Are Your Employees Heading For A Burn Out? Part Two

Yesterday, we discussed the negative effects burn out has on employee engagement.

Today, we’d like to offer you some ideas for preventing burn out in your organisation:

Look For External Factors

If someone has always been enthusiastic and productive at work but now appears to be in a slump, there could be outside factors affecting them. Be sensitive to problems employees might be going through in their personal lives. Try not to pry, but encourage the person to talk to someone they trust and feel comfortable talking to, this will help you to understand what the issues are and how they may affect their performance at work.

Be Open To Communication From Your People

Communication is a two-way street. It won’t pay to bite someone’s head off each time they come to you with an issue or problem. You need to be approachable and employees need to trust you and feel they can be honest with you about circumstances that are bringing them to the brink of burn out. Simply allowing someone to vent their feelings can often be all it takes to get them back on track.

Communicate With Your Team

Ensure that expectations, project deadlines and project progression is clearly communicated to everyone involved. If employees know and understand the direction they’re working toward, they are less likely to burn out. Even the massive, highly complicated projects seem less intimidating when everyone is clear about how their role fits in and when there will be light at the end of the tunnel.

Walk The Walk And Talk The Talk

There must be policies in place that encourage healthy behaviours and promote general well-being, for example, regular breaks in the day and getting regular exercise.

Fit For The Job

Burn out prevention begins way before you ever recruit or promote an employee. Don’t just consider skills and experience when assessing someone for a particular role, look at personality traits and behaviours.  If they are unlikely to be able to multi-task or move from one task to another rapidly, then it would be like cramming a square peg into a round hole.

Stop Micromanaging

Employees are more likely to be less engaged at work, and more likely to suffer from burn out, if they don’t have a degree of control over how they carry their duties. Managers and team leaders should investigate ways to ease the burden on their employees. This may include alterations to a style of management or working environment.

At the end of the day, burn out is an issue that isn’t going to go away easily. Helping to prevent it, employers will protect employee engagement levels and ultimately help prevent their organisation from failing.

If you would like information about the benefits of employee engagement, then please contact us on +44 (0) 1255 850051.