Understanding Employee Wellbeing – Identifying Burnout
Business Owners & HR Professionals alike are constantly looking for ways to provide a happy and healthy workplace for their team. The benefits of a happy team speak for themselves, including research that shows engaged employees have increased productivity, improved sales and heightened accuracy.
However, with the impacts of COVID still lingering, businesses are facing employees who are not only unhappy, but burnt out. In fact, a recent study has shown that the effects of burn out is exaggerated for women in Australia, with:
48% of women feeling totally at capacity, so can’t take on anymore
72% of women saying that trying to balance work and family life means they don’t get enough time to themselves
Understanding and recognising employee fatigue is a vital aspect to ensuring employee wellbeing, regardless of the size of your company. In this blog, we’ll help you to identify, mitigate and subsequently overcome any possible factors your employees may face.
What is burnout?
Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when an individual feels overwhelmed, emotionally drained, tired & unable to meet constant demands.
It is important to note that employee burnout is different to everyday stress - stress is an element of work that can reasonably be overcome and used as motivation. Burnout on the other hand is the feeling of excessive and endless stress leading to a complete lack of motivation. Let’s compare the two…
Stress
Identifiable by ‘over-engagement’
Can aid in day-to-day performance of role
Produces urgency & hyperactivity
Loss of energy
Emotions are heightened
Burnout:
Identifiable by ‘Disengagement’
Extremely counterproductive to performance of role
Produces helplessness & inactivity
Loss of motivation, ideals, purpose & desire
Emotions are blunted
How to identify symptoms of burnout?
There are a number of signs that can help Owners & HR Managers detect burnout in the workplace. Some are more obvious than others & often depend on the severity being experienced.
These indicators may include:
Exhaustion (Feeling physically and/or emotionally drained)
Isolation (Withdrawing or not wanting to engage with others, often as a result of feeling overwhelmed)
Poor Performance (Mistakes appearing in work due to an inability to perform well)
Irritability (Not feeling like usual self & becoming easily frustrated)
Recent Change in Role (Increased work hours, taking on additional responsibilities, or simply a lack of role clarity)
It is important to note that in some cases an individual may be hitting targets and still incur burnout. Similarly, burnout may be gradual over a long period of time or quickly onset due to one of the below factors.
Where does workplace burnout come from?
Burnout can be caused by any number of reasons and is usually a complication of multiple factors at the same time. Some common examples include:
Excessive workload
No holiday/leave/break taken to re-establish work/life balance
Lack of role clarity or direction
Unreasonable time pressure
Significant lack of recognition
How to address employee burnout?
There are multiple ways to combat burnout in employees. Once identified, having open and honest conversations is a great place to start. This will allow for you, with the individuals help, to devise some basic strategies to restore their passion and attitude to their work.
Once improved, it is important to remember to avoid the issues that caused the employee burnout to originally occur.
Supporting employees with a positive and effective employee wellbeing approach is one aspect Melbourne HR adds value to its ongoing outsourcing clients.
Sean Johnson is a Full-Time HR Advisor who is now into his fourth year with Melbourne HR.
Edited by Nicole Torrington, Marketing Manager at Melbourne HR.