The Secret to Ensuring Your Employees Are Not Overworked
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Are you worried that you are asking too much of your employees? Are any of your employees exhibiting signs of burnout? Here are some key tips about ensuring your employees are not overworked:
Why Should You Care
According to an American Psychological Association study, 79% of employees have experienced work-related stress at one point in time and cited these negative impacts of the stress:
Decreased motivation
Decreased interest in work
Increased tiredness
Lack of energy
Physical exhaustion
These negative effects can destroy an amazing employee’s ability to perform within the workplace. Ultimately, it is necessary to find a happy balance between a rigorous work schedule and time to rest. Noticing those startling signs can help address burnout as soon as possible. Read over How to Recognize the 5 Most Common Signs of Burnout to learn some tips on recognizing burnout in your workplace.
How To Address Employee Burnout
When you begin to see signs of burnout in an employee, take time to meet with them and show your interest in their wellbeing. Here are some examples of what you can do to immediately address the problem:
Encourage the employee to take some time off to take care of themselves
Use ManageBetter's ActionPlan to create goals for the employee to work on taking sufficient breaks and to plan a schedule that can work better for their wellbeing
Discuss the importance of using a full lunch break to not focus on work
As a manager, it is important to notice the signs of burnout and allow time to speak with the employee to discuss a plan of action. Review 5 Steps to Creating an Effective Action Plan to prepare initial action steps for the employee to take to address their burnout.
Creating The Environment
It is important to recognize you will be unable to fully prevent workplace burnout as some employees will create that for themselves by being overly ambitious. As a manager, you can take these key action steps to try to mitigate burnout in your workplace to the best of your ability:
Understand the Difficulty of the Tasks You Assign To Employees
Take some time to review the tasks before giving them to your employees to make sure they are not too difficult with their current workload. Doing so will limit the ability of the employee to become burnt out. Knowing when to give certain tasks will take some time to develop, but can truly benefit the well-being of your employees so they feel they can accomplish everything they have to do.
Allow Employees to Take Advantage of Vacation Time
If your employee has accumulated tons of vacation time, reach out to them about taking some time off, especially if they are exhibiting signs of burnout. Moreover, when employees are taking vacation time, encourage them to take a break from work and even from checking their emails. Telling the employee it is okay to do this, and ultimately encouraging them, will make them more likely to do so. Even doing this on the weekend can help the employee decompress and be ready to come back on Monday to work productively.
Look Out For the Well-being of Your Employees Through Providing Resources
You can look out for the well-being of the employees by having plenty of snacks and beverages for employees to have throughout the day. This will encourage them to stay hydrated and nourished, which can sometimes be forgotten about when an employee becomes super engrossed in a task. Another example would be to have seminars about mental health in the workplace and guide your employees through understanding their limits. Even having open office hours will encourage employees to come to see you if they have any concerns.
Make Work Expectations Clear
When assigning tasks, try to be as thorough as possible in explaining to the employee what they are expected to do. Again, having time where the employee can come ask questions will help avoid too much time spent trying to complete the task when they are unsure of something. You can also make deadlines clear to the employee, so they don’t go out to complete a large task too quickly and become too burnt out when there was really more time available to work on it.
Conclusion
As a manager, lead by example within the workplace. Utilize resources to prioritize your wellbeing, and then you can demonstrate to your employees the importance of self-care and understanding their limits. Taking preemptive matters for burnout can eliminate the likelihood of this occurring, but the best thing you can do is get to know your employees to guide them through their work experience in a way that is best for them.
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