Top 5 Ways To Prevent Burnout in Your Company
Reading Time: 5 minutes Just having the right people on board isn’t always enough. Sometimes the top employees get tired and start needing more in order to stay and thrive in your company. This means that you have to give them the best environment possible to work in. This will prevent them from feeling overwhelmed and getting a burnout.
Burnout can be one of the worst things to happen to your company. People lose motivation, drive and this lowers the productivity. Moreover, it can cause conflicts and even loss of talents, which is never good.
But how do you recognize that an employee is burning out?
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First will come to the obvious signs like exhaustion, disengagement in meetings and work. Their performance will drop as well.
When you notice these signs, you should make sure that you evaluate the situation. But to prevent burnout completely, you need to set a few good practices in motion and thus help your employees feel happy and confident in your company.
Here are some of the best tips on how to achieve this:
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Make sure that your doors are always open
“Your employees need to be comfortable with talking to you. But, you first need to open your doors and make them aware of the fact that you will be there for them if they have something that they want to talk to you about,” says Emily Paulson, sales manager at Australia 2 Write.
One of the things that you can do is to literally keep their doors open so that people can easily come whenever they want to. Let them know that they can come and talk to you before or after a meeting in case they need anything from you. Help, tips, advice – anything.
When they show up, you should be the person that stops doing what they are doing at the moment and really listen to what they have to say. Pay attention to what they are not saying as well.
If you miss the opportunity to talk to them, you can lose a valuable opportunity to fix something and keep a valuable employee in your company. Make sure that you work with them to solve their problems and make them feel better.
To show that you truly care, you should schedule another meeting with them to see how they feel now or what changed in the meantime.
Make sure that they have everything they need
If you try gardening without proper tools, you will likely not achieve anything. The same thing applies to your company and business. If your employees have the right roles but not enough resources, this will result in a job poorly done, no matter how good they are.
For instance, one of the worst things you can do is hire someone talented and smart and then giving them work that could be automated or done by someone on a lower pay grade. You are wasting the talent, the time and the trust. Always ask your employees if something could make their work better and more effective.
“Ask them if they need any tools or help and what is annoying them at their position, what doesn’t fit their job description. They would need a tool, some training or some help in the form of another set of hands,”
Says Jessica Lind, office executive at Brit Student.
Give them clear roles
One of the worst mistakes you can make as an employer is not taking every role at your company seriously. And the sad fact is that most employers don’t.
They will always find additional responsibilities for their employees. For example, someone will do their job – let’s say, a manager – and then they will have to handle customer service and some additional tasks as well.
All of this is poor leadership. People will not stay satisfied in that role and they will leave because they will feel exploited. So, instead of doing that, have clear roles for every single one of your employees. They need to know exactly what their job is and then focus on it entirely.
It doesn’t matter if they finish daily tasks earlier, this doesn’t mean that you should load them with work that’s not in their job description. This creates frustration with the team and yourself. Short Staffed? Well, hire new people.
Provide feedback constantly
Just imagine how an employee feels – they just completed a hard project that took months of work and many late nights, weekends and so on. But, their boss tells them that the project is dropped.
How would you feel?
This is not a proper way to handle your employee communication. You need to make sure that they know how much their hard work is appreciated and valued. It’s much better to be kind and has good feedback for them than to be cold and reserved.
Most people aren’t looking for huge approval, just some nice words and the feeling of belonging in a company. Give them feedback as much as is necessary.
Allow them to make decisions with you
No one likes being bossed around all the time. This is a one-way road that results in a lot of frustration on the employees part. They will eventually resent their place in your company so much that they will quit.
Employees can be useful in decision making because they have valuable insights into the core of the business and their opinion might help you make better decisions. You don’t even have to do what they say, but you have to hear them out. Ask them questions and engage them in your everyday decision-making process.
It’s way easier to prevent a burnout than to fix it. When you notice things early on and implement positive practices to make your employees feel better and more motivated at work.
A burned out employee is a bad thing for your company, so you should make sure that you follow these tips and help your employees thrive.
Burnout is often a lot easier to prevent than it is to fix. Without attention early on, a burned out employee would take weeks or months to recover to full productivity. If you’re running a business, get the right people on the bus, but also make sure they are feeling 100% on the right line.
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Co-Authored With
Joel Snyder is a manager, coach, and writer at PhD Kingdom and Next CourseWork. He enjoys helping people to learn more about managing marketing teams as well as creating articles about things that excite him. He strives to help companies learn more about proper people management.
