Research Backed Ways to reduce burnout at your workplace

At 7pm, the Business Leader beamed with pride as he saw employees working on their workstations. “They are so committed”, he said to me.

3 months later, I am working with him on understanding reasons of high exits in his company!

Employee burn-out is rampant.

This is what you can do to reduce burnout for you and your team:

As a Team Manager:

• Predict right: Ensure you have the right number of people in your team: Under (and over) Staffing puts tremendous pressure on teams to ensure deliverables are met.
• Hire Right: Hire the right fits. Don’t compromise on quality for the sake of an early joiner or cost-effective resource.
• Commit Right: Commit delivery timelines to your stakeholders as per your team strength. Don’t factor extra weekday working/weekend slogging in your project plan.
• Monitor Right: Letting them figure out on their own & then creating panic in the end needs to be stopped. Make your plan together, talk about responsibilities. Monitor progress regularly. Solve for Obstacles.
• Acknowledge Right: Wrong or right, they have put in efforts towards a task. Be Mindful of their efforts and capability.
• Rest Them Right: You got 8 hours of their daily time- Give them rest/break post that. They will be more productive after a well-rested day.

As an employee:

• Time Yourself Well: Focus on all aspects of your well-being on a daily basis (Physical, Mental, Spiritual & Financial). Time them well. Don’t immerse yourself in just office work for more than 9 hours a day.
• Be Committed: You can’t take sutta & chai breaks every one hour. You can’t engage in office gossips every single day!
• Give your Best: Don’t sit with obstacles and problems- Make an attempt to solve them.
• Constantly Learn: Keep Learning. From Mistakes, From Successes, From Resources, From People.
• Learn to Say No: Don’t take more than you can chew. Know your limits. Make it clear to your stakeholders.

It doesn’t have to be crazy at work. Don’t hope to land a dream job, make your current one an ideal one and make attempts to reduce burnout.