How to avoid and Recognize Burnout

Burnout is excessive exhaustion caused by stress that can include emotional, physical, and mental. It’s the feeling of becoming so overwhelmed to function and meet the requirements of your job. This is extremely common in workplaces and as an employer you need to know how to recognize the signs and avoid them. You need to provide the resources to help your employees fight burnout when it starts to affect them.

Symptoms of Burnout:

• Loss of Motivation
• Feeling defeated
• Reduced Performance
• Lack of energy
• Extreme Tiredness
• Headaches
• Stomachaches
• Loss of Appetite
• Anxiety or Depression

Now that we have discussed the symptoms of burnout, and what burnout truly is, we can now start discussing steps you can take as an employer to help support your employees through it and help them avoid it.

8 steps to take as an employer:

1. Communicate

• The most important thing you can do is communicate with your employees. Communicate about expectations and your employee’s needs.

2. Create goals

• Creating goals with your employees, helps them feel recognized, heard, and appreciated. It also gives them something to strive for.

3. Be an advocate for your employees

• Encourage a good work and home life balance for your staff, provide breaks and time off so your team feels refreshed.

4. Support their wellbeing

• Support your staff’s health. Provide friendly health challenges, or simply bring around cold water during the shift to remind people to hydrate. Let them know you care of their health.

5. Discover the Roadblocks

• Talk to your staff and find out what the root cause is. Find out what can be done to help the specific situation and avoid burnout in the future.

6. Review System and Processes Often

• Reviewing System and Processes with your staff, this helps solve kinks and see what is working. It helps the overall team feel involved in their day-to-day processes as well. This can also help with the roadblocks above.

7. Provide resources to your employees for relieving stress

• Providing the smallest flier, or resource to relieve stress can help so much. It helps your team know you are wanting them to succeed but also helps provide ways for them to relieve some of the symptoms before they reach burnout.

8. Recognize and reward your staff often

• Recognition can go a long way; everybody just wants to feel important and appreciated. This can be as simple as a compliment, including the recognition in the division emails, or providing an incentive.