How to Identify and Prevent Employee Burnout

Regardless of the proficiency of your workforce, there comes a time when they begin to feel tired. If one or more of your team members show signs of employee burnout, know that it is time they badly need some time out. Usually, employees working in a fast-paced work environment feel tired and exhausted early. The same is not the case where employees work in a relaxed atmosphere. Perhaps this tells us that employee burnout has something to do with the burden of work. Indeed, the responsibility of work is one of the reasons, but there are many others.

Why is preventing Burnout important?

Before we find ways employees feel burned out at work, it would help to identify why this happens in the first place. Businesses set monthly, quarterly annual targets for teams. To achieve these, managers ask and expect their teams to work their hearts out. Employees respond by pushing their performance envelope all the time.

Maintaining this pace for some time makes them feel tired and mentally exhausted. Such employees take some time off work. They have difficulty paying attention to work, even during duty hours. Good managers can pinpoint who may be experiencing burnout. They try ways to prevent burnout using various techniques. Managers often try the following to identify and avoid employee burnout:

Deploy employee Wellness programs

It is a norm for employees to feel isolated and overworked. Managers have a responsibility to make every employee feel comfortable in the workplace. To ensure employees feel at ease, managers must make them feel comfortable. One of the ways they can achieve that is by coming up with employee wellness programs. They may need approval from higher-ups. Once approved, the manager must announce the program is in place, and employees can benefit from it. Wellness programs may include holidays, dinners and events, bonuses and prizes for achievers, etc.

Maintain work-life Balance

Employees tend to feel tired during the day, which is normal. However, they are done and dusted when you see them tired and bored and feel sleepy at the beginning of the day. Managers can cheer up such employees using various methods, including a proper work-life balance. Try not to push employees and make them work long hours every other day.

Request them to leave for home and do their work for the day during duty hours only. It will improve their efficiency and give them enough hours to enjoy quality time with family. Not to mention, it will reduce employee burnout considerably.

Facilitate work at Home occasionally

With Covid-19 protocols in place, working from home is integral to every workplace. As a friendly gesture, allow your team members to work from home from time to time. Working from home will make them feel relaxed, knowing they can work from the comfort of their home. It will save them money and time without reducing their work efficiency. On the contrary, there have been notable cases where employees notably improved during WFH.

Communicate with your Employees

A principal reason employees feel exhausted at work is a lack of communication. They know the targets but often experience barricades when meeting them. Proper communication can effectively eliminate many barriers, including lack of communication. Managers must maintain frequent communication with employees to make them feel at ease. Discussing performance-related issues can also relax your employees and help them refocus on the targets at hand.

Set realistic targets and Performance goals

Employees feel burned out in many ways, especially when they have unrealistic targets to achieve. An employee who is unable to complete his monthly targets can feel discouraged. Such employees suffer from issues like low esteem and lackluster performance. Missing targets become a norm for such employees, and managers won’t like that. As someone who understands employee behavior, it is best to discuss their targets with your employees and make them realistic.

It will let them reach targets easily. Ask them not to make it a practice to miss monthly targets and motivate them by reminding them how they achieved targets last time. It will encourage them to an extent and allow them to develop strategies to reach targets more efficiently.