AltoPartners presents the second in a three-part series on burnout. In this article, we look at steps that leadership can take to prevent burnout…

Burnout is happening in workplaces everywhere.

A Fast Company poll of workers from 60 organisations across the U.S. (and around the globe) found that an overwhelming 80% of people reported feeling stress on the job.

Stress and burnout are felt on an individual level, but they have health and economic impacts, too.

A 2017 study estimated that workplace stress:

● contributes to at least 120,000 deaths each year

● causes additional expenditures of between $125 and $190 billion a year – representing 5 to 8 percent of US spending on health care.

And yet, says leadership researcher Nick Petrie, executives often don’t want to take the issue on. “It requires organisation and cultural change, and it’s hard to see how to get going or how to get wins on the board.”

It’s tempting for leadership to deal with employee stress by instituting wellness programmes. But such initiatives often have a counterintuitive outcome by making employees more stressed as they navigate the actions needed to get the perks offered by the programme.

Speaking at a webinar on burnout hosted by The Inzito Partnership / AltoPartners UK recently, Petrie says that while it’s understandable that leadership might feel daunted by dealing with burnout and employee mental health, there are good reasons to tackle the issue.

Petrie shared the findings and insights of the Perform / Grow / Thrive Project, which he conceived three years ago. The researchers interviewed a wide range of people about their experiences with burnout and found one common factor.

“We did not meet many selfish people who burned out. Instead, it was the most committed, most collaborative and hard-working people who sacrificed themselves.”

For this reason, he says, it is imperative that leadership find ways to look after people in ways that prevent burnout.

What leaders need to know about burnout:

● There is no single cause of burnout. It’s likely to be caused by a combination of individual and organisational factors

● There are different levels of burnout, requiring different levels of intervention

● Rest is not the solution. Most people try rest as the solution. But after they have rested, they return unchanged to an unchanged workplace, which leads to a repeat episode of burnout or an escalation in intensity.

Things leaders can do

Petrie says that a dual strategy is needed. Organisations need to help individuals change their ways of working, and at the same time, they need to work to reduce organisational stressors.

In working with organisations to address burnout, Petrie noticed that management enthusiasm to tackle the issue would often grow when they saw results in individual productivity. For that reason, Petrie recommends starting small.

“Organisational solutions are most effective when they are practical and easy to implement. You don’t want to overload an exhausted workforce with more work.”

Practical steps to take

Start with individuals: Helping people who are burned out is doable and has immediate impact. “It creates momentum, it creates a buzz,” says Petrie. Here it’s important to match the level of help offered to the level of burnout being experienced. Someone in the initial stages of burnout might benefit from a rest; someone with severe burnout might need organisational support for extensive counselling and a long break from work. (See part one of our series for more detail about the different stages of burnout)

Provide workers with opportunities to work in ways that suit them: Petrie says there’s an important distinction between two modes of work: in perform mode, people use the skills they already have, while in grow mode people are learning new things. It’s possible that an employee who values growth is stuck in a role where they can only perform, or vice versa. People who cannot grow may feel resentful, while people who are forced to grow may feel out of their depth, he says.

Get some data: At the same time as working with individuals, do assessments to measure what’s happening in the organisation. Open and transparent efforts to find out how people are feeling will allow employees to talk about their feelings and to report on the levels of stress that they are feeling.

Act on the data: If people report that they are being micro-managed or that they feel undervalued, address those concerns in your leadership development programmes.

Address bullying in the workplace: Petrie says interviewees recounted meetings in which there was shouting and people throwing things – and yet senior executives who were present in the meetings did nothing to stop it. “That meant that everyone in the room felt unsafe. And that’s when people started feeling desperate. If bullying is going on, senior executives must address it publicly when they see it.”

Cut back on meetings: Petrie says that meetings deprive people of the time to do deep, uninterrupted focus work. “They’re doing shallow work all the time. So they’re working in the evenings so they can actually concentrate because the day is full of interruptions and multitasking. And there’s just an overload of commitment.”

Read: Burnout - what causes it and how to deal with it (part one)

COMING UP:

Ask Alto: The eight habits of people who don’t get burnout (part three)