This
is part 1 of a 2 part series on Burnout – how to spot the signs of Burnout in
our uniquely fragmented and changing workplaces, and how leaders can focus on
new metrics to increase happiness and engagement.
Burnout
can creep up on you.
Prolonged periods of isolation or
loneliness have been known for decades to cause an increase in depression and
mental health illness, and burnout has been a widely understood end result of a
mixture of stress, unhappiness and overbearing workloads.
However, in the post-pandemic world
noticing the signs of burnout will only be made harder as workplaces shift
remote and workers contend with hybrid or disparate team building, screen-based
recognition and changing performance management. Being able to mitigate
stressful situations at work where possible is enormously important now, and in the future.
Business leaders have to put processes in place now
to mitigate workplace stress. All it takes is knowing what to look for.
What
causes burnout?
It’s worth noting that the American
Institute for Stress highlights that it isn’t your job that causes
stress or burnout, but the person-environment fit.
Your character, personality and work ethic are bound
to the environment you work in, rather than the specific job you’re doing, and
your action and reaction to that environment are the primary driver of burnout.
It all comes down to the feeling of
being in control. The institute quite literally defines stress as having lots
of demands, but little control, so it’s wise to bear this in mind when
considering the environmental causes behind burnout.
Some people thrive in a pressure-cooker
environment with immediate deadlines to hit, others prefer and enjoy a role
without the trappings of leadership or decision making.
The clearest example you can give is this: a Police
Officer in Inner City New York will not have the same workload, pressures, and
yes, stresses, as an Officer in rural Texas, but they ostensibly have the same
job. To say, then, that Policing is “stressful” would be generally correct, but
in only the broadest and most unspecific of criteria.
How do you measure burnout in Policing if you deal
with wide data sets based on the Job alone, rather than the specific
environmental pressures Police face? How do you mitigate the differences in
stress loads in New York, compared to Texas?
What
does burnout look like?
Everyone will react to burnout or workplace
stress in different ways: some react physically, some bear the burden mentally,
some bury it. Cruelly, its intangibility is precisely why it isn’t seen or
acted on more effectively, and when behavioral signs of burnout such as
cynicism, isolation or irritability are often seen as “having a bad day” it
makes the process of dealing with it that much harder.
Common
symptoms of burnout include:
●
Depression and low
mood,
●
Inability to focus,
●
Pessimism,
●
Insomnia,
●
Fatigue,
●
Muscle tension and back
aches,
●
Shortness of breath,
●
Heart palpitations,
●
Panic attacks.
Mitigating
stress
If Burnout is to a large degree
environmentally determined, the simplest and most effective of measures you can
take to pre-empt damaging amounts of stress is amending the environment.
You can do this through a variety of
ways – what you need to do is focus on your company, your brand and your
workplace ethic, and only change what you need to make quality change.
●
Improve performance
management including reviews, promotions, achievements and recognition by
creating team-orientated digital spaces for communal review, sharing of success
stories and reward,
●
Address individual
work/life balance situations with frequent and thorough reviews, focusing on
happiness, not productivity or KPI’s,
●
Re-establish your
social value – do more than lean on AGM’s to celebrate your company, or reward
your team. Look at your social net good (to your team, families, communities or
wider state or country) and talk about it with your staff,
●
Listen. Simply listen
to your staff and line managers, understand the day to day strains, the
pressures and the problems. Stress is exacerbated when staff feel their management
don’t listen or believe them,
●
The WHO advises recognition as being a key facet
of good modern management – “being appreciated is one of the most important
factors that increases motivation and satisfaction as well as health and
wellbeing”. Do this often, and make it meaningful.
Harvey Nexus has been created precisely to help
companies feeling the added burden of running a business in a pandemic. Our
recruitment services are only as good as our lived experience, relevant advice
and values. Burnout is exhausting, for everyone involved. We’re here to help.
We’re always on hand, through our mentoring systems
and business support, to lend support where needed to workers and businesses in
Texas.
Simply get in touch.
*
Harvey Nexus is a non-profit recruitment
organization, committed to helping communities, business leaders and workers in
Texas and beyond through, recruitment,
career coaching, jobs networking, business incubation and acceleration.
To find out more about what we do; to donate to our cause; to volunteer with our agency or to discover how we could help
your company, simply visit our website and Partnerships page
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