Avoid burnout and retain your staff.
Some of us may think we’re invincible to burnout, but unlike the boogey man, it does exist. I remember a little while back I was working for a large international mining company and we were setting up the Australian branch. The good news was we were getting really good results with our sales, the bad news was that there wasn’t an operational infrastructure that could handle the rapid scale.
In the beginning, the ongoing tasks where ok. I could handle them and work was work. But as continued to focus on the priority tasks, little administrative tasks started to slip by the way side, and bit by bit, it piled up. The result? Shortly my colleague and I would get in and without saying a word to each other, race frantically every day to try chip away at the mountain. It got to a point that I was so burnt out that I’d get home, skip the gym, barely say anything to my girlfriend at the time and just veg out on the couch. After screaming for support with no luck, I threw in the towel and looked for another job. Shortly after, the rest of the team left also.
I’m sure you’ve heard this story time and time again. Burnout is actually one of the biggest reasons organizations lose great staff. And it’s often the proactive staff who are wanting to help who get burnt the quickest.
Having worked with a lot of organizations from a HR point of view I often saw teams that were way under-resourced. Causing simple things like leaving the office at 5 in Summer to enjoy the remaining day become a lost hope, or actually getting to the gym a next years resolution.
So how can you avoid burnout and retain your staff? Someone once said to me a manager does things right, and a leader does the right things. Here’s a few simple things I found that won’t impact you much, but will dramatically impact your staff positively:
· Encourage holidays — Now that doesn’t mean their off every single week, but life is for the living! You’ll quickly find that if you encourage holidays you’ll see an increase in productivity, they’ll be motivated to work towards something and overall will be much more energized to work.
· Work from home — I know in some roles this just isn’t capable, but if you’re in an environment where this can happen, reward your top staff by letting them work from home when they need to. You’ll be surprised at how much more they’ll respect you by treating them like an adult, and often that extra little sleep in will do wonders to their energy levels.
· Hire temps — By having a temp around the office to provide extra support can save hours of time and energy for your staff. It could literally be just to help out around the office doing some filing or doing some data entry. You’ll be surprised at how cost effective it is, and when you look at the return on investment, you’ll be hiring temps all year round.
There are obviously multiple ways in which you can help reduce over burn but first, you’ve got to acknowledge that it’s a serious problem, be proactive about it and explore your options. Just picture your top staff leaving you right now and how much more work you’ll need to do to find a replacement, then get them up to speed, then add the costs and risks associated!
If you made it here thanks for reading and as I’m no professional writer any feedback is much appreciated!
And of course, if you want to talk about how Weploy can help you get some temps in the office or would like to discuss this topic more please feel free to contact me directly.
