Workload Management and Burnout: Taking Preventive Measures for Wellness

Push, push, push only works for so long — at some point, employees will likely experience burnout. As an employer, you are responsible for managing workloads. If an employee feels overworked, they may burn out. At this point, their productivity will suffer. On top of that, the worker may feel unhappy. This may lead the employee to start looking elsewhere for jobs. And over time, other members of your team may start to do the same.

Mental Health Awareness Month takes place every May. This month and moving forward, do everything you can to protect your employees against burnout. Here are five tips you can use to help your employees manage their workloads and avoid getting burned out.

5 Tips to Recognize Burnout

1. Identify the Signs of Burnout

Burnout is more than just feeling tired after a long day at work. When an employee is burned out, they may feel physically and emotionally exhausted. They may also feel detached from their job. This makes it tough for an employee to perform their best. It may impact your entire team’s productivity, too.

Recognizing the signs of burnout early is essential to prevent it from taking a toll on your employees. Common signs of burnout include:

• Apathy: If a worker seems disinterested in their job most days, they may be burned out.
• Fatigue: An employee may look or feel tired at work, to the point where they can’t focus on their job and are increasingly prone to mistakes.
• Headaches: When a worker frequently says their head hurts, they may be experiencing tension headaches that may be related to burnout.

Employee burnout is unlikely to resolve itself. Fortunately, you can step in and help an employee who is dealing with burnout symptoms.

Burnout may be a sign of a medical issue. As such, you may want to encourage your worker to consult with a doctor. This allows the employee to receive a medical diagnosis and treatment that may help them combat stress that contributes to their burnout symptoms.

Also, you may want to discuss what you’re seeing with the worker and get to the root of their problem. If an employee needs help with their workload or in other areas, you can provide assistance.

2. Perform a Workload Assessment

You may believe each worker is contributing their fair share to your business. However, some employees may be trying to do too much. These workers may start to feel stressed out, especially if they’re struggling to keep pace. If their stress becomes too much to handle, they may be susceptible to burnout.

With a workload assessment, you can make sure each employee is given a reasonable amount of work. There are several ways you can assess employees’ workloads, including:

• Conduct Surveys: Use surveys to find out if employees feel overwhelmed by their work.
• Analyze Your Productivity Levels: Track your company’s productivity over the past few months, look for patterns and trends within your data, and identify improvement areas.
• Adjust Your Workflows: Modify workloads, monitor your results, and continue to make changes as needed.

Workload assessments should be conducted periodically. Each one gives your business a glimpse into how well your employees are handling their day-to-day duties. If there are workload issues, you can make changes before your employees experience burnout symptoms.

In addition to conducting assessments, you can encourage your employees to come forward and discuss their workloads. For example, you can host weekly one-on-one meetings with each member of your team. These meetings allow you to discuss an employee’s workload and performance. If you or your worker have concerns about completing tasks on time, you can modify an employee’s workload accordingly.

3. Prioritize Workload Management

Planning and scheduling work tasks are often easier said than done. Your company has responsibilities, and you expect your workers to fulfill them. Yet, some workers may be burned out by the tasks they have to complete during a given shift. This may lead to burnout and other workload management issues.

It may seem impossible to find the right balance between productivity and employee wellbeing is a delicate but achievable task. Thankfully, there are many things you can do to help your employees manage their workloads, such as:

• Define Urgent and Important Tasks: Teach employees about the differences between urgent and important tasks and encourage them to prioritize ones that deliver the biggest return on investment.
• Establish Realistic and Achievable Goals: Work with employees to create goals based on the task at hand. If an employee falls short of reaching a milestone, find out what happened, learn from the experience, and revise the goal.
• Distribute Work Equitably: Let each member of your team contribute equally. This allows you to divide up your workload among employees and give each worker an opportunity to contribute to your company’s success.

Along with workforce management, you may want to invest in workforce solutions that help you level up your team. For instance, you can partner with a staffing agency that connects you with national recruiters. Next, these recruiters will make it easy to engage with top talent in your industry. This helps you quickly identify quality job candidates who can join your team and hit the ground running. It also protects you against job seeker burnout.

4. Promote a Healthy Work-Life Balance

Your workers should feel great at work and everywhere else. But, there are times when workers commit too much time to their jobs. This may cause employees to miss out on opportunities to enjoy their time outside of work. In the long run, it may lead workers to resent their employers and experience burnout.

You can teach workers about the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Because, if employees value work-life balance, they may be better equipped than ever before to manage their workloads and avoid feeling burned out.

There are many things you can do to help your employees foster a healthy work-life balance, including:

• Offer a Flexible Work Schedule: Whenever possible, let your employees work whatever hours they choose and remotely. This empowers employees by giving them control over when and where they complete their work.
• Encourage Workers to Take Time Off: Remind workers to use their paid time off (PTO). When workers take time off, they can focus exclusively on their own health and well-being. And when they return to work, they may feel their best.
• Create Wellness Initiatives: Set up mindfulness programs and other wellness initiatives. These create awareness about personal wellness. They provide your workers with additional opportunities to take care of themselves.

Be consistent in your efforts to educate your employees about work-life balance. Encourage your workers to come forward if they have work-life balance concerns or questions. From here, you can provide tips, recommendations, and guidance to help your employees avoid burnout.

5. Keep the Lines of Communication Open

Your willingness to communicate with your employees about workload management and burnout has far-flung effects. If you maintain open communication with workers, you can address any workplace issues before they get worse. Plus, your employees may be ready to share their concerns and questions with you. If an employee starts to feel burned out, you can help them out right away.

By prioritizing workplace communication, you may be able to manage your employees’ workloads and protect your workers against burnout like never before. Here are things you can do to improve communication with your employees:

• Provide Your Employees with Many Opportunities to Engage: Encourage your workers to reach out to you by phone, email, and other platforms. This helps ensure that if an employee has a concern or question, they’ll have no trouble connecting with you.
• Listen to Your Workers: When an employee connects with you, give this individual the attention they deserve. Actively listen to your worker and respond appropriately.
• Get Feedback: Look for opportunities to enhance your employee communications. Regularly request feedback from your employees, so you can learn from them and engage with them in a way that helps you foster positive relationships.

Workplace communication is a two-way street. If you are concerned about a worker’s performance or possible burnout, connect with the employee. This gives you an opportunity to discuss your concerns and hear what they have to say about them.

On the other hand, remain accessible to your workers. If an employee wants to discuss their workload or burnout, provide the worker with this opportunity. This helps foster trust between you and your worker. And you and your employee can work together to resolve any problems.

Want Help with Workload Management and Burnout?

Workload management and burnout can get the best of your business and its employees. At PrideStaff, we understand these challenges and many others that affect companies. Our team has a wealth of talent recruitment experience. We’ll help you find job candidates who can fill roles across your business. Additionally, we’ll make sure your workforce is properly staffed, so you’ll be able to effectively manage your workloads and guard against employee burnout.

We are here to address your staffing needs. Your local PrideStaff office can provide the talent you need to ease stress and keep your team engaged and productive. For more information, contact us today.