From the course: How to Support Your Employees' Well-Being

How to recognize the signs of employee burnout

From the course: How to Support Your Employees' Well-Being

How to recognize the signs of employee burnout

- Sometimes we all wish we could be mind readers, to see inside the head of another person standing in front of us and discover what they're really thinking and feeling, especially when they look like they're having a bad day, and there is one type of struggling that's especially important to be able to spot at a distance, and that's burnout. This chronic state of workplace stress, which seriously impacts a person's performance and wellbeing. It's not only pervasive, affecting nearly all organizations, but it's also on the rise, especially with the arrival of the COVID pandemic. No one chooses to become burnt out, but with the pressures of work and life, it can sometimes just appear when someone least expects it. So how can you spot burnout? What should you be looking out for? Well, classical physical signs of burnout include mental and physical exhaustion with symptoms such as headaches or stomach aches while it also leaves people feeling drained and unable to cope. Decoding more subtle physical signs can give you insight into someone else's mental state. For example, by paying attention to the micro changes in the muscles of someone's face, your brain is actually able to distinguish between a whole host of emotional expressions so that you can work out what the other person might be feeling. Similarly, the loudness and pitch of someone's voice and the fact that they include other non-verbal sounds like laughter is another indicator. The speed at which someone walks, the angle of their limbs and their posture can also all reflect someone's mood. These micro messages can cue you when things aren't quite right. Changes in attitude can signal burnout. For example, people with burnout often show a growing cynicism about their work. They view the jobs as increasingly stressful, as frustrating. They begin to feel numb about their work and they can start to really distance themselves from other people. Empathy, the skill of putting yourself in their shoes to know what they're thinking and feeling is critical. Compare their behavior against the wider background of the situation or who they are. This context will allow you to see whether their behavior is proportional to the situation or if it's disproportional, and therefore, a signal that something is amiss. Another warning sign for burnout is either a person's performance slipping or that they increasingly express that they don't have what it takes to do the job despite putting all the hours available in to get the job done. What's more, there are also personality tendencies that can contribute to burnout. People who are more prone to perfectionism and pessimism are sometimes thought to be at greater risk for burnout. As a manager assessing your team, it's important for you to check your own bias in the evaluation. For example, it's well known that a person is more likely to blame their own poor work performance on the situation rather than on themselves, but in contrast, if they're making exactly the same assessment for someone else, they're more likely to blame the person. This dispositional bias is highly common and happens in the background without us even realizing that we're doing it, but this kind of bias hinders your emotional intelligence when dealing with situations like burnout. It's easy to find yourself blaming the person. Well, it might be the case that the situation needs changing. In conclusion, there are various social emotional skills that will help you deal with tricky situations such as employee burnout as well as generally helping you to become a better people manager. Dismissing these as softer skills overlooks their critical importance in daily work and will prevent you from getting the most out of your team, whatever adversities and stresses they face.

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