Employee burnout is a serious problem in both human and economic terms — so much so that in 2019, the World Health Organization officially recognized burnout in its list of diseases.
One of the major causes of employee burnout is overwork: When a staff has too much on its plate, employees can suffer physical and mental stress that substantially reduces their quality of life, as well as their ability to perform on the job.
The infographic below, Work-Life Balance: How to Prevent Employee Burnout, provides a useful overview of the problem, how to recognize the symptoms, and ways to keep employees happy and productive. It’s excellent reading for anyone in an HR role, executives and employees who feel they or a colleague are overworked or completely burned out.
It’s important to keep in mind that burnout arises from a variety of causes:
- Sometimes, an organization will simply push its staff too hard, asking too much and rewarding too little.
- In other cases, organizations create burnout condition unintentionally, by failing to properly monitor workloads or getting too caught up extinguishing day-to-day fires to step back and assess the overall morale of the team.
- In yet other cases, burnout is actually self-imposed. Sometimes, employees bite off more than they can chew, lack the necessary organizational skills, or have some other correctable issue that prevents them from maintaining a positive attitude and strong level of performance.
As the infographic shows, the key to preventing burnout is helping employees achieve the proper balance in their personal and professional activities. It may seem paradoxical, but when employees have more time to cultivate their personal lives, they become more productive at work. To learn more and prevent burnout in your organization, please continue reading below.
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