You might have heard of this thing called #burnout.
It’s hitting every company, position, and industry.
If you think it’s not impacting your organization, it is.
Even if you’re not the one who has it, there are others in your workforce that do.
When one person is in burnout, it impacts the team, leaders, and the whole organization.
How?
Think of it this way…
Burnout doesn’t stay self-contained.
So when you have burnout, it impacts how you:
✓ Show up
✓ Lead others and yourself
✓ Communicate with your team, colleagues and family
✓ Focus, listen, and think
✓ Offer your insights, thoughts, and opinions or even if you do
✓ Interact or engage
✓ Behave, act and respond
It literally impacts everything. When one person is in burnout, it also trickles out to others.
If they are not focused, they are easily distracted and not getting things done or are making more mistakes, which leads to having to redo things. They miss deadlines or have to stay longer at work to try to get this work done.
Since burnout impacts mental health, this employee is easily frustrated or irritable, making it harder to communicate or interact with them. Their mood impacts others too. Think of how one Negative Nancy or Toxic Tim can impact the whole team.
When you have an employee missing deadlines or making mistakes and having to redo work, how does that impact you? You might have to stay longer or do some of their work, which means you miss dinner with your family or your kids’ activities.
Their mood impacts the work environment of everyone else who has to engage with them. It’s harder to communicate with them, because they are easily irritable and less patient, which then impacts how you respond to them or begin conversations with them (or if you want to talk with them at all). It makes you on edge around them.
Burnout isn’t just affecting the person who is experiencing it. It infiltrates its way into the environment, team, and every other aspect of work.
Even if you don’t have burnout, you’re being impacted by it when someone else does or when someone else is on the brink of it.
What can you do?
1. Start a dialogue—Begin talking about burnout. There’s still some stigma around burnout. People often fear, if they admit they have it, what will others think, do or say. Will they think I can’t do my job? Will they take away responsibilities or will they lose trust in me?
The more you talk about it, the more it reduces this stigma. In the process, you allow others who are experiencing it to not feel alone. To know that someone, somewhere gets it and understands, and they’ll be met with compassion and empathy.
Let others know it’s okay to feel burned out. You can still love your job and be burned out.
2. Create awareness around burnout—Burnout doesn’t discriminate. It’s impacting your people. The more they know what to look for and what to do to prevent it, the less likely they will find themselves in it. You can’t change something you aren’t aware exists. Look for how your people are burned out or what might lead to burnout for them in future. Then don’t wait. Do something now to help them prevent it.
Hint: Time off is great, but vacation won’t cure burnout. Once you create awareness around it, share with your people day to day strategies that work to help alleviate burnout.
3. Implement a burnout program—This is the key element. Talking about it is a great beginning, but it’s imperative to do more. The only way to prevent and address burnout is to be intentional and strategic with it. Workplace wellness programs aren’t enough. Almost all of them don’t address or help prevent burnout.
As a leader, you have to do your part to help your people with burnout. Your organization MUST implement a continual program to help with burnout. This gives people the opportunity to ask questions, implement strategies, find out what challenges arise and be able to address them.
Whether the program is a bootcamp, a live virtual series, or an online course, it’s important to have a training program for your people. Many organizations my company works with also partake in our Train the Trainer program, where we train one of your employees to teach our material within your company. You can decide whether this person teaches it per team, department, or by position.
Burnout doesn’t go away on its own. With so many industries incurring staff shortages, it’s up to you, as a leader, to invest in your people if you want to keep them. Since half of employees leave due to burnout, it’s a huge opportunity for your company to address the burnout issue, while retaining more of your people.
It’s a win-win for everyone.
What will you do to help your people with burnout?
Contact me HERE if you want to reduce turnover, increase productivity, enhance engagement and create a happy, healthy, thriving workforce and culture.
I’m here to help!
