How to Combat Employee Burnout in 2024?

Written by Stephanie Fortune

Hi, My name is Stephanie! I am passionate about helping small and medium-sized businesses empower themselves and their employees while working to achieve their strategic goals! By reviewing your unique business needs, we implement Payroll, Insurance, and HR solutions that are right for you!

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February 7, 2024

Do you feel that a lot of your employees seem exhausted and disinterested even after getting a hike or a promotion?

Any employee who joins an organisation full of energy and passion can become a victim of depression due to an overpowering job load or ill-treatment of the team lead. Yes, these incidences are widespread and caused because of severe employee burnout.

A study has agreed that workplace stress upsets the psychological health of employees and leads to burnout. It not only impacts adversely on mental health but also the physical and emotional well-being of employees. Keep reading to learn how to encounter employee burnout to ensure the long-term success of an organisation.

How to Prevent Employee Burnout?

Below, we have discussed some effective approaches to eliminate burnout and encourage a healthy workplace:

Elicit Employee Feedback

Being an employer, you need to ensure that your employees are treated cordially. Sometimes day-to-day workload can lead to burnout. Under such circumstances, if you find burnout does start to manifest, you can meet with your employee in order to figure out the core of the problem.

While often the solution is simple, at times it can be quite complicated. You cannot reduce employee burnout unless you address their problem.

Create Reasonable Workloads

If employees are allocated an unreasonable number of tasks, they may get panicked and end up making many mistakes which in turn diminishes their efficiency. To avoid this, being an employer, you should formulate a proper work plan and distribute the assignments among your employees accordingly.

Engage Supportive Supervisors

Another effective way to reduce employee burnout and improve an organisation’s productivity is by engaging compassionate supervisors to monitor employee performance. As soon as they find an employee’s performance is dropping, they will inform higher authorities that they are experiencing burnout and need assistance.

Provide Flexible Scheduling

Consider providing flexible working time for employees so that they can complete their assigned tasks comfortably while having a work-life balance. Doing so, also lets them choose the best-suited work hours that fulfil their professional and personal needs.

What are the Major Reasons Causing Employee Burnout?

To eliminate employee burnout, you must understand the leading reasons behind it. Most employers think it is caused due to unmanageable work pressure. Even though it is also a major factor leading to employee burnout, it is not the only cause. There are some other reasons for this. These include:

Lack of Support from Leaders

Leaders play a vital role in an employee’s success or failure. Having a good and supportive leader is always encouraging for employees and vice versa. Leaders unavailable to assist their employees or providing unclear instructions are responsible for affecting the mental well-being of employees.

Unfair Treatment

Often there is some bias among leaders regarding the allocation of tasks, resulting in additional strain for employees who fear to say “no” to cope with unnecessary work pressure that is beyond their capacity.

Furthermore, employees getting bullied or harassed by seniors for their mistakes can also experience intense levels of stress.

Improper Work-Life Balance

Another noteworthy factor causing employee burnout is their desperate struggle with work-life balance, where employees find themselves rushing to handle various commitments, even after office hours or on weekends. Besides, the pressure to answer texts or emails from bosses or clients outside work hours can be highly stressful.

Lack of Autonomy

Poor autonomy in workforces signifies a situation where people have limited freedom because of the decision-making supremacy of their leaders. They are extorted to follow stringent rules, adhere to challenging processes, and experience repeated negative feedback from superiors for making mistakes.

If an employee is unable to determine their schedule, workload, or assignments, they are expected to experience burnout. Furthermore, the extreme pressure to deliver assignments under fixed deadlines can also cause stress.

Unclear Job Expectations

Another common reason affecting the mental health of employees and causing them to get burned out is inadequate guidance or unclear job expectations.

If you are unclear about the expectations of your leader, or if your job role has changed from what you expected at the time of joining, you are likely to feel uncomfortable in that environment and more likely to get burned out.

Final Words

From the above discussions, you are aware of employee burnout and the main reasons behind it. To be precise, it is essential to retain employee well-being in order to maintain an encouraging and hearty working ambience. This has a positive influence on the company’s productivity, employee retention, and overall organisation performance. If you are facing difficulty in incorporating the above-mentioned strategies to curb employee burnout, do not hesitate to contact us. We offer professional support at a reasonable price to boost your company’s work environment. For further information, read our previous blogs.