Burnout is for Dummies
(And How Ignoring It Can Destroy Your Company Culture)
"Burnout is nature's way of telling you that you've been going through the motions your soul has departed; you're a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker." - Sam Keen
There are many things that are out of an organization’s span of control. We can’t control the economy. We can’t control competitors. We can’t control the weather.
Can we control burnout?
According to recent studies conducted in 2021, 89% of employees surveyed experienced burnout in the previous 12 months. Which means that 1 in 10 people are lying to the survey company.
Burnout is insidious and can cause an organization extreme amounts of waste and general decline. $300 billion dollars a year is the estimated loss that organizations suffer due to burnout.
That is a figure calculated by understanding absenteeism, diminished production and accidents in the workplace.
Now, $300 billion dollars a year is an enormous figure and clearly not one that anyone would scoff at. However, I would argue that that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of what burnout really inflicts in the workplace. Think of all the value that is being missed out on because your employees are burned out. It’s staggering.
The biggest and most difficult to diagnose factor of burnout is apathy. Apathy should be the word that leaders fear the most. An apathetic workforce is as dangerous as it is damning to success as any factor anyone could imagine.
Apathy is when an employee just stops caring.
They stop caring about the quality of their work, they stop caring about their career progression and most importantly they stop caring about making things better.
Let’s be completely clear; a new and engaged employee that you have to completely train from the ground up is more valuable to you than an experienced employee who is now apathetic.
Apathy is contagious.
If you have one employee who is phoning it in and stops caring about your mission, you can be all but guaranteed that they will spread their condition to anyone who is willing to listen to them. You can also bet that there will be a lot of people who are willing to lend an ear.
So, how can we avoid the burnout which leads to apathy?
First we have to diagnose what causes burnout in the first place.
There can be a whole host of reasons which may lead to burnout of an individual employee. For each employee, they may be more greatly impacted by one more than another or several all at once.
Here are the three big ones:
Failure to be recognized
Rewarded with more work
Churn
In addition to the Big Three, since 2020 and the COVID Pandemic, there has been an introduction of completely new factors which can lead to burnout which we won’t be discussing in detail here. Needless to say, things like pandemic induced anxiety and remote work have led to even more employees experiencing even worse burnout in the workplace.
1. Failure to be recognized:
Humans crave recognition. We thrive on being told we are doing a good job, getting rewarded for our effort or even things as simple as being remembered.
As organizations grow, the ability for leaders to have a really good ability to know the people that work for them and be able to recognize them in turn, becomes very difficult. Just like in our education system where we face ever increasing classroom sizes where students fall through the cracks, leaders can be at risk of having too large of teams where they cannot be attentive to the needs of their people.
Rewards are the biggest factor here for recognition. Rewards can be things like compensation increases, bonuses, promotions and putting someone on a special project.
Missing opportunities to understand the way in which employees prefer to be recognized is one of the most common mistakes leaders make. It is also one of the easiest to fix once you become aware of it.
2. Rewarded with more work:
“The reward we get for working so hard is more work”
This occurs when an employee is so successful at what they do that their leader gives them even more things to do. This typically happens with hard workers who hate to let people down and want to be known for “getting things done”. Make no mistake, saying ‘no’ is not easy for these people and before you know it, your workhorse will keel over from the strain of their burden.
This is not to be confused with getting more scope or access to growth opportunities. Being rewarded with more work is simply the instances when you work hard to plug the holes on your boat only to see your boss on the other side of the boat drilling a brand new hole.
3. Churn:
Ah, churn – my favorite of the bunch.
Churn is the catchall term for all of the things that happen at work which don’t allow you to keep up with consistent effort.
They may include a new boss(or 5 in the course of a year), a new strategy, new workflows, new tools, unknown expectations or any other thing which throws a wrench into working quickly and efficiently.
Churn is the thing that can totally derail effort and engagement in an otherwise healthy team. Take a strong employee and give them multiple new leaders in the course of a few years and you’ll be left with the husk of potential and a soulless apathetic burnout.
The good news is that all of these can be managed to help reduce, if not eliminate, burnout in your organization.
Failure to be recognized can be addressed with leadership training, a strong incentive structure and a culture of attentiveness. Know how your employees want to be recognized, focus on that with an empathetic mind and you’re golden.
Being rewarded with more work can be avoided by understanding what kinds of work actually fill the tanks of your employees versus drain them. Just because someone is willing to take on more doesn’t mean you should automatically make that happen. What is easier for you today might make things harder in the long run.
Churn – well, churn cannot be wholly destroyed because change is inevitable. Instead, you can focus on making your culture adaptive. Adaptive cultures have systems in place to create a sense of persistent structure while creating clarity through ambiguity. Increasing the adaptability quotient of your organization helps your people and teams flow with the go.
Nothing will ever be perfect, but it can be better.
We can get better at reducing burnout and helping our employees be not just engaged and back to producing – but creating value.
An engaged employee who wants to create value is the most precious commodity in the workplace.
Ask yourself:
Who among your value creators is at risk of being burned out?
Citations: https://www.zippia.com/advice/burnout-statistics/
