Employee Burnouts Rising: How To Maintain Your Employees’ Welfare
The conversation of employee burnout has been on the lips of many since the start of this decade. While employee welfare has historically been overlooked, the context of 2020 and 2021 asked businesses to pay more attention to the mental strain they were putting on their own staff, especially when it came to burnouts causing employees to quit their job altogether.
Despite this, recent studies have shown that not all of the warnings have been heeded by businesses. 36% of employees have revealed that their organisation is doing nothing to help employee burnout, while 37% have said they are working longer hours than they were before 2020. Following this, 75% of workers have stated that they have experienced burnout.
What Do These Stats Tell You?
If you are running a business, these stats should directly inform the way you conduct your employee base. It is important for any business to put their employees’ needs right up alongside the customers. After all, without a solid employee base, there will be no company.
But how do you work to ensure your company falls on the right side of these stats? Here are three simple ideas to help keep your employees happy and mitigate the risk of burnout:
Make Sure Your HR Department Is Solid
The most important way to alleviate employee burnouts is to give your workers space to talk about their issues. Compassion is crucial in any positive workspace, so they need to feel like they are being listened to and their problems can be alleviated on your end. 56% of employees have stated that their HR departments did not encourage conversations about burnouts. Make sure that your HR department is not in the majority and does its best to encourage these conversations.
Engagement Is Key To Employee Retention
One of the reasons that employees experience burnout is because they suffer from the statistical syndrome. This is when employees feel more like a statistic on a spreadsheet rather than human being who is part of a team. It is important that you invest in an employee engagement program which can alleviate these feelings and similarly help your company thrive through employee productivity and retention. This is especially true for B2B companies, where employees must liaise directly with customers and form relationships. Employees must enjoy their time in the workspace and feel motivated by contributing to a team effort to perform and feel valued.
Monitor Work Times And Vacations
With many employees working from home, 61% of remote workers have said they find it difficult to unplug from the workspace during off-hours. In this way, your job is to monitor their work times and ensure that they have a flexible and healthy schedule. If employees are staying late or messaging the team during off-hours, invite them to have an open conversation about their work/life balance. Similarly, as a manager, you should promote vacations and encourage every team member to evenly spread their vacation out throughout the year. This is just one small way to alleviate burnouts, but every effort is essential in making your company a positive and healthy place of work.