It’s a massive topic in the news right now that many public sector staff are on strike. With a shortage of staff in key sectors like Health and Social Care, our public sector heroes are burnt out and overworked.
Given the impending recession and post-Brexit immigration laws, the challenges of understaffing and stagnating wages aren’t going away any time soon. Bearing this in mind, we need to begin to understand how to tackle burnout in our workplaces and support our employees through this time of crisis.
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What is employee burnout?
We’ve all experienced stress in our lifetime and are familiar with the physical health effects. The high cost of living is just one example of many stressors that Britons currently face in their daily lives. Stress is typically a difficult but temporary state that leads to overactivity in our daily lives as we try to deal with the stressor(s).
Stressors in the workplace may include:
- Too many meetings
- Deadlines
- High workload
- Lack of career direction
- Fear over job security
However, burnout is slightly different. Burnout is a long-term emotional state that comes about from chronic exposure to stress. At this point, we completely lose our energy and motivation to complete tasks, and may become completely detached from our problems.
It’s typically a workplace problem and prolonged burnout may even lead to worse long term health conditions such as depression and heart disease.
Many public sector employees are having to take on extra workload due to staffing challenges. Our own performance marketing data demonstrates that active job seekers in social work are taking to Google to seek out roles with smaller workloads.
Therefore, it’s unsurprising that staff such as nurses and teachers are taking to the picket lines as they lose the motivation to provide the public services our country relies on.
What are the signs of burnout?
It’s not difficult to predict that employee burnout is going to cause further retention challenges in 2023. Unhappy employees will eventually look for roles where they will feel happier and more fulfilled. The first step to addressing the issue and reducing turnover is recognising the signs in your own employees.
These are some of the main symptoms to look out for:
- Exhaustion
- Withdrawal from colleagues
- Procrastination and lower productivity
- Irritability and more argumentative with colleagues
- Higher absenteeism/illness
- Changes in working patterns (starting late, finishing early)
- Emotional changes – feelings of failure, detachment or dissatisfaction
So now we know what a typical case of burnout looks like, how can we fight it?
Tackling employee burnout
The following tips will help you to support staff in your organisation who are experiencing burnout, and prevent it from reoccurring in the future:
1 Create an open culture
First, create an open and honest workplace culture where staff feel comfortable to discuss stressors. Conduct anonymous pulse surveys of your employees, and do it regularly. A lot of workplaces conduct annual or quarterly surveys.
However, the length of time it takes to collect and collate this feedback means that senior staff have little power to react to problems in real time. Use feedback to quickly address negativities within the organisation.
A poor internal Employer Value Proposition (EVP) makes current staff feel despondent. There may be no magic wand we can wave to compete with a private sector salary offering– but creating a more positive workplace can help the talent you already have to feel supported.
Collecting continuous feedback from your staff will create a culture where employees see that their needs are important.
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A further way to develop a culture which focuses on your employees’ needs is to make an active effort to recognise staff achievements. Through activities such as awards events and staff bulletins within your department, you can remind your employees their hard work is recognised.
When someone is experiencing burnout and under a lot of work stress it’s easy to feel like a faceless cog in the machine. Sharing great feedback will help your staff recognise the value of their own work. Encouraging your employees to celebrate small wins together will also remind them that they are working collectively towards the same goals of making a difference.
3 Start a dialogue
Talk to the staff you line manage when you notice the symptoms of burnout. Don’t ignore it. It could be nothing, but you will never know if you don’t ask. It may be that your employee needs reassurance they are doing a good job. Or maybe they need support with managing their workload.
Opening a dialogue with your employee can help you to identify challenges as soon as possible. If someone is struggling to meet their targets, are there tools or software that can help them to plan their time better?
Also make sure you establish and reinforce boundaries:
- Can tasks your employee is working on be left to another day?
- Is there someone extra workload can be delegated to?
- Are your staff using their annual leave?
- If they have annual leave, is there adequate support to cover their work?
As the pandemic has moved Britons into a culture of remote work it can become very easy to work overtime as the lines between work and our personal lives are blurred. But working loads of extra hours is only bound to head in one direction – burnout.
4 Implement wellness action plans
If you have identified that your employee is burnt out, the next step is to create an action plan to address the problem. This will be unique to the employee and allow them to lay out a guide with you about how you can work together to reduce burnout.
Some points an action plan addressing burnout could include are:
- Identify what stressors lead to this employee’s burnout
- Identify how these stressors impact the employee’s work
- An agreed set of stress mitigations (e.g. task management tools)
- Identify a person or mentor the employee feels safe to approach in the organisation when stressed
- Individual warning signs to look out for
- An agreed set of actions the employee can take to encourage their own wellness
If you’re struggling with where to start, you could check some examples of wellness action plans such as this template from Mind for inspiration.
5 Wellbeing programmes
Having an organisation-level wellbeing programme in place is a fantastic first step towards mitigating stressors before the stage of burnout occurs. Not only will this make your current employees more productive, it will also create a fantastic talking point for your EVP.
A wellbeing programme could include actions such as supporting employees to practice mindfulness, exercise and maintain their health. You could also reduce isolation by creating time for employees to socialise and befriend each other.
For some employees remote working can become lonely and monotonous, further exacerbating the stress that leads to burnout. Try introducing activities such as coffee roulette on your video software to help simulate water-cooler chat, or implement department-wide social activities at the office.
Takeaways
Burnout is a topic on everyone’s minds as we consume news that more and more staff are striking on a regular basis. Although the cost-of-living crisis is a large contributor to the country’s current discontent, addressing burnout goes beyond salary.
Creating a workplace culture where your staff feel supported to do their jobs even through the most challenging time periods will help to prevent burnout from occurring to begin with. And it’s important for us to recognise when employees have already become burnt out and address the problem before it leads to retention challenges.