The structure of paid time off has never been in a stranger place than it’s been through 2020 and 2021. Anyone who’s kept their traditional jobs has undoubtedly wished to take a vacation over the past two years, but due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, such travel has been anywhere between inconsistent and impossible.
For that reason, not only has paid time off been trending downwards, but an enormous 47% of employees in America have gone a whole calendar year during the pandemic without taking any paid time off at all. This isn’t from some renewed passion for working, as much as we’d wish; countless Americans feel trapped in the pipeline between their workplace and their home, with no end in sight. This is leading to burnout.
The What
Burnout, the phenomenon when a team member feels exhausted and mentally spent due to work, is one of the biggest threats to employee engagement. It’s a real issue – the World Health Organization declared burnout an occupational phenomenon in their 2019 revision of the International Classification of Diseases.
We know the intangible results of employee burnout: slower production, a more negative team culture, and the generally irritable nature of anyone who’s felt overworked during a global health crisis. Gallup recently uncovered some consequences of an exhausted workforce that are a little more quantitative…
Burnt-out team members are
63% more likely to take sick days
50% as likely to discuss performance goals with their manager
13% less confident in their performance
2.6x as likely to be actively seeking a new job
These trends are both a bad sign for a staff’s well-being and a company’s bottom line. Extra sick days and consistent turnover significantly hamper efficiency no matter the business, which is one more reason why burnout should be remedied immediately.
The Why
As stressful as these last couple years have been, people have been running out of steam at work long before any global pandemics. So, what usually causes it?
Gallup used the same survey to determine the biggest factors contributing to employee burnout, which serves as a glance at workplaces we don’t want to emulate. The five causes most commonly mentioned are:
Unclear communication from managers
An overwhelming workload
Lack of managerial support
Unreasonable time pressure
Unfair treatment at work
Team members who strongly agree that they’re being treated unfairly at work, in fact, are 2.3x more likely to experience a high level of burnout.
We’ve all trudged through jobs that we felt were defined by some of these factors, whether an excessive workload or careless management. Remember how sick of it you were? Millions of employees in hundreds of industries are feeling the same way, and it’s costing organizations untold amounts of money.
Let’s fix it.
The How
The first and simplest step to tackling employee burnout is to address those five causes above. Sometimes it’s possible to notice these issues from your own spot in the leader’s seat; overwhelming workloads and tight deadlines can become obvious once you begin to deliberately look for them.
However, it’s much more difficult to perceive problems like unfair treatment and unclear communication without seeing the perspectives of your team themselves. This is where anonymous surveys can be a huge help.
The anonymity of answering questions about work culture and burnout will be crucial to getting candid answers from your staff – answers that you can take action on as soon as possible. Learning that most people agree about a problem’s presence, such as heavy workloads or sparse communication, can be eye-opening.
That said, not all burnout is a result of mismanagement. Sometimes folks are just sick and tired of working, regardless of any particular complaints about the position. We can all relate to feeling exhausted, and we all know the solution: relaxation.
Even if your team has access to a healthy number of vacation days, they might not be using them due to the fact that travel has been so fickle and events like concerts have been scarce. Encourage everyone to take vacation time for the sake of their mental health – a day or two off in the middle of the week can be surprisingly rejuvenating.
While the pandemic spoiled countless travel plans, it also revealed a new type of relaxation to other workers: hybrid work. Tons of evidence has been uncovered indicating that working from home can cure stress while maintaining high productivity, and some folks have even decided they don’t want to return to the on-site office at all (looking at you, Apple).
Whether or not your organization’s set up for hybrid work depends heavily on what your company does and the roles different people play within it. If you can manage to integrate some remote work into your team’s week, though, it could lead to a huge upgrade in energy and employee satisfaction.
A sales team, for example, could be given the opportunity to work from home one day each week. It’s like a tiny little vacation that brings the same efficacy in guarding against exhaustion. A hybrid work week might also lead to your workers taking fewer frivolous sick days, which certainly helps productivity and profit.
Curing burnout is vital to both your team’s well-being and your company overall. Your workers are your biggest investment, and prioritizing their satisfaction is the path to success as both a people leader and a business leader.
Use surveys (or some sharp intuition) to determine whether your team is becoming worn out, and if they are, address the causes right at the root and make your office a more welcoming place. Though, if the office environment itself isn’t the problem, then go ahead and get them out of the office entirely. You’ll both be glad they did.