Avoid employee burnout in five simple steps

Employee burnout is on the rise. Workers in the modern workplace are taking on more responsibilities than ever, while trying to balance their professional and personal lives. 

It’s crucial that we, as employers, take action to prevent burnout, as it leads to damaged wellbeing, reduced engagement, and decreased productivity. Here we explore how you can avoid employee burnout within your business:

How can I avoid employee burnout?

Here are five simple ways in which employers and HR professionals can prevent employee burnout:

#1 – Utilise wellbeing/engagement surveys

Wellbeing and engagement strongly influence the success of your business. If your employees lack engagement, their productivity will suffer as a result. 

Using wellbeing/engagement surveys helps employers to highlight key challenges within their workforce – adapting their HR strategy to overcome these. Gamified survey tools provide quick and easy polls to identify employees’ wants, needs, likes and dislikes.

Survey your employees regularly to identify areas for improvement in your engagement strategy, and potential adaptations needed to your corporate benefits package. Meeting the needs of your employees in this way helps to boost morale, and reduce the risk of burnout.

Discover our gamified employee feedback app

#2 – Use SMART targeting to organise workflows

SMART targeting is a workflow structure that seeks to organise, contextualise, and simplify the way we work. This stands for: 

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant 
• Time-based

By structuring employee performance targets in this way, you help them to organise their workload accordingly. This ensures that all targets are realistically achievable, and have clear, realistic deadlines – boosting productivity, and reducing employee burnout.

#3 – Upgrade your business technology toolkit

Technology is a vital tool in any business; it’s how we adapt to expansion, and deliver a consistent service to our customers. Using smart technology is also key for reducing the risk of employee burnout.

Review your business tech toolkit; do you have all the tools you need to deliver the best value to your customers? Is there any additional support your workforce needs to succeed? Identify where your business needs the extra technological support, and make use of the tools available.

Software such as project management systems, sales platforms, and applicant tracking systems all help to lift pressure from your workforce. With the increased demands of the modern workplace, using the best tech is crucial for maximising performance.

#4 – Be open to flexible working initiatives 

Flexible working has become a popular feature of the modern workplace; it’s seen as a valuable benefit by employees across all sectors.

Introducing flexible working initiatives, such as hybrid/remote working and flexitime, can vastly reduce the risk of employee burnout. For employees with care responsibilities, such as parents, flexible working helps to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

A 2021 poll of the UK’s top 50 employers found that 43 of these companies intended to promote remote working into the future. It’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest workplace trends; if employees aren’t given these opportunities, they might begin to look elsewhere.

#5 – Support your remote & hybrid workers

While remote/hybrid working has become a popular trend in recent years, it’s important to recognise the challenges this may bring. The COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 showed both the advantages and disadvantages of home-working – namely, an increase in employee burnout.

To reduce the risk of burnout amongst your remote/hybrid workers, make sure to maintain a clear work/life balance – don’t blur the lines between work and home life. 

Host stand-up and stand-down meetings at the beginning and end of each day to add more definition to the working schedule. This will help employees maintain a healthy working structure, while giving you an insight into their performance and workload. 

Utilise technology to engage remote workers. Use survey tools to identify changes in their wants and needs, while using video technology to keep in regular, high-quality contact. 

Introducing…

Talos Engage: Take action against ‘burnout’

Talos Engage is our gamified employee engagement tool – giving companies a better way to maintain a happy, productive workforce.

Gamification boosts response rates

Employees simply play the swipe-card game to express their wants and needs within their roles. Through this, they’re able to rank the importance of specific values and benefits within your workplace – informing positive HR strategy decisions.

With Talos Engage, it has never been easier to analyse and adapt your Employee Value Proposition (EVP), and optimise your wider engagement strategy. 

Discover a better way to reduce employee burnout, and optimise your engagement strategy:

Free demo

Play for yourself

In summary

Employee burnout is becoming more common across all sectors and job-roles. It’s crucial for employers to support employees to maintain wellbeing, engagement, and productivity. 

Here are five ways to reduce the risk of employee burnout in your business:

• Utilise wellbeing/engagement surveys
• Use SMART targeting to organise workflows
• Update your business technology toolkit
• Be open to flexible working initiatives
• Support your remote/hybrid workers

Without the right level of support, it’s easy for your employees to become overwhelmed in their roles. This has a damaging effect on their productivity, personal wellbeing, and retention within your company.