How to Prevent Employee Burnout and Help Your Team Thrive

Burnout among employees is on the rise, and it poses a huge problem to employers and employees alike as it negatively affects businesses. For employees, job burnout could mean feeling physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted from one's job. This work-related stress can affect an employee's job performance and sense of personal identity. It can even affect their home life. 

For employers, on the other hand, burnout can affect a business's success and reputation because the employees are not performing like they should.

This article will offer some tips on how to prevent employee burnout and ways to combat it if your employees are experiencing burnout. 

What Causes Burnout?

The cause of burnout varies depending on the employee, but some common factors include: 

• Uncertainty with responsibilities: When employees are unsure of their responsibilities at work, this can create confusion and lead to employees performing tasks outside of their job description. This results in time and energy wasted. 
• Being overworked: Employees who are overworked, either by having an excessive workload or working too much overtime, can become exhausted and bored with their work.
• Feeling pressured: Pressure in the workplace threatens employees' psychological safety at work and often leads to stress. Job pressure can create mental exhaustion among employees, contributing to their burnout. 
• Lack of support: When employees lack support from their supervisors and receive little to no feedback, they may feel underappreciated. This lack of recognition and belonging can also lead to mental burnout.

3 Ways To Prevent Employee Burnout

Keeping your employees happy and engaged in their work life and addressing their mental health and well-being concerns are essential to increase employee engagement and motivation. To keep employees engaged and motivated, you must learn ways to prevent employee burnout. 

Let Your Employees Recover 

Recovery time is essential. When employees are pushed too hard, it can create burnout and make them unproductive. Instead of piling an unreasonable amount of time-sensitive tasks on one employee, make sure to adjust workloads and avoid unrealistic expectations. 

Create a Positive Work Culture 

A positive work culture helps create job satisfaction and improves the well-being of your employees. It also fosters a good relationship between employees and employers. 

To create a positive work culture, you should:  

• Listen to your employees and consider their feedback
• Build rapport with your employees based on your organization's core values 
• Encourage social interaction between employees 

Train Your Managers

Managers, supervisors, and team leaders must receive proper training and resources to identify, prevent, and combat burnout. After all, it is these positions that can influence how your employees feel about the work they do. Your leaders must know how to establish clear expectations, communicate and support their employees, and remove any barriers or stressors. 

3 Ways To Help Employees Overcome Burnout

Identifying employee burnout causes and cures is not enough to solve the problem of employee burnout. You must implement ways to help your employees overcome burnout. Here are three ways to consider:

Encourage Work-Life Balance 

A good work-life balance is essential to combating workplace burnout. Employees should be given room to breathe and time to enjoy their personal life. Your employees should be given time to spend with their loved ones, so they can come back to work refreshed. 

A proper work-life balance improves your employees' physical and mental health. As leaders, promote a good work-life balance by practicing it yourself and encouraging your employees to follow.

Promote Using Vacation Time or PTO 

Some employees may not use their vacation time or PTO as much as they should because of their workload and because they feel obligated to their employers. Encourage your employees to take advantage of their vacation time and PTO. You can do this by reminding them when their PTO is set to expire or gently encouraging them to take some time off.

Offer Assistance Programs 

If your employees are experiencing burnout, now might be the time to incorporate some assistance programs into your workplace. You can provide your employees with self-care resources like gym memberships, mental health counseling, or on-site yoga classes. 

You can also offer them employee assistance programs (EAPs). EAPs are intervention programs created to help employees with personal issues that can impact their work performance. These programs aim to assist employees with problems such as alcohol and substance abuse by offering counseling or nurse advice lines. 

EAPs can also provide employees assistance in child and elder care, financial and legal problems, traumatic events, and more. EAPs are typically offered to employees but may also extend to an employee’s spouse, children, and other household members.

These assistance programs will show your employees that you care about and value them. 

It’s essential to take steps to prevent employee burnout before it occurs. Once burnout happens, it can be challenging to pull your employees out of the rut. Burnout can lead to disengaged employees and, worst case scenario, poor employee retention. Instead of constantly filling positions, you should aim to keep your current employees by ensuring they're happy and engaged in their work and addressing burnout issues. 

iHire is here to help. Check out our Resource Center to learn more about employee burnout causes and cures.