Businesses have experienced a dramatic bounceback since they’ve recovered from the hardships of COVID-19. Many professional services businesses have seen huge increases in transactional business and client engagement over the last 12 months which has boosted sales and profits. 

However, with the tumultuous business climate and state border lockdowns, labour shortages caused people to jump ship to other businesses with more relaxed policies and staff were being poached in promises of sexier roles and bigger pay. Many experienced staff were lured by these opportunities and resigned, leaving others to pick up the slack and work twice as hard and with twice as much pressure.

Teams are now working double time to meet client and regulatory demands, causing burnout. Burnout can affect more than just a day’s work, it can cause problems mentally, physically and emotionally both your employees’ professional and personal lives.

In order to stop team burnout, you need to be able to recognise the signs and take action before your team becomes unproductive and stress themselves out to the point of wanting to resign, as well. You want good employee morale and to cultivate an uplifting team culture that promotes health and camaraderie. 

What is burnout?

Recently, workplace burnout has been recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as an “occupational phenomenon” that arises out of constant stress from the workplace that isn’t being successfully managed. Some of the signs of burnout include:

• Exhaustion
• Negative feelings towards one’s job
• Reduced productivity and efficacy 
• Physical aches and pains
• Emotional exhaustion
• Avoiding work-related activities

Burnout is a state where your employees don’t perform at their best nor do they look forward to clocking in and spending eight or nine hours in the office. They don’t feel motivated and are stressed out to the point of not performing to standard. 

Herbert Freudenberger, in his book “Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement,” defined burnout officially as “the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.” 

Beyond just affecting your employees’ work and their productivity, burnout can cause long-term health problems that can be fatal. High amounts of stress can affect your employees by exacerbating mental illness, affecting memory and even causing heart problems. Burnout can have lifelong consequences, so it’s best to identify signs of it as soon as possible. 

What causes burnout?

More often than not, it’s an employee’s work environment that causes burnout. It’s not simply that some people are more susceptible to it than others (although that is true to a degree, a good workplace has a more positive impact on someone’s tolerance for stress). Even the most effective and healthy employee can feel burnt out in a bad environment while a stress-prone employee working in a calm and conducive environment might thrive. 

There are plenty of causes of burnout, such as:

• Unclear job expectations or succession planning – When an employee is unsure of what’s expected of them and if they don’t know whether or not they’ll be stuck in the same position without an opportunity to grow or be promoted, they may grow very unhappy and burn out. 
• Micromanaging – A lack of control can drive anyone up the wall but when schedules and even the way an employee has to carry things out is being micromanaged by supervisors, they’ll be more prone to burnout. 
• Dysfunctional team culture – A team that doesn’t get along and is hard or uncomfortable to be around can make for a high stress environment. 
• Intimidation – An employee that’s intimidated by their supervisors can feel extra pressure and fear. 
• Lack of work-life balance – Not being able to delineate between one’s work life and personal life can cause them to overlap the two and feel stressed constantly. 

7 ways to stop team burnout

Here you need to segue into the seven ways that a business leader can stop team burnout. 

1. Talk to your client and reset their deadline expectations

In order to ease the burden off your employees, approach from the other side. Negotiate a different deadline with your client and be honest with them about the capacity of the team and how much they’re taking on. Appeal to their sympathy and remind them that your business is going through some tough changes at the moment as well. 

2. Make sure all client information is received before tasks are started

Eliminate inefficiency for your team by ensuring that your client has sent over everything you need for them before starting the job. Instead of going back and forth and having to pick up and put down, your team will be able to plow through their work without interruption. 

3. Prioritise the right people with the right skills for the right jobs

Making sure you run clear workflow and capacity meetings to priorities jobs. By evaluating your employees well and understanding their strengths, you can assign the right people to carry out jobs best suited to them. This is especially important in pooled resource environments where there are no teams. Without establishing strong relationships with your employees and not knowing where their strengths lie, you could have a really good employee miserable in a cubicle all day because they are not working on more challenging jobs and they’ll become totally disengaged.

You want to be able to maximise your employees’ unique assets and strong points. 

4. Encourage partners and staff to take mini breaks during the day

Working continuously and without any sort of respite can be exhausting and drain your employees of energy and motivation. Breaks are great for them to re-energise and reset themselves mentally and physically. 

5. Be more flexible with work hours

Not every staff member operates optimally at the same time. Some staff may find they work better earlier in the morning whilst others might prefer later in the morning or even after lunch because they’re at their most productive at that time. Not all of them have to be in the office for the same eight hours when they could have turned in better work had they been allowed to clock in earlier or later. 

6. Acknowledge & reward hard work 

Without being acknowledged for their work, staff can feel unmotivated and like their work isn’t valuable. Show them that what they do is very important and provide incentives for those who do exceptionally well. Incentives can be massages or spa treatments, yoga, meditation that they can use to recharge their batteries. If you show them that what they do has value and they can get something in return, they won’t feel sluggish or burnt out because they’re working towards something. 

7. Encourage work life balance

Ensure your staff clock out when they’re supposed to, take their holidays and that they don’t take work home with them. Having a relationship with your staff is important so they feel they can talk to you about their lives and how they’re faring. Checking in with your staff to see if they’re doing okay is key to a healthy business. 

Burnout can be deadly not just for your business, but for your individual employees as well. It’s no joke that it can cause both short-term and long-term health problems if not dealt with immediately. A lot of people tend to overlook burnout and see it as temporary, but if it’s not addressed, it can make even the most productive staff members sluggish, unmotivated and unhealthy.

By being on the lookout for signs of burnout and preventing it altogether, you ensure a happier, healthier team.
Think your team might be suffering from burnout? Let’s work together to assess the signs.