6 Management Strategies To Prevent Employee Burnout

Burnout is a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion due to prolonged stress, which can cause detrimental effects on your employees and business.

These effects include increased employee absenteeism, lower productivity, careless mistakes, and uncooperative behaviour from employees, among others. These, in turn, affect your business’s efficiency and productivity rates, increase miscommunication, and high turnover rates. With statistics showing that 43% of employees have experienced workplace burnout, it is important to implement strategies to prevent this phenomenon and its effects. As a manager, you may wonder what to do to prevent burnout and its effects. If that’s the case, you are at the right place!

Below are some effective strategies for managers to prevent employee burnout in the workplace.

Be proactive

A common mistake several managers make is ignoring their employees’ burnout issues. Doing this does more harm than good for you and your business. Managers tend to ignore employee burnout as they attribute it to mere exhaustion. However, this is a far cry from the truth. As stated earlier, burnout has mental and emotional effects on your employees. In extreme cases, it can lead to bad personal habits such as alcoholism and substance abuse, which affects the quality of their work and working environment. Being proactive is a smart strategy to prevent employee burnout. This is because you would know the warning signs of burnout will help you identify employee burnout and quickly find alternative ways of curbing it before it becomes severe.

Promote healthy work-life balance

A healthy work-life balance effectively separates one’s work from their personal life. There are several advantages to promoting a healthy work-life balance. It reduces chronic stress, boosts employees’ moods, and improves physical and mental health. Most importantly, a healthy work-life balance prevents employee burnout and increases productivity and efficiency. As a manager, you should also implement the right strategies to effectively promote a healthy work-life balance for your employees. For instance, you can consider implementing 4-10 work schedules, which allow employees to complete the needed work hours in fewer days. This compressed workweek strategy gives employees more time to recharge and enjoy other non-work activities. Another strategy you can consider is implementing flexible working schedules. Flexibility not only improves your employees’ productivity as it decreases stress but also allows them to effectively separate their work from their personal lives and gives them ample time to do other activities outside of work.

Encourage breaks and leave

In addition to promoting healthy work-life balance among your employees, you should encourage them to take breaks and go on leave. Many of your employees believe that working long hours is an effective way to boost productivity and efficiency. Or, in some cases, to get recognised and rewarded within the business. Not only is this untrue, but also an unhealthy practice. Regular breaks from work during the day help your employees release stress, regain focus, and boost their mood, all of which further improve their productivity and efficiency. Additionally, taking regular breaks also helps improve your physical health, which, when compromised, can also cause stress and burnout. Therefore, as a manager, you should encourage employees to take regularly scheduled breaks throughout the day. You can do this by discussing and educating them on the benefits of taking breaks and providing staff with a quiet break area. It would be best to consider leading by example, as workplace behaviour is usually contagious; therefore, such a habit will likely catch on.

Another thing you should consider promoting and encouraging your employees to do to prevent them from burning out is taking their annual leave. Going on leave allows them to disassociate themselves from the workplace for a healthy amount of time. However, most employees are reluctant to take annual leave for fear of missing out on great opportunities such as promotions, dedication to coworkers, and guilt. As a manager, you should also explain to your employees how going on leave can be beneficial to them. It would be best to ask your employees to submit annual leave plans, which would force them to plan for their leave, ensuring that they take advantage of this policy.

Adequately identify work stressors

How will you help your employees deal with their burnout if you don’t have an idea of what may be causing it in the first place? This is why you need to adequately identify work stressors that may be causing burnout in your employees. Take the time to evaluate your workplace to determine which elements may be stressing your employees out. For example, through evaluation, you may notice that the lack of upgraded devices or limited technological solutions leaves your employees frustrated and stressed from the delays these may be causing their work. Or perhaps, the poor office furniture, which may be causing them back pains and other health issues, causing them to stress out. On the other hand, your employees may be experiencing burnout due to their confusion about their career path. Whatever the reason for their burnout, you would identify it through the work stressors.

Now, you may be wondering: How do I identify these stressors? First, you can consider asking your employees directly what causes them great stress at the workplace. You can also place a suggestion box where employees can place their problems and suggestions. It is important to remember that once these are stressors, be sure to implement them as soon as possible. Not only does it reduce and prevent employee burnout rates, but it also increases motivation and morale as your employees feel heard.

Implement effective employee well-being initiatives

Positivity is needed in every aspect of your life, even at the workplace. A negative work environment is physically and mentally draining for your employees. It breeds unhealthy emotions, lower productivity, and increased stress, which leads to eventual burnout. Implementing an effective employee well-being initiative in the workplace is a great solution to this problem. For instance, you can stock up your breakroom or vending machines with healthy snacks or encourage physical fitness to ensure that your employees take the right decisions concerning their health. You can also encourage meditation and other mindful practices, which help improve their mental well-being.

Another initiative you should consider implementing is teaching your employees the importance of setting boundaries. Many employees are overworked because they take on more than they can chew. This leaves them stressed and overwhelmed, eventually causing them to experience burnout. You should explain to your employees their inability to say “no” to tasks that are too much for them to handle all at a time. The challenge, more often than not, is when such tasks are assigned by high-level staff. However, teaching your employees respectful and diplomatic ways of doing these overburdening responsibilities.

Offer training opportunities

At the workplace, training is an effective means of ensuring that work is done appropriately and adequately. When your employees are faced with situations or tasks they are unfamiliar with; naturally, they feel stressed. Additionally, they may not know the better directions to take to achieve the desired results. This leads to further frustration, and the more this happens, the more likely your employee is to experience burnout. To do this, you must monitor and track your employees to identify the areas they are lacking in and how best you can resolve them. Not only would it help your employees avoid burnout, but it would also assist the overall business as the cost of hiring new employees is prevented and productivity and efficiency increase.