Burn Out

With every year that passes, more and more people are reporting signs of burnout. According to an article on Forbes.com, about 53% of workers have said that they are feeling burnt out, however this doesn't equate for people that have left the workforce entirely.

According to the World Health Organization, burnout is defined as:

“Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

• feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;

• increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and

• reduced professional efficacy.

I personally haven't heard of anyone that didn't suffer from feelings of energy depletion, exhaustion, cynicism and reduced personal efficiency.

LinkedIn, has a great article:

Is 2021 the year that we pay attention to burnout?

It estimates burnout to cause corporations across America around 150 BN a year.

It's clearly something that we can't afford to ignore any more.

Management and many companies are trying to begin to tackle this tough enemy without understanding the effects of stress behind the curtain, struggle with questions on how to treat their staff and many of them may not have even had a chance to take a crash course in management. Those last three articles, colored in green, will take you to our other webpages where we help with exactly that.

The main goal of management is to make sure that the employees have the training, resources and time they need in order to do their jobs. Many corporations can actually improve conditions by treating their staff like machines. Instead of getting mad at them when they don't operate the way as desired, they make sure that there given the support they need to function properly, including making sure that the other machines around them are doing their job.

But the main element that leads to burnout is a lack of knowing how much each staff member is able to do. Each machine is only able to go at a certain speed, if you forced to go faster, it will naturally heat up until it literally burns out. How are machines able to go faster? By training them. While recognizing their speed will be limited by the resources and peers around them.

Ever seen a new martial arts student walking to the Dojo for the first time? They're very timid, afraid and uncertain of themselves. The speed at which they're able to handle combat is very slow. But with training and support they become able to handle greater and greater speed, greater and greater force without even having to stress as much about it. Training is simply the art of learning how to better do our jobs, become better people with less stress and more quality to our products.

Managers should have digital check sheets that represent each main step an employee's training that is based on an overall flowchart that is also posted for them to be able to see how they fit into the Corporation. Ideally, there would be a combined Excel sheet that shows each employee and each thing they are trained to do and each thing they excel at. Employees that excel at task A should not be put onto task B while employees that excel at task B should not be put onto task A. Notes should also be placed at each task as to how efficient and quick they are at that thing. Obviously the more they excel at that thing the quicker they will be.

This is management.

The ability to recognize where your staff are at so that you can correctly utilize them according to their strengths and speed while being able to recognize who needs exactly what training. In any business training is everything and leaders that do not prioritize the training of their staff are not leaders. In fact, they may be illusionists, but you'll have to read up on them to be able to tell. So this does mean that harder workers are going to be doing more work as the others get trained, but this should also mean those harder workers, who earn the company more per hour than others, should get a promotion of some kind.

If we fail to at least properly reward those who most keep us afloat then can we really wonder why it feels like we're constantly sinking?

The truth is America was never founded on fair working conditions for all people. Even after slavery was abolished countless companies continued to live off unpaid internships. We've committed to a 3% increase in rent year over year without the ability to increase wages as much, an equal hardship on business owners who have to pay more and more of their profits to their ability to exist.

It's clear we need to find a better way.

Lets, at least, let that way be based on common sense, kindness and wellness. As well as for the sake of our own profits!

Beyond that we recommend a free burnout analysis and customized corporation wellness plan. Essentially we'll give out a template to send to the employees that exclude any personal information. Then either we or one of your staff can review them and compile the results. From there we can clearly isolate the areas that are costing you the most money and point out what small changes could be made to see an immediate difference.

Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels