Burnout can sneak up on the best of us, leaving us drained and disconnected. In this post, we’ll share simple but powerful tips to help your team beat burnout, so everyone can stay motivated and feel their best at work.
What is burnout?
Burnout is a state of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion caused by chronic stress. When you experience burnout, you may feel overwhelmed and unable to meet the constant demands of your job. Burnout can lead to a decrease in motivation, productivity, and overall well-being.
Burnout is expensive, contributing to between $125 and $190 billion a year in U.S. healthcare spending. It has been connected to emotional issues (depression, insomnia, psychological distress) and can even lead to physical health issues like colds, flu, and heart disease.
Burnout affects the quality of our work, impacts turnover, and negatively impacts relationships.
How big is the burnout problem? Pretty big.
- 77% of people surveyed in a recent Deloitte study admitted to experiencing burnout in their current job.
- 60% of tech workers have felt burned out.
- 84% of millennials report burnout.
It’s clear that the effects of burnout are serious. That’s why it’s important to know how to spot the signs of burnout and stay proactive. If you want to know whether you’re currently suffering from burnout, consider self-assessing by using the Maslach Burnout Inventory.
Identify the signs of burnout
Herbert Freudenberger and Gail North left their mark on the field of psychiatry by identifying the 12 stages of burnout. Others have simplified the stages into fewer phases, but the core concept remains the same: burnout is a gradual process that can lead to serious consequences — and even physical symptoms — if left unchecked.
According to the World Health Organization, burnout is characterized by three dimensions:
- Feelings of energy depletion or physical exhaustion
- Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativity or cynicism related to one’s job
- Reduced professional efficacy
Although the external symptoms of burnout will differ from person to person, burnout looks like
- Having less energy
- Reduced connection
- Lower effectiveness
How to avoid burnout
Preventing burnout requires proactive measures to manage stress and maintain work-life balance. We become less likely to suffer from burnout when we:
- Set boundaries: Establish clear limits on work hours and avoid taking work home. Don't be afraid to ask for help from a manager or co-worker.
- Prioritize self-care: A combination of frequent exercise, healthy diet, and good sleep habits can make a world of difference. You may be surprised by how much better you feel when you make time for personal health and get enough sleep.
- Take breaks: Step away from work throughout the day to recharge. And never underestimate the power of a good day off.
- Master mindfulness and relaxation techniques: Practice deep breathing or meditation to reduce stress. Positive habits like journaling can also be great for your overall mental health.
Remember, prioritizing your well-being is essential for preventing burnout and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
How to recover from burnout at work
Recovering from job burnout requires that you take steps to reduce stress, exhaustion, and other health problems.
- Lean on loved ones for support: Their encouragement and caregiving can play a crucial role in your healing process.
- Re-evaluate schedule: Use an AI-powered scheduling assistant like Clockwise to identify areas where you can reduce meetings and increase Focus Time. Developing effective time management strategies can also help you to overcome procrastination.
- Seek professional help: Consider seeking guidance from a therapist or counselor to develop coping strategies and manage stress. Those who are suffering from health conditions related to burnout should reach out to their healthcare providers immediately.
Remember, recovery takes time and self-compassion. Prioritize your well-being and make necessary changes to create a healthier and more sustainable work environment.
How to help your team avoid burnout
Burnout can have a devastating impact on employees and organizations. If you want to proactively combat burnout and foster a healthy workplace, you should:
- Regularly check in with team members
- Identify warning signs
- Implement targeted strategies
Let's dive deeper into these strategies, and discuss how they can create a more supportive work environment.
Listen to your team
Listening to your team is so critical because there’s not a one-size-fits-all magic bullet for burnout.
Research published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review found that workers are most likely to burn out when there’s a mismatch in one of six key areas:
- Workload
- Reward
- Fairness
- Control
- Community
- Values
For a deeper dive into each of these six areas, download our Burnout Prevention Kit.
Tailor your approach with burnout prevention strategies
Using a tailored approach is essential because solving the wrong problem can only make the problem worse.
Here are a few ideas for tackling each of the six main work-related causes of burnout, but you’ll find even more inside the Burnout Prevention Kit:
- Workload: Ensure your team has enough Focus Time by reviewing Team Analytics in Clockwise.
- Reward: Recognize your team’s effort and praise their achievements. Give kudos in team meetings and express gratitude for a job well done.
- Fairness: Create more transparency around who gets recognized, and incorporate different perspectives from across the organization.
- Control: Allow employees to work flexible hours and make sure they have time to prioritize their own needs. Clockwise makes it easy to schedule across different availability and time zones when your team sets meeting hours and working hours.
- Community: Create water cooler style conversations using an app like Donut.
- Values: Reiterate the company values. Promote a meaningful cause, and make sure it aligns with those values.
Burnout happens. But when you know how to spot the signs, listen to your team to uncover the root cause, and tailor your approach, you’re on your way to helping your team beat burnout.
How to prevent burnout in remote workforce
Remote work can introduce unique stressors, such as blurred work-life boundaries and social isolation. Recognizing these challenges is crucial for preventing burnout in remote teams.
- Encourage regular communication: When you miss out on the day-to-day social perks of being in a real-life office, you need to be thoughtful in how you make up for what team members are missing. Foster virtual connection through team meetings, one-on-one check-ins, and social activities.
- Set clear expectations: In a world where employees never leave work, it’s important to clearly define when the workday ends. Establish clear guidelines for work hours, availability, and response times to promote work-life balance.
- Provide resources for mental health: Offer access to mental health resources, such as time with a licensed therapist or stress management programs. Make sure that you regularly check in with team members — don’t just make sure they’re taking care of their work, make sure they’re taking care of themselves.
- Recognize achievements: Celebrate successes and acknowledge contributions to boost morale and maintain motivation. Team members lose incentive when they feel like their victories fall through the cracks, but if they’re properly recognized, it can be a whole different story.
Check out our article on sustainable remote work best practices for more helpful tips. When you prioritize communication, set clear expectations, and foster a supportive environment, you help remote teams thrive (and minimize the risk of burnout).
FAQ
How can you support your team through reward-based burnout when you have no control over pay, promotion or bonuses?
Identify opportunities to give recognition to team members beyond pay, promotion or bonuses. Sometimes there are other methods of recognition that could be used besides compensation that can be tailored based on the individual.
Examples could include:
- Upgrading their job title
- Improving their working environment with new equipment or furniture
- Providing additional time off
- Allowing more flexible hours
- Recognizing the individual in a team setting
- Creating a shout-out during a meeting, on Slack, or on social media
- Nominating them for external awards like 40 Under 40 or industry-specific awards
How can I help co-workers who are feeling burned out because so much of their time is spent supporting team projects instead of their personal projects?
When a team member feels that they don’t have control of their time because it’s been stretched thin due to collaborative projects, burnout can set in. Here are some recommendations you can provide to the burned out team member:
- Inventory your existing projects. Encourage team members to do an inventory of all of their current projects. Sometimes when projects are spread across digital workspaces, it can be difficult to get a complete visual of everything on our plate. Creating a project inventory can be as simple as a handwritten list on a notepad or a dry erase board. This inventory creates more visibility and clarity around current obligations and time commitments.
- Understand where your time is going. Open up your calendar and do a visual sweep of the past week or two. As you review your calendar, pay attention to which projects are taking most of your time in the form of meetings and time blocks. You just might find that you’re spending more time than you realized on your personal projects. Scanning your 1:1 Dashboard and Team Analytics in Clockwise can also give a great bird’s eye view of where your time is going. Or feel free to ask scheduling questions directly to Prism, a first-of-its-kind intelligent calendar.
- Analyze time spent on projects vs. your project responsibilities. Now that you have visibility of where you time has been going, ask yourself the following questions:some text
- How much time should I be spending on each of these projects?
- Based on my role within each project, am I spending an appropriate amount of time, or am I devoting too much time to a project in which I am playing a minor role?
- Am I being reactive with my time, or am I proactively planning when I’ll work on each project?
When we’re working on a collaborative project, it can be very easy to unintentionally slip into reactive mode. A project that we’re meant to play a contributing role is suddenly taking up all of our time. This is Parkinson’s Law in action.
Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time allotted.
When you don’t set boundaries, or proactively use time blocking to set aside time for your work on specific projects, your collaborative projects begin to creep into all of your existing open space. This can make it feel like all of your time is going to team projects.
The solution? Use time blocking in conjunction with your Clockwise Focus Time to proactively allocate your time to each of your projects.
Start each week by creating time blocks in your calendar for your high-priority projects so you’ve got a visual reminder of how you will spend your time.
Sometimes my personal day-to-day responsibilities stress me out more than my work responsibilities. How can we apply anti-burnout practices to our personal lives?
We’ve got so many responsibilities in our roles as professionals, but we all have personal lives, too. If you find your personal responsibilities are causing stress, think about what’s going right when it comes to managing your work responsibilities. Are your work projects clearly defined and stored in a project management system, like Asana, with roles, responsibilities and deadlines captured?
We encourage you to apply what’s working in your professional life to your personal life.
One of the reasons why we tend to feel so stressed is because we’re trying to remember everything, or keep everything in our heads. David Allen, the creator of the Getting Things Done productivity method said, “Our minds are for having ideas, not holding them.”
Any opportunity you have to get things out of your head and onto paper or into a project management system will relieve that pressure to keep everything in your head.
Creating checklists — even for your everyday routines — can also help relieve that pressure to remember everything.
And remember, you don’t have to suffer alone. You can always reach out to friends and family members to ask for help.
How can we navigate a situation in which a people leader may not realize that they promote a culture of burnout?
Unfortunately this is all too common in organizations. Chances are you’re not the only person who has recognized this, and it’s highly likely that others on your team feel the same way.
The way to approach this situation is going to vary based on your position within the company. If you’re a manager, have a dialogue with your team members and lead by example. Show up as a culture leader to your team and take care of them. Then, look upward. What conversation can you have with your supervisor about your concerns? Providing specific examples of how this leadership style is affecting your team, can be helpful in the short term.
Sometimes this leader has to have an epiphany on their own, and that’s not something that can always be orchestrated. Often they have to come to terms with high turnover and losing valuable team members to recognize there’s a problem and that they are the problem.
Regardless, be an example of the type of culture you’d like to see, support your team, and begin the conversation with your supervisor. By offering solutions you can begin to make a change. A small turn in the right direction can lead to the tipping point that can make all the difference.
Download our Burnout Prevention Kit here!
About the author
Judy Tsuei is a Simon & Schuster author, speaker, and podcast host. She has been writing for Clockwise for several years while also being featured in MindBodyGreen, BBC Travel, Fast Company, Hello Giggles, and more. As the founder of Wild Hearted Words, a creative marketing agency for global brands, Judy is also a mentor with the Founder Institute, the world's largest pre-seed accelerator. Judy advocates for mental and emotional health on her popular podcast, F*ck Saving Face. Follow along her journey at WildHeartedWords.com.
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