The World Health Organization (WHO)[1] defines employee burnout as an occupation-related syndrome brought about by chronic workplace stress that has not been managed successfully. Employees who are burned out can either feel mentally, emotionally, or physically exhausted from the work-related stress. They are also generally dissatisfied with their jobs and no longer feel motivated to do daily work tasks. While burnout is generally preventable, you have to know how to spot potential signs (such as a sudden increase in absences) before it becomes a big workplace issue.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at employee burnout—from the common causes to typical signs. We’ll also share some of the strategies to help you address this workplace problem.
Factors That Contribute to Employee Burnout
Worker burnout can happen in any workplace and industry. However, it doesn’t just happen—many factors can contribute to burnout, from the employee’s workload to the way that a leader manages his team.
Here are some of the common causes of employee burnout.
- Unmanageable workload: Having too much work but not enough time to do it (or to rest in between tasks) can push employees to their limits, which can result in worker burnout. This is why it’s important to monitor your team’s workload, assign tasks within reasonable timelines, and provide additional resources if needed.
- Unfair treatment at work: Workplace bias, favoritism, worker mistreatment, and being undervalued at work can lead to employees feeling anxious about their jobs. Unjust company policies can also contribute to workers feeling dissatisfied at work. You can try to prevent these by reviewing your policies, creating a positive workplace culture, and running diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) training sessions and awareness programs.
- Unclear work task or role: The lack of work clarity can make employees feel confused about what they need to do to succeed in their roles. This can lead to employee burnout if the work is unclear or the job role keeps on changing. Setting and sharing SMART work goals can help in this situation, as well as preparing a job description that shows basic work expectations and responsibilities.
- Lack of communication and support from managers: Your staff may be at risk of experiencing burnout if they can‘t easily approach you to discuss challenges and ask for support. Aside from poor communication, the lack of recognition can make them feel underappreciated at work. This is why honest and open communication is essential for people managers to effectively manage employees. Coming up with employee appreciation ideas to reward and recognize workers for their hard work and accomplishments can also motivate your team to continue doing their best.
- No career path or progression: If employees don’t see a clear career path where they can grow professionally within your company, they may feel frustrated and leave their jobs. Aside from creating a career progression path, investing in your workers’ professional development can help them feel valued and prevent burnout.
- Insufficient compensation: Employee burnout can happen if the compensation that workers receive isn’t commensurate with the demands or complexities of the job. Conducting job and salary analyses to ensure that you’re providing competitive rates can help prevent this, including setting up incentive programs to reward employees for doing high-quality work.
How to Spot Employee Burnout
Knowing what to look for can help you prevent and address burnout before it becomes a big workplace issue. While the employee burnout signs can be subtle and vary for different individuals, here are some symptoms based on business-related key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Staff attendance: A sudden increase in absences (such as frequent sick leaves), tardiness, and undertime may signal that an employee is getting burnt out.
- Work performance: Another early burnout indicator is if employees show decreased motivation to work, commit frequent mistakes and errors, find it difficult to concentrate, and delay in completing important tasks.
- Turnover or attrition: High resignation rates and workers leaving the company quickly are potential signs of burnout within the company. This talent drain can prevent business operations from running as smoothly as you’d want given the time it takes to find a qualified candidate and orient the new hire. Plus, if you see a common theme, such as your leavers holding the same job roles, belonging to the same team/department, or having similar reasons for quitting (e.g., heavy workload), you might want to take a closer look as this can be burnout signs.
- Employee satisfaction: If your company runs employee satisfaction surveys to measure staff engagement and the scores keep trending downward, you may want to take a closer look at the results to see which factors may be contributing to employee burnout.
How to Handle Employee Burnout
When you recognize a worker experiencing burnout or if a team member approaches you expressing burnout concerns, it can be difficult to know how to tackle it. One way to help you prepare for handling conversations about worker burnout is to attend training sessions to hone your people management skills. Here are also a few steps you can take to manage the situation.
If you notice sudden changes in your workers’ performance or if team members tell you that they feel burned out, take the situation seriously. Don’t turn a blind eye to the potential employee burnout signs or dismiss the confession as an exaggerated statement or a joke.
Make sure to set aside time to ask them how they’re doing. Schedule a one-on-one discussion as soon as possible. Encourage your staff to be open about their work concerns and don’t interrupt them while they’re talking. If they seem to have finished speaking, wait five to eight seconds before responding—they might still have something left to say.
Further, be an active listener during the meeting. Repeat what you heard and ask if you understood it correctly.
Try to understand why your staff feels burned out at work. Ask what their biggest stressors are and what’s causing those stressors.
Let’s say, your employees feel physically and mentally exhausted because they often work extended hours. Try to dig into the details of why they are working long hours. Could it be because the team is understaffed, the workload is too much, or the project completion timeline is too tight?
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to addressing this, but you can create short- and long-term employee burnout solutions. You can come up with ideas to address the issue, but it’s also good if you ask your employees what they need to help make things better in the short- and long-run. Listen to their suggestions and consider whether their asks can be accommodated.
A few examples of short-term employee burnout solutions for the scenario in Step 3 include providing extra staff support or adjusting the task deadline to a slightly longer one. On the other hand, a good long-term action plan for preventing burnout due to working long hours is to review and analyze work tasks and job requirements. This enables you to understand workload distribution and identify areas for improvement.
You can even launch company-wide programs to help alleviate the impact of workplace stress. These can be through employee wellness activities or by introducing a flexible work schedule policy. You can also encourage workers to take much-needed rest by reminding them to file their vacation leaves.
Aside from keeping track of workloads and conducting regular one-on-one discussions with your employees, monitor how your short- and long-term solutions are doing. Knowing what worked well and what didn’t will allow you to make the necessary changes to your action plans. Running engagement surveys will also help you measure whether your employees feel happy at work.
Why Preventing Employee Burnout Is Important
Burnout happens when employees are overwhelmed with the work and stress that they experience. According to Gallup, about three in four US employees experience burnout at least sometimes. Meanwhile, one in four US workers experience it either “very often” or “always.”
While some employers may think that this is a problem workers have to tackle on their own, employee burnout can become a serious workplace issue if not addressed. It can lead to high resignation or attrition rates, poor employee engagement, and decreased work productivity.
If you don’t want it to negatively impact business operations, you should try to prevent burnout from happening to your workers. Understanding what is employee burnout and the factors that can trigger it helps, as well as recognizing the typical signs and knowing how to handle the situation. These will allow you to come up with support programs for affected workers and implement action plans to rectify the underlying issue.
Bottom Line
Worker burnout is a common problem in many organizations. However, you can prevent it from affecting your workforce by knowing the factors that contribute to it and recognizing the signs of employee burnout. Doing so can also help you create strategies to decrease the risk of burnout from affecting business productivity, staff engagement, and overall worker well-being.
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