To stamp out employee burnout, organizations and their leaders must play their role
Employee burnout is a big problem across industries. Nearly half of U.S. human resource leaders who took a 2017 survey reported that employee burnout accounted for at least 20 percent and, in some cases, up to 50 percent of their companies’ annual employee turnover. In 2015, it was estimated that the global burden of burnout through decreased productivity, retention, absenteeism, and compensation costs would be more than $300 billion annually. The World Health Organisation is predicted to report burnout as a global pandemic by 2023.
I thought of these statistics when I read that David M. Solomon, a long-time investment banker, was appointed as CEO-designate at Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s most influential banks, and that he is also an active DJ. He operates under the moniker DJ D-Sol and has been quoted as saying that a wide range of outside interests like DJing leads to a balanced life and a better career.
While it is wonderful this works for him, it is important that solutions to employee burnout don’t focus solely on the individual because that implies that the problem originates from the affected person.
As a young doctor, I had first-hand experience of how a broken workplace system — at Uganda’s main national hospital — can push young professionals to the edge of their physical and mental limits. The worst day was when, overworked and tired after almost 10 continuous days of 18-hour night shifts, I inadvertently pricked myself with the needle while drawing blood from a patient with HIV-AIDS. I had to go through the physical and mental trauma of taking a month of post-exposure prophylaxis antiretroviral drugs. As soon as I could leave the job, I quit.
Business leaders, especially those like Mr. Solomon, who empathise with those who burn out, must not only serve as examples of how to balance work’s and life’s commitments but should also lead systemic change internally and externally that will prevent burnout in the first place.
Here are three ways to do that:
First, CEOs and the top management in industry-leading organizations must accept that it takes more than policies to get employers to use work-life balance perks. The whole organizational culture must change and it should start with the leaders. Research has shown that supervisors facilitate their subordinates’ work-life balance when they themselves display a balanced lifestyle. Examples such as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, who took two months off after his second daughter was born are a great.
Top leaders in large companies should go a step further and ensure the behaviour of other senior leaders reflects the organization’s stated support for better work-life balance. For instance, they could examine how many hours per week, outside the forty-hours-maximum work-week, top leaders have worked and how many miles they have travelled. Of course, some leadership roles require more travel than others — and that should be considered — but the trends and outliers seen, especially among leaders at similar levels with comparable responsibilities, could be instructive in bringing to light workaholic internal leaders who are not being effective role models.
Secondly, any industry-leading institution — such as Goldman Sachs or, in the case of the Ugandan healthcare system, the main national hospital in Uganda — must embrace and utilize effectively the influence it has over others in the same industry by initiating collective action geared towards good. For instance, they could lead others in designing and implementing industry-wide pledges and conventions that will affect systems-levels changes to stamp burnout. The American Medical Association provides a useful template that even other industries can use to initiate systems-level measures to protect professionals from burnout. They include encouraging working in teams; embedding satisfaction and well-being scores in institutional success metrics; allowing flexible schedules; and, creating wellness committees and infrastructure. Industry-leading institutions must encourage others to sign and implement these types of pledges.
Lastly, industry-leading organizations could differentiate themselves from their competitors by introducing clauses and benchmarks in their contracts with third-party organizations — such as institutional clients, corporations and governments — that tie implementation of burnout elimination policies to the business relationship. For instance, hospitals should encourage, and where possible stipulate, medical schools that provide medical students to have clear policies on medical student burnout. Of course, given the legal complications of introducing new conditions to existing business relationships, perhaps there should be a voluntary and staggered implementation process for existing contracts.
To be sure, many companies have already shown they are serious about improving employee work-life balance and reducing burnout. They have shown that the bare minimum in best practice includes adequate paid parental and sick leave, on-site child care, flexible work schedules and caps on hours or days people can work in a specified period. Others should follow suit.
Companies must go beyond lip-service and work-life balance employee policies that are not fully utilized. It is important that business leaders recognize they have the responsibility to model good work-life balance and go ahead and create systems that support employee behaviour in a way that is positive and meaningful.
Dr Serufusa Sekidde is a Director at GlaxoSmithKline and a 2015 Aspen New Voices Fellow. The views expressed in this article are his own
