Anxiety, overwhelm, exhaustion, self-doubt – the symptoms of burnout are many, and they can be crippling. 

In the four years since burnout was recognised by the World Health Organisation as an occupational phenomenon, it’s become part of the HR language. How do we prevent burnout? How do we support employees experiencing burnout? Is burnout happening in my organisation? These are all questions in need of answers, but the solution is rarely simple. 

Advanced’s most recent survey of HR directors in British businesses indicated that a huge nine in 10 HRDs (91 per cent) believe burnout to be an issue, up from 84 per cent last year. This stat in itself is a confliction – while it’s horrifying that so many HRDs are flagging burnout in their organisation, it’s simultaneously a good thing that the signs and symptoms are being seen for what they are. 

Our annual Performance Management Report, launched earlier this year, found that 42 per cent of employees are more stressed than they were last year. Only a fifth (21 per cent) said they felt less stressed, despite more HRDs recognising their red flags. 

Recognising burnout and stress is a vital part of keeping a workforce healthy. But it’s only part of the battle – it’s not enough simply to acknowledge burnout; businesses need to take proactive and effective steps to address and prevent it. 

What is burnout?
When we talk about burnout, we generally mean the physical manifestation of a prolonged period of stress. Mental Health UK has a helpful guide to burnout which outlines the symptoms and causes of the condition. 

People may experience burnout differently, but many will experience:

• Feeling overwhelmed.
• Feeling detached from work.
• Feeling listless or a lack of energy.
• Anxiety.
• Self-doubt. 

Burnout does not get better by itself. Without a fundamental shift in a person’s working routine, the individual will not see an improvement and could even see a decline in their mental and physical health. 

When a workforce experiences these symptoms at large the impact on a business can be catastrophic, so it’s vital that HR departments have a plan in place to recognise, prevent and mitigate burnout. 

Tracking and addressing burnout
Tracking burnout can be easier said than done and HR teams must ensure they have strategies in place to properly monitor individuals and teams in their business. It’s not enough to ask employees to raise concerns about their own mental health in relation to burnout – employers must proactively monitor their staff and their behaviour and act at the first signs of a problem. 

Continuous performance management is a good solution to this problem because it forces greater clarity on how each person in a team is performing at any one time. Rather than relying on quarterly, six-monthly or even annual reviews, continuous performance management offers a year-round view of how each person is performing at work and can wave the first warning flag that something is amiss. 

Equally important are plans to address burnout. 

We know that repeated isolations caused by the pandemic triggered greater levels of burnout. Being suddenly available 24/7 without a hard stop at the end of the working day meant that many fell into a pattern of working longer hours with no break. Teams and Zoom overload, spyware monitoring computer use, out of hours working patterns – it all adds up to leave people feeling overwhelmed and on a path to burnout. 

Many soft benefits can be framed as helping address burnout, but HRDs should tread carefully. A gym subscription, free fruit in the office and a hybrid working environment is not a one-stop solution for burnout. In fact, these can be Band-Aid solutions that do little more than prolong the burnout experience. Offering on-site restaurants or a gym in the office can actually serve to keep employees on-site for longer than they would otherwise have done, contributing further to the burnout they’re meant to be helping. 

It’s important to develop a thorough strategy for helping identify, address and minimise burnout. 

Free fruit is tokenism – don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a couple of browning bananas will help anyone tackle burnout! 

What actually helps?
Almost half (49 per cent) of employees we surveyed said that their manager doesn’t help them avoid burnout at work.

Avoiding burnout means taking real and meaningful steps to change working practices for the long-term. It might mean a blanket ban on meetings with more than three people (like Shopify), a stoppage to out-of-hours emails or greater annual leave allowances. It might look like an organisational redesign to alleviate pressure on certain teams, or a recruitment drive to split the workload more fairly. 

The point is that your organisation won’t know what the right solution looks like if it doesn’t understand the scale and scope of the problem. HRDs must take action to understand the burnout picture at their organisation and conduct real conversations with individuals of all levels to understand what the issues at hand are. 

Managers are a secret weapon here. A good manager will know their team and their pressures and be able to identify ways that these pressures can be alleviated. In fact, a huge number of the managers we surveyed felt that they could help. Ninety-two per cent said they felt equipped or somewhat equipped to support employees suffering from burnout – which sounds like great news. 

However, only 52 per cent of employees said that their manager helps them avoid burnout at work. Clearly, there’s a discrepancy here, and it’s HR’s job to identify and close that gap. 

Why does it matter?
If changes to address staff burnout aren’t made soon, many businesses may find themselves dealing with lower productivity and engrained wellness issues which could affect the long-term success of the organisation.

Burnout cannot be underestimated – it’s real and it’s significant. It impacts more of your employees than you probably think, and if your organisation can’t (or won’t) take steps to help those people then it will feel the impact. Burned out employees are not an asset any business wants.

The issues around burnout aren’t going anywhere. In fact, as we keep pushing hybrid working set-ups with minimal changes to performance management and wellbeing plans, it’s just going to get more and more prolific. 

It’s time for HRDs to grab the bull by the horns and formulate a plan to address burnout properly. 

Just make sure that it doesn’t revolve around free bowls of fruit.