Im An Employer What Can I Do About This
You could use a Wellbeing Plan as a tool to help you identify what good wellbeing looks like for you, as well as what it looks like when things arent so good. You could share this with your team so that you can help to look out for each other.
Stress Risk Assessments are another way you can explore stress in yourself and others at work. These work the same way as a regular health and safety risk assessment: you identify a risk, then explore ways of removing or reducing the risk. This could be explored during 1:1s or less formal check-ins.
How To Avoid Burnout In The Workplace
The missing link: well-being
Its obvious why employers want to foster engagement, but few know how to foster high engagement and high well-being at the same time.
Employee well-being drives engagement, and vice versa. When employees are engaged in their work, they feel good and live with a sense of purpose.
Employees with higher well-being are twice as likely to be engaged in their jobs, Gallup reports. Research by Limeade and Quantum Workplace shows these employees enjoy their teams more, are more loyal and recommend their company as a great place to work. Further, highly engaged employees with high levels of well-being are able to cope with higher levels of stress without succumbing to the symptoms of workplace burnout.
When employees have high well-being AND feel supported by their organization, its a win for everyone.
Be Aware Of Addictive Behavior Risk
Mental health experts note that when theres economic uncertainty, food insecurity, and isolation, people feel more stressed. Extra stress can lead to more anxiety and depression. In those circumstances, people whove had disordered eating or substance use issues may notice more symptoms.
In one small , 38 percent of people being treated for an eating disorder said they had an increase in symptoms during the early part of the pandemic.
The researchers of this study recommend that you:
- plan relaxing and enjoyable activities
- practice deep breathing
- keep a diary of positive experiences during the day
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Acceptance And Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is an evidence-based therapeutic approach that emphasizes processes such as psychological flexibility, mindfulness, acceptance, and values in assisting people in overcoming obstacles in their lives. ACT operates under the basic assumption that discomfort, self-doubt, suffering, and fear are a normal and unavoidable part of human experience. An individuals attempts to control or avoid painful experiences eventually lead to long-term suffering. The goal of ACT is not to eliminate certain parts of ones experience of life, but rather to learn how to experience life more fully, without as much struggle, and with vitality and commitment. Further, goals of ACT include reduction of suffering, increase of psychological flexibility, and an increase in ones opportunity to change their behavior and engage in committed action toward their valued goals and outcomes.
Take Unpaid Leave For Life Events
There are certain life events, either planned or unexpected, that are too important to miss.
While companies can provide sick days and paid personal days, people often have other life needs that arent covered by paid time off. These may be serious events and emergencies. There are also instances when employees need time to make life-changing decisions, such as moving to another state or going back to school. Unpaid leave can be time well spent for employees to balance the pressures in their personal lives while remaining on good terms with their employers.
These work-life balance tips are guidelines for keeping the stress of career and life ambitions in check. Those who can maintain stability on both fronts are better able to avoid burnout at work. By paying attention to meaningful aspects of their personal lives, people are better equipped to focus on excelling in their careers.
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Companies With Engaged Employees Are:
However, burnout can happen when highly engaged employees begin to have low well-being due to unmanaged personal and/or workplace stressors. In order to be burned out at work, an employee has to be highly engaged. The employee has to be all in and care deeply about their work in order to get to the point of feeling burned out. This means top-performing, highly engaged employees are at the highest risk for burnout.
Without support from their manager or organization, and/or the ability to resolve stressors for themselves, engaged employees can eventually burn out. And the consequences can be huge. Burnout results in low productivity and high employee turnover especially turnover of the most talented and productive people that employers cant afford to lose.
Decide To Make Your Health Your Number One Priority
I believe that illnesses are what happen to our bodies when weve been ignoring their messages for too long.
When you reach a point of extreme burnout, youre there because youve been overriding your bodys message to slow down and rest for too long. It sees no other way than to stop you dead in your tracks and make you listen.
It is imperative that you make the conscious decision that you are going to listen to your body, and make your health your number one priority from now on. Not just until you feel a bit better so that you can get back to your normal life but literally from now on.
This is a wake up call. Its time for you to create some fundamental shifts in your life that will see you honouring your health more on a daily basis. No more taking your health for granted its time for a real change.
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Burnout Vs Fatigue And Stress
Youd be wrong to think that burnout is just another form of fatigue or stress.
Stress is a physical and emotional response to changes in life. Your heart rate goes up, your pupils dilate, and your mind goes into hyperdriveor stalls, depending on how you see it. Youre meeting a tight deadline, your boss is breathing down your neck, or you are about to give a speech in front of a thousand people. Positive stress or even short-term stress can be empowering and motivating. Too much long-term stress, however, can lead to burnout.
Fatigue comes around when youre physically and mentally tired after working on a project, sitting in a long meeting, or solving a problem. You feel somewhat drained of energy and devoid of motivation, both physical and emotional. But its nothing to worry aboutits the kind of tiredness a nap takes care of in no time.
So, what makes burnout different from short-lived stresses and simple exhaustion? It is specifically an extended period of unaddressed and unmitigated stress that feels impossible to overcome.
Stress is about having too much pressure, while burnout is about not having enough physical, mental, and emotional bandwidth to deal with that pressure.
Being burnt out is more than tension under pressure or exhaustion due to overworkits feeling completely empty, mentally exhausted, totally unmotivated, and beyond caring.
How Companies Can Help Prevent Burnout
Burnout isnt just about the individual worker. Jennifer Moss, author of The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix Itputs it this way, Burnout is about the organization, not the people.
Employers may want to check in with their employees to understand their needs and follow through with healthy changes to the work environment. Warning signs of burnout to look for in an organization include lowered productivity levels, missed meetings, loss of enthusiasm, or dejected body language.
Organizational leaders may consider doing the following to ensure job burnout doesnt seep into their company:
- Make employees feel valued
- Create reasonable expectations for work hours
- Setting fair policies with regards to parental leave,
- Addressing systemic discrimination
- Creating an environment of collaboration and openness
Maintaining balance is also crucial, says Dr. Christina Maslach. When organizational leaders add new things to their employees plates, other things should be taken off.
Clear work-life boundaries and reasonable expectations go a long way toward ensuring workers experience minimal physical, mental, and emotional turmoil as they do their job.
Clear worklife boundaries and reasonable expectations go a long way toward ensuring workers experience minimal physical, mental, and emotional turmoil as they do their job.
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Effects Of Untreated Burnout Symptoms
If left untreated, burnout symptoms can lead to:
- Alienation from work-related activities. Individuals experiencing burnout view their jobs as increasingly stressful and frustrating. You may grow cynical about your working conditions and the people you work with. You might also emotionally distance yourself and begin to feel numb about your work.
- Emotional exhaustion. Over time, untreated burnout symptoms can cause you to feel emotionally drained and unable to cope.
- Reduced performance. Burnout affects everyday tasks at work, or in the home if your main job involves caring for family members. Individuals with burnout symptoms feel negative about tasks, have difficulty concentrating, and often lack creativity. Together, this results in reduced performance.
Types Of Burnout Recovery
Recovery is different for all of us because everybody has a different relationship with stress. You should use different recovery techniques depending on the situation.
Once youve identified a burnout stressor or trigger, you can start looking at the different recovery types and move forward.
Some people are very physically affected by burnout. Others will experience purely psychological or emotional symptoms.
Here are three common recovery types and what they can look like.
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The Difference Between Stress And Burnout
Burnout may be the result of unrelenting stress, but it isnt the same as too much stress. Stress, by and large, involves too much: too many pressures that demand too much of you physically and mentally. However, stressed people can still imagine that if they can just get everything under control, theyll feel better.
Burnout, on the other hand, is about not enough. Being burned out means feeling empty and mentally exhausted, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. People experiencing burnout often dont see any hope of positive change in their situations. If excessive stress feels like youre drowning in responsibilities, burnout is a sense of being all dried up. And while youre usually aware of being under a lot of stress, you dont always notice burnout when it happens.
| Stress vs. Burnout |
| May make life seem not worth living. |
Tip : Reevaluate Your Priorities
Burnout is an undeniable sign that something important in your life is not working. Take time to think about your hopes, goals, and dreams. Are you neglecting something that is truly important to you? This can be an opportunity to rediscover what really makes you happy and to slow down and give yourself time to rest, reflect, and heal.
Set boundaries. Dont overextend yourself. Learn how to say no to requests on your time. If you find this difficult, remind yourself that saying no allows you to say yes to the commitments you want to make.
Take a daily break from technology. Set a time each day when you completely disconnect. Put away your laptop, turn off your phone, and stop checking email or social media.
Nourish your creative side. Creativity is a powerful antidote to burnout. Try something new, start a fun project, or resume a favorite hobby. Choose activities that have nothing to do with work or whatever is causing your stress.
Set aside relaxation time. Relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, and deep breathing activate the bodys relaxation response, a state of restfulness that is the opposite of the stress response.
Get plenty of sleep. Feeling tired can exacerbate burnout by causing you to think irrationally. Keep your cool in stressful situations by getting a good nights sleep.
Boost your ability to stay on task
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Tips To Get Through Pandemic Fatigue
Pandemic fatigue is real. Many of us are still emotionally and physically exhausted. We must reduce our expectations about what we can achieve or we risk burnout.
This is the advice given by clinical psychologist Valerie Ling, director of the Centre for Effective Living in Sydney, at a recent womens event for Anglican Deaconess Ministries.
With the pandemic and everything that weve been through our capabilities dont match our capacities quite as much anymore, explained Ling.
In my practice, Ive actually said to , bring your capacities down to 70 per cent now. Dont expect that you can write as many reports. Dont expect that you can make that many phone calls. I said to the practice manager, You will have to blind yourself by 70 per cent to all the things that are unwashed, unfinished, crooked pictures, etc.
Everybodys got to bring their capacity down and normalise that, even though youre probably capable of doing more. So readjust our expectations for ourselves, for our capacities.
Its like if you dont go and see the dentist and you put up with the cavity, eventually its going to lead to something way bigger. Valerie Ling, psychologist
While there is debate over exactly how to label the general malaise that many people are experiencing whether its pandemic fatigue, burnout, languishing or something else Ling says: It kind of doesnt really matter anymore. Lets just say weve been really, really tired.
Rest
Reflect
Replenish
Restore
Resourcing
Take An Actual Break To Reset Your Nervous System
There are likely a handful of things in your life that youve been engaging in that have been draining your metaphorical batteries for a while now. In order to earn your way back to a clean bill of health, you must begin by taking a proper break from the things that have been exhausting you.
Take a two week break from work. Start saying no to social events that drain you. Pass off your least favourite responsibilities to someone else for a while.
Yes, people will be disappointed with you. But your health comes first. Full stop.
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Dealing With Burnout While Working From Home
For many of us who are working from home during the pandemic, the blurred boundaries between home and work have made it much harder to switch and realise when we are headed for burnout.
In fact, a recent study by Monster found that 69% of employees working from home are experiencing symptoms of burnout. Its unsurprising when you consider how many of us are juggling busy work schedules, video calls, home-schooling and household chores everyday.
Build A Welcoming Workplace
As staff begin returning to the workplace after COVID, a positive working environment is essential. It redresses a common cause of employee burnout and helps rebuild workplace morale. 65% of employers claim that employee morale has been a problem during the pandemic.
Back to business doesnt just mean a return to the old ways. Consider the opportunities for improving efficiency and collaboration a reopened office allows. Introduce breakout spaces and pods for informal meetings. Incorporate bright colors and plentiful space to inspire fresh thinking.
More importantly, foster an environment where employees feel they can ask questions and take concerns to managers or the HR team.
Action: Audit your current workplace setup. What improvements can be made to increase its appeal, over and above the health and safety precautions being taken? How can some of the working from home environment be incorporated ?
Addressing employee burnout and fatigue must be a priority for Human Resources Managers this year. Focus messaging on how to form healthy mental habits and establish a positive working environment.
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Establish A Daily Routine
With work-life boundaries blurred, it can be difficult to put up strict divisions between your job and personal life. But Dr. Borland says establishing a healthy daily routine for sleep, diet,and non-work time is crucial. Its important to say, Okay, Ive put in a hard days work. Now I need to press stop, and I need to attend to social aspects of my life, things that are just fun and relaxing, he explains.
Creating and maintaining boundaries does take work, however. Setting an alarm to signal when its time to stop working is one helpful technique. Writing down your to-do list is another technique that can help make what you need to get done clearer. When you write things down, you break them down into small, achievable goals, says Dr. Borland. Thats a wonderful way to approach things. You can cross those things off during the day.
Ask For A Flexible Schedule
The average person juggles many work and life responsibilities on a daily basis. If management approves, a flexible work schedule can make a big difference in someone burning out on the job and achieving work-life balance.
For example, employees who can start work later in the morning will be able to take their children to school every day. Offering flexible start and end of day work hours may not be difficult to coordinate, though the impact on an employees personal life can be significant.
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Heres How You Can Regain Balance
The reason why Ive mentioned self-care repeatedly throughout this article is that I want you to understand how important it is to care for yourself before caring for others.
Whether youre working in a field where illness and suffering are part of the job or taking care of someone close whos going through a rough patch, dont lose yourself in their struggles.
Its Ok to Take a Break!
As a caregiver, your job is to provide compassion and support. The people you care for rely on you for physical, medical, or emotional assistance.
In such circumstances, its easy to take on full responsibility for other peoples well-being and lose sight of your needs.
And even if you feel emotionally drained, theres something thats keeping you from prioritizing yourself.
Maybe you feel like theres no energy left to care for yourself, or perhaps you feel like you dont deserve it simply because the other person has it worse than you.
In my experience, guilt is often the reason why caregivers refuse to distance themselves from all the illness and suffering they witness day in, day out.
Whenever youre exhausted but feel too guilty to take a break, ask yourself this: How will I be able to help the person I care about if I dont give myself time to recharge?
Taking some time for yourself doesnt make you a selfish person it just makes you human.
