When teams start to underperform or lose focus, burnout is often to blame. The World Health Organization categorizes burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”
The costs of burnout can be high – to the tune of $125-$190 billion per year in the USA, according to one study that estimated mental and physical problems stemming from burnout.
Teams that are in the midst of burnout can quickly begin to struggle and become stressed if management does not take time to consider employee health and what needs to be changed.
Keep reading for a few pieces of advice to help your team with burnout:
- Start With
Yourself: Leaders have to make sure they can manage their stress before
trying to work with team members on mitigating burnout. Eat healthy foods,
exercise, and get plenty of sleep so your leadership can shine and motivate
amid stressful situations with your team.
- Switch Up Work: Employees often get burned out when they are assigned the same type of work – usually assignments that are very large or stressful. Managers should try to divide and split up work among teams who seem to be burned out to foster variation. A smart strategy is to try and challenge the younger employees while giving more senior team members a bit of a break.
- Optimize
Outputs: Teams that are burned out are often checked out and disengaged
from work. This can cost a company a lot of money. Managers should look for
ways to optimize the budget while getting back on track.
Strategies can include offering unpaid vacation to non-essential staffers, outsourcing specific tasks to employees who are remote or even replacing a company retreat with an innovation session – where employees are encouraged to bring their best ideas to the table. All of these options help jump-start innovation in the workplace, which can shift morale for the better.
If you are stuck trying to figure out how to get a burned-out team away from a rut, don’t panic. If you’re stressed and setting a bad example, your employees will notice.
Instead, turn to our experienced team members at FirstOption Workforce Solutions. We’re happy to offer advice about how to motivate, encourage, and inspire burned-out teams, and can help you find the right employees for your workplace.
To learn more, speak with FirstOption Workforce Solutions today at 210-733-3700 or contact us online.
