Even in the early stages of building your startup, you need to anticipate the working conditions of your employees. This is a vital part of operating a business. The people who work to run your operations are your business’s lifeblood; without them, your entire enterprise will not prosper.
You wouldn’t want to reach the point when employees are quitting one by one or are getting sick because of the stress brought by work. From the get-go, you need to familiarize yourself with the causes of employee burnout so that you can avoid them in the future.
What’s Employee Burnout
According to experts, team member burnout is the prolonged physical, mental and emotional exhaustion caused by poor workplace conditions. Most of the time, business owners don’t realize that they’re the number one cause of this. How they call the shots at work and the unbalanced decisions affecting the entire organization affect the entire workforce’s wellbeing.
Here are other causes of employee burnout:
- Workload;
- Compensation;
- Physical environment; and
- Culture at work.
Issues like team member burnout must be nipped at the bud when you feel them manifesting in the workplace. Ignoring the signs could lead to more significant losses and affect the whole operation. In the United States, it has been noted that about 37% of adults have encountered stress in 2017, a considerable rise from the previous years.
Tackling Worker Burnout Head On
Luckily, employee burnout is avoidable. To help you tackle team member burnout effectively, here are some suggestions for your startup:
- Promote Work-Life Balance
Encourage your team members to have a life outside work. It could be done by reminding them to clock out of work on time and not to bring work home.
In addition, you may schedule weekly casual get-togethers after work hours which isn’t mandatory. Anyone on the team who wants to join can do so if they have the available time or if their Friday night isn’t busy. You can meet up at a bar or a coffee shop to chat about things unrelated to work or catch up with each other.
- Practice Efficient Scheduling
If your business operates 24/7, ensure that no team member gets the graveyard shift all the time. Balanced scheduling that includes day shift, mid and graveyard shifts in a week will allow your team member to get the desired hours of sleep and will not create a permanent sleep cycle that’s opposed to the normal.
When a person gets assigned a permanent graveyard shift, they’ll suffer from disrupting their circadian rhythm – the body’s internal clock that dictates the sleep-wake cycle. This, in turn, affects a person’s general wellness and may suffer from anxiety, depression, and weight loss or weight gain
- Provide Work From Home Options
Often, employees get burned out from the stress of commuting to and from work, more so, if the traffic situation in your city is as worse as that in Manila or New Delhi. At times, if the traffic is horrendous during the peak period, giving an allowance of two hours wouldn’t be enough. And this could be too stressful for an employee that they’re already exhausted even before beginning their work day.
Allowing a work-from-home setup could give them a little more time for themselves and their family, time that, instead of being spent commuting, can be dedicated to improving their wellness and nurturing their relationships.
- Encourage Employees To Use Their Vacation Privileges
When team members are too bent on achieving their goals, like earning enough travel money for their next trip, they could forget to take a rest or well-deserved break. And often, what usually happens is they have saved the money they need, but they get too sick to even travel and enjoy the money they worked so hard for.
Remind your employees to take their vacation, and if you have a newsletter, give them a few suggestions on what to do during their holiday if they seem to be running out of ideas.
- Provide A Quiet Space To Unplug
In the office, have a quiet break room where employees can relax during their breaks. It could have a cot where they could lie if they need to nap or have a coffee machine if they need to recharge. It’d also be nice to have a few reading materials like magazines or exciting books that they could read while resting.
- Install Time Management App For Computers
Most of the team members who work on the computer don’t even realize the time when they’re working, and often, they forget to eat or take a rest.
A time management app will automatically shut down the computers to make them stop working at designated times. This is crucial in taking care of their eye health and preventing them from having tension headaches. Your employees will appreciate that you’re looking after their welfare and understand that you’re only trying to preserve their health.
Conclusion
Team member burnout could be something you feel is inexistent in your organization. But you have to understand that it’s not easy to talk about mental health; there’s still a stigma about it and people are wary of discussing about the topic openly. Taking a proactive approach to anticipating workplace burnout so it doesn’t happen in your organization is a great strategy you can employ for your startup.
