuals, but rather the whole team, since others will have to pick up the slack.
This spells trouble for the organization as well, as output is reduced and progress on key projects is hampered, both of which can negatively impact your bottom line.
Increases absenteeism
Burnout materializes through physical and mental issues that give rise to absenteeism. When this occurs, you may notice employees taking more sick days and then citing vague health problems or stress-related ones.
CIPD’s 2022 workplace stress survey, in fact, saw 76% of its respondents reporting absences linked to stress, strongly suggesting that such instances are a signal of burnout.
When these take place, immediately check in with employees who exhibit these patterns. Besides the drop in productivity, this can increase costs tied to temporary staffing, overtime pay, and healthcare.
Harms employee engagement and employer branding
Employee engagement suffers when burnout is present. Due to physical, mental, and emotional fatigue, personnel may lose their passion and motivation, leading to them being less committed.
This not only erodes team morale but also causes widespread disengagement if left unattended. Since team cohesion and workplace culture will also take a hit, you may face damage to your employer branding, which discourages talent from joining your company.
Increases turnover
Burnout strongly contributes to employee turnover, as those who regularly experience it are 2.6x more likely to be actively seeking new employment. This comes as no surprise, as anybody who reaches their breaking point will surely leave in hopes of finding a less stressful environment.
Losing personnel can financially hurt your organization as well, with voluntary turnover costing U.S. businesses up to $1 trillion per year. Replacing individuals can net you half to double their annual salaries as well since new hires have to be properly recruited, onboarded, and trained.
Damages workplace relationships
Burnout not only leads to negative attitudes towards one’s job, but also colleagues. Since employees become disengaged, they tend to be more withdrawn, irritable, and confrontational, all of which can heighten workplace toxicity.
This obstructs collaboration and gives rise to difficult workplace scenarios, thus damaging team chemistry and professional relationships. At the same time, maintaining a positive culture becomes extremely challenging, hurting your organization’s effectiveness.
Why detect employee burnout early?
Given burnout’s negative effects, it’s imperative that you detect it early and then intervene before things get out of hand. Doing so delivers multiple benefits:
Healthier employees, better performance
Recognizing burnout ahead of time lets you address problems before they take their toll on your employee’s well-being and productivity. Since advanced intervention can help them recover physically and mentally, you allow them to regain their focus and motivation as well.
As a result, personnel can perform and produce at the desired standard, therefore contributing to your organization’s overall success.
Reduced absenteeism and healthcare costs
Nipping burnout in the bud lets you maintain healthy employees. Having a wellness program that helps prevent physical or mental health problems, for instance, lets you reduce absenteeism by 14% to 19% and avoid its associated costs.
Circadian’s white paper titled Absenteeism: The Bottom-Line Killer, for example, states that unexpected absenteeism can net businesses up to $3,600 per hourly worker and $2,660 for salaried employees annually. These can be tied to factors such as:
- An absent employees’ wages
- Overtime pay for other employees and/or pay for temporary workers
- The administrative costs of managing absenteeism
Physically and mentally sound employees mean lower healthcare costs for them and your company as well.
In fact, the United States Chamber of Commerce’s Winning With Wellness report found 60% of its respondents saying that workplace wellness programs have lowered their company’s healthcare costs.
Improved employee morale
The early detection of burnout creates opportunities to address its root causes, like workload imbalances or lack of recognition, and then take the necessary corrective actions.
This improves employee morale and engagement, thus reigniting your workers’ desire to perform well. This can even positively impact teamwork, the work environment, and innovation.
Better retention
The advanced intervention of burnout can compel workers to stay, as it shows you care about their well-being and are willing to improve their work experiences.
Since they’ll feel valued and respected, employee retention significantly improves, effectively reducing the costs and disruptions associated with recruiting and training new personnel. This helps preserve your organization’s knowledge and stability as well.
Team cohesion
Prolonged stress and exhaustion negatively impact an employee’s attitude towards their colleagues, then deteriorate workplace relationships.
Addressing this early, however, lets you maintain a positive and collaborative work environment, while stronger workplace relationships let you build successful teams as communication and teamwork are improved.
Early warning signs of burnout
You now have an idea of burnout’s effects, as well as the upsides of recognizing it early. To effectively prevent its escalation, watch out for these indicators:
Significant performance drops
A noticeable dip in an employee’s productivity can be a glaring sign of burnout. It’s hard to miss as well since it materializes through missed deadlines, incomplete tasks, or a decline in overall work quality.
Procrastination
Procrastination is a typical coping mechanism for burnout, as employees try to avoid overwhelming workloads and stressful situations. For example, to keep away from additional assignments, those experiencing it will often delay tasks that they once handled with ease.
Tension with colleagues
This often stems from frustration, exhaustion, or a sense of being undervalued. Hard circumstances can strongly shift how an employee behaves towards their coworkers, like going from cooperative to confrontational or withdrawn.
Careless errors
Burnout affects people mentally, with some examples being difficulty concentrating, slower thought processing, and overall fatigue. As a result, frequent mistakes or lapses in judgment become common.
A rise in absenteeism
Burnout also manifests physically, which leads to increased instances of absenteeism due to illness. When an employee frequently calls in sick or raises vague health complaints, this indicates they are struggling.
How to detect burnout early
Knowing the indicators of burnout isn’t enough, as some may fly under the radar without a discerning eye. To properly recognize it in advance, you must take a proactive approach and employ strategies such as:
Employee engagement surveys
One of the best ways of pinpointing signs of prolonged stress and exhaustion is getting first-hand input from your workforce.
Periodic employee engagement surveys, for example, are excellent for soliciting feedback consistently. This structured tool evaluates how invested people are in their company, as its questions gauge sentiments towards job aspects like:
- Duties
- Workplace relationships
- Organizational culture and values
- Career advancement
Employee engagement surveys extract quantitative and qualitative data that paint a clear picture of how workers see their roles and environment. It lets you recognize any negative implications that point to burnout, whether they be high-stress levels or workload dissatisfaction.
How often you conduct one actually depends on your organization’s needs, but one should be deployed annually, semi-annually, or quarterly.
Regular check-ins
Various internal communication strategies allow you to stay on top of workplace burnout. A particular one we recommend, however, is to hold regular check-ins with your staff.
Although of a more informal nature, consistently conducting them with individual team members helps you gauge their physical, mental, and emotional states.
Such one-on-one conversations let you identify concerns before they escalate but make sure to schedule them to avoid the pitfalls of micromanagement. Then, focus on learning how you can address any challenges employees are facing, then cap things off by offering support.
KPIs and relevant metrics
Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and other relevant metrics can reveal patterns that indicate burnout. If their output suddenly declines – think of a sales employee who abruptly fails to meet targets – it may be time to investigate further.
Others you should consider include:
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- Absences: Someone taking an increased amount of time off can suggest they’re struggling, whether it be with work, their health, or both.
- Overtimes: Excessive overtime may suggest overwhelming workloads. If this becomes a regular occurrence, act immediately.
- Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI): Developed in 1981 by Christina Maslach, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, it evaluates burnout based on the three characteristics stated in the WHO’s definition.
Observe employee behaviors
This is something more achievable when you and your personnel regularly work in a physical office. Any changes in how one typically behaves can suggest underlying problems, so pay attention to their conduct and mood.
For instance, a worker who is typically upbeat but suddenly becomes withdrawn or irritable can indicate frustrations that aren’t being addressed. Once you notice it, schedule a one-on-one conversation and see how they’re doing.
Ways to prevent burnout
Burnout prevention is always better than cure, as those experiencing it can take a few months to more than a year to recover. Here are some strategies that can help:
Train competent leaders
Your leaders are strong contributors to burnout prevention. Good ones effectively delegate work, communicate, manage relationships, and facilitate how well employees cope with workplace stress. Poor leaders, meanwhile, are either unable to do these or exacerbate issues.
To ensure they help your workers thrive, give them the autonomy and necessary resources. Identifying any gaps may be challenging, but 360-degree feedback can assess any possible difficulties your personnel may have with leadership.
Profiles Asia Pacific’s CheckPoint 360° Feedback System™, for instance, evaluates managers’ and leaders’ skills and effectiveness. It surfaces management issues that impact employee productivity, morale, satisfaction, and turnover as well.
Promote work-life balance
Excessive workloads and overbearing managers create unreasonable amounts of stress for employees, all of which result in burnout. The American Psychological Association, in fact, found three out of five workers reporting negative effects like:
- Physical fatigue
- Cognitive weariness
- Emotional exhaustion
To prevent such ailments from taking hold of your personnel, promote work-life balance in your organization. You can help workers achieve this equilibrium by doing the following:
Allow flexible work setups
Your employees have lives beyond work, which can be frenetic as well. To give them time for their personal commitments and interests, incorporate flexibility into your policies. Allow them to:
- Work fluid hours
- Request lighter workloads when needed
- Work from home when it makes sense
To bolster your efforts for burnout prevention, use the right HR tools as well, as these help you create more flexible work arrangements.
Create a sympathetic environment
Your organization’s culture will be key to preventing burnout, as the American Institute of Stress states that no amount of resilience training can counteract the effects of a toxic one.
With workplace toxicity being characterized by hefty workloads, enormous amounts of pressure, a lack of independence, and the like, make sure to do the opposite and:
- Put a cap on overtime hours
- Avoid micromanaging your employees
- Give them autonomy
Encourage time off
31% of employees named mandatory paid time off (PTO) as a top benefit they want from employers, even ranking it ahead of mental health assistance. This comes as no surprise, as this lets them rest physically and mentally, as well as devote time to their personal lives.
So, to effectively prevent burnout, urge workers to maximize opportunities for recreation. They’ll return well-rested and ready to tackle new challenges.
Advocate for healthy communication
Employees should be given the freedom to openly talk about the difficulties they face without fear of any repercussions. This lets you recognize factors that give rise to challenges, whether they be unreasonable workloads, demanding supervisors, or operational inefficiencies.
Implementing policies that prevent them from being “always on the clock” is also a must. If they must respond to emails and work requests past their hours, they’ll never get ample rest.
Establishing where and when communication happens prevents your people from talking about work beyond their shifts.
Offer growth opportunities
Career stagnation can create feelings of stress and frustration. However, professional development, which we can also take care of, provides employees with opportunities for advancement and change, keeping them engaged in their work.
Not to mention, upskilling and reskilling keeps their capabilities up-to-date as well. This prevents them from becoming overwhelmed by changes in their roles brought about by the evolution of technology or relevant skill sets.
Lead by example
Employees will typically follow their leader’s example. So, to effectively prevent burnout, embody healthy self-care, communication, collaboration, and management practices.
- Take vacation days and show them that time off matters
- Don’t answer work-related calls and emails outside your hours
- Be open to employee feedback
- Don’t micromanage, but offer support
Remember, if leadership fails to practice what they preach, no one else will.
Wrapping up—Burnout prevention is better than cure
Employee burnout is a key issue that, if left unchecked, can have devastating effects on individuals and your whole organization. By fully understanding its complexities and taking proactive measures to prevent it, companies can protect their most valuable asset: their people.
Through early burnout detection and intervention, you not only preserve employee well-being but also sustain productivity and organizational success. Remember, a healthy workplace is the foundation of every thriving business, so take good care of your personnel.
About the Author: Irish Almocera
