Burnout is one of the biggest threats facing your employees and your company. Learn how you can prevent burnout risk before it ever becomes an issue and promote strong employee engagement.
Blaise Radley
Editorial Strategist
Workday
Employee burnout is a reality of any work environment, even at companies with high employee satisfaction. Workplace burnout can be impacted by workload, periods of economic uncertainty, stressors outside of work, difficulties with mental health, and any other number of factors. That's why employers must be attentive to the first signs of burnout.
The first step is assessing your organization's current burnout risk. Using the Areas of Worklife Survey, an assessment designed to evaluate employees' perception of their work environment, businesses can better understand what workplace factors contribute to burnout. In their research, Michael Leiter and Christina Maslach identified six focus areas for assessing potential burnout risk:
In this article, we'll assess the way each of the above drivers impact job burnout and explain how you can better support your employees. By creating a workplace culture that encourages employees to be their best self, you'll not only reduce burnout at work—you'll unlock huge business benefits.
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Employee burnout refers to a state of emotional and physical exhaustion that can lead to an inability to complete normal day-to-day activities. Common causes of employee burnout include a demanding work schedule, unclear job expectations, and limited vacation time.
According to Workday research, 27% of employees are currently at high risk of burnout.
In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized burnout in its International Classification of Diseases. The organization defines it as: “A syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” In categorizing it, the WHO points to three essential characteristics:
This clinical definition of burnout emphasizes how critical it is that businesses take it seriously. However, it’s important to distinguish between clinical burnout, which requires assessment by a trained health professional, and burnout risk, which is assessed through workplace experience-based indicators.
According to Workday research, 27% of employees are currently at high risk of burnout. That same report found that higher burnout risk is correlated with lower employee satisfaction in both management and organizational support. That means that the drivers of burnout are mostly found at the organization level.
To better identify burnout risk, Maslach and Leiter developed a framework that identifies how well matched (or in the case of employee burnout, mismatched) someone is with six different areas of employee experience. We’ve highlighted each of those areas below, along with suggestions for how to reduce stress, prioritize employee mental health, and alleviate burnout risk.
For most employees, their workload is unlikely to be consistent during their career. There will be periods of high stress, long hours, and unexpected change, especially during times of economic uncertainty. Workload only becomes overwhelming when an employee can’t communicate their needs.
Unrealistic expectations and conflicting priorities can make it impossible to manage a heavy workload, dramatically increasing the risk of employee burnout. Burnout can also occur when employees are pushed to do the wrong kind of work, either because they lack the correct skills or inclination.
Managing workload is about more than hiring additional staff. Managers need to be proactive in communicating with their employees to account for their individual needs and ensure their workload is aligned with their job role and personal work patterns. Here are three effective actions for addressing burnout risk:
When employees have limited responsibility and agency, they're more likely to feel undervalued and stressed. It's important that employees have the freedom to pursue their work in a way that makes sense for them.
Recently hired employees and promoted managers may also feel overwhelmed by their newfound level of responsibility. Onboarding remotely has only exacerbated that, resulting in employees with a high degree of manager oversight but limited direct contact.
Ensuring that employees feel trusted without being isolated is a careful balancing act. The solution? Finding the sweet spot between support and autonomy:
Companies that aren't transparent in how they handle pay, policies, and other areas of the business risk alienating their employees.
Unsurprisingly, paying your people a reasonable salary is an important part of lowering employee burnout risk, especially as we face uncertain economic times. But there is a caveat.
Insufficient extrinsic rewards—such as poor salary, bonuses, and benefits—can have a negative effect on employee motivation. However, extrinsic rewards on their own won’t raise people’s motivation past a certain level—which is why companies need to prioritize recognition as well.
Primarily, it’s important that your employees are paid fairly and competitively. After that, recognition is the most effective way to have a positive impact on performance:
Part of what makes recognition so important is the fact that it promotes a more positive and supportive work community. If employees aren't encouraged to collaborate regularly, don't have good workplace communication, or limited social opportunities, that sense of community will suffer.
It's also possible to go too far in the other direction. When social events are positioned as obligatory for getting ahead, particularly where alcohol is involved, employees can feel disengaged and overlooked. Make sure that you respect your employees' work-life balance in the process, and avoid creating social cliques.
Creating a community at work has to occur organically and certainly doesn’t happen overnight. Business leaders should give thought and consideration to how they consistently help foster collaboration and social opportunity:
"Building engagement is the best approach to preventing burnout." —Christina Maslach, Social Psychologist
We all want to be treated fairly in the workplace. Unfairness most often becomes an issue when there is inequity of workload and pay or poor handling of evaluations, promotions, and grievances. These issues can compound if there is a perception that certain employees are receiving preferential treatment.
Companies that aren't transparent in how they handle pay, policies, and other areas of the business risk alienating their employees. If that discontent isn't handled quickly, workplace burnout will rise even faster.
Being fair only has value if employees have visibility over your company processes. Each of the steps below promote better transparency and make procedures more fair:
Creating a good company culture isn’t about hiring people who like the same music or sports team. It’s about identifying shared company values and living by them. Without strong company values, it's easy for people to feel disconnected from their work and their colleagues.
Pay attention to whether your values are as good in practice as they sound on paper. A lofty mission statement serves no function if it’s disconnected from the way a company actually does business. If your values can’t be connected to your business practices, initiatives, and projects, then it’s time to reevaluate them.
If you want your employees to feel an affinity to your company values, you need to understand their personal values too. Here are three steps to make sure your organization is living its values:
What each of the above factors have in common is that positive action is just as critical as tackling negative issues. Overcoming employee burnout risk requires responding to issues when employees raise them and being proactive. It's important that you prioritize improving employee engagement as much as you prioritize reducing burnout.
In The European Health Psychologist, Christina Maslach said, “Building engagement is the best approach to preventing burnout. People who are engaged with their work are better able to cope with the challenges they encounter, and thus are more likely to recover from stress. So building an engaged workforce, before there are major problems, is a great prevention strategy.”
When businesses make a concerted effort to improve employee engagement and retention, they promote a work environment where stigmas around mental health conditions disappear and those struggling with burnout speak up. That’s the true benefit of tackling burnout risk.
On average, 27% of employees are at risk of burnout—decreasing overall engagement levels and increasing the probability of turnover. Download this report to address organizational burnout at the source.
This article has been updated since it was first published in April 2021.
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