Avoiding Employee Burnout | Richard Greathead

Burnout is one of the vicious threats to employee productivity in the workplace. It is often associated with prolonged working hours, allocation of too much work, and insufficient resting. As an employer, it is your responsibility to ensure that your employees do not suffer burnout as it can easily threaten their dedication. Research determined that employees suffering from burnout are likely to take a day off as a result of sickness or exhaustion-related conditions. This can imply a major impairment in your business’s productivity and service delivery. Here is an overview of how to prevent employee burnout.

Enforcing Teamwork

A large percentage of all burnout incidences among employees is associated with being provided with too much work. The employees’ ability to manage and successfully deliver on large volumes of work can be enhanced by forming teams within the workplace. Working as a team dissipates any chances of exhaustion. Bringing together different persons with different strengths and capabilities facilitates the successful completion of tough tasks.

Strategic Allocation of Duties

Burnout is also associated with additional factors, such as situations where employees are allocated tough duties beyond their ability to successfully complete. To avoid such instances, duties in the workplace should be allocated strategically, following the employees’ individual competencies. The idea here is to have specific tasks given to employees who have experience as a way of preventing frustrations and struggles that come with tough duties.

Encouraging Vacations and Personal Days

Taking some rest from workplace duties and responsibilities is an effective strategy that can help employees to unwind. Enforcing a workplace policy where workers are given some days off within a month or a year can encourage and facilitate the prevention of burnout. In addition, offering a flexible workplace arrangement, such as a highly comfortable office with open spaces, encourages workers to socialize and take some time off from their duties during the day.

Leveraging Technology

Modern-day technology can also help prevent the onset of burnout among workers. Tasks that are normally done manually, such as retrieving, updating, arranging, and storing printed files, can be effectively achieved at the click of a button if the workplace is computerized. Using facilitative technologies within your company can ease the volume of work and the duration of time that employees have to take to complete a given task.

There is a difference between working hard and working too much. While they both may leave an employee tired, working too much will often result in complete exhaustion and sickness. As an employer, we want to curb this, not only to protect productivity, but the health of those who work for us. 

Originally posted on RichardGreathead.uk.