5 Steps to Talking About Burnout at Work
Whether we’re acknowledging it aloud or not, the burnout crisis is already here. Last year, half of millennials quit their jobs due to mental health reasons and that was before the impact of Covid-19.
Undoubtedly, burnout is a loaded and scary term that can be difficult to bring up at work. But if left unaddressed, burnout can severely impact both our physical and mental health. Opening the “can of worms” might feel like the impossible task, but the sooner you bring this up with your colleagues the healthier your culture will be in the long term.
The good news is, you don’t need a budget to take the first step in reducing burnout and prioritising mental health. Here’s a starting guide with 5 steps to follow as a manager or employee (you may be more influential than what you think).
Step 1: Clearly understand what burnout is and isn’t
A stressful day or week doesn’t mean you’re burnt out. Burnout is the result of a longer cyclical phenomenon caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It manifests itself as emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion.
When you’re experiencing a stressful moment, you react by being overly engaged, hyperactive, and show reactive emotions. When you’ve crossed the line to burnout, you become disengaged, negative about your job, your emotions are more distant, and you may start showing symptoms of depression. Knowing the difference is important
When you decide to talk to your employees or colleagues about it, make sure you lead with a definition and provide parallels between stress and burnout.
Step 2: Host a burnout Q&A or virtual town hall
Gather a group of colleagues (if not everyone) to talk about burnout and overall mental health at the company. If you’re a leader and can organise a virtual town hall, it will show everyone else how seriously you take this topic. If you’re not in a managerial position, suggest an action plan to your boss or organise an informal conversation with your colleagues.
Here’s a proposed agenda:
State of affairs: Acknowledgement of uncertainty and the lack of a “new normal” (we really still don’t know how the world will look like next year). During uncertain times, checking in on our mental health is even more important to our overall health and the company’s culture.
Relevant facts: Link between uncertainty and mental health issues, including risk of burnout.
Between 60% and 75% professionals (depending on the industry) report they are burnt out.
Anxiety is up by 5%.
Loneliness is up by 11%.
While most of us are working more, our productivity is lower.
Burnout levels are worse for working parents, anyone impacted by compassion fatigue, and those suffering from added financial stress.
Personal assessment: Encourage everyone to take a burnout assessment to have a better understanding of their burnout levels.
Open forum: If not right now, think about a time when you experienced symptoms of burnout. This is a workplace syndrome that’s way more common than what most people think, so sharing a personal story will emphasise that you understand what they’re going through. Ask if anyone else wants to participate too. An open forum will lessen the feeling of loneliness and will help your colleagues feel comfortable asking for help when they need it.
Collective action plan: Burnout is multidimensional, complex, driven both by the individual’s resilience, cumulative stress, and context, as well as company’s practices and organisational design. While it’s hard to completely identify and eliminate all negative variables in the short term, it is possible to address some obvious ones. Here are some ideas to consider:
A new prioritisation template or adjustments to the existing process (especially, making sure that everyone has a saying in their own priorities).
Time off to figure out specific situations at home (even if it’s one day it can really help everyone take a step back and reorganise some tasks at home).
Clarity about valuable traits and expectations from employees. This is important to remove the element of fear that’s currently aggravating burnout. For example, some individuals report they have to constantly be online to show their worth. It’s important to demystify such misconceptions about what’s expected of them and what’s not.
30 mental health minutes per day during work hours (formally on the calendar). This can be used to meditate, leverage music therapy, audio journal while on a walk, or doing breathing exercises.
Allocate 5 minutes of weekly meetings to check in on each other’s mental wellbeing and share any new learnings or resources anyone has found helpful.
Step 3: Set up a communication channel
Set up a group chat or Slack channel to discuss this topic and, if you don’t have a budget, take the lead sharing some free resources.
Here are a few ideas:
Step 4: Decide on key dates
Set time on the calendar for important follow ups. This will help everyone think about mental health as a new company priority vs a one-off conversation. Remember the only way to solve this is a collective approach, so you need everyone thinking about potential solutions and ideas to improve motivation and wellbeing.
Here are some suggestions:
A prioritisation meeting (could be 1:1s or within groups)
A follow up virtual town hall one month later to discuss improvements and further adjustments needed
Individual burnout assessments 3 months later
Step 5: Checks and balances
A town hall, a communication channel, and specific changes will help you set in motion a journey towards workplace wellbeing and lower burnout. It is proven that higher motivation and a better state of everyone’s mental health contributes to better productivity. So, when focusing on wellness, everybody wins.
However, anecdotally we’ve seen that some individuals would also misinterpret the concepts of self-care and wellbeing to an extent of reducing the effort and attention to their work. This usually comes as a result of not being motivated by the job itself, but in those cases it means there isn’t a fit between the individual’s expectations and their role. This fact shouldn’t be scary because it presents an opportunity to have an honest discussion about it. The productivity of an employee in such a situation would be lower anyway, so re-assigning them to a more suitable role would benefit everyone.
For more statistics and suggested actions, download Journify’s new comprehensive report on pre and post lockdown workplace burnout.
