Workplace stress is tough to deal with at the best of times, and on top of everything, the last couple years have been some of the most stressful in recent memory! A pandemic, economic turmoil, and an en-masse shift towards remote work-could the world throw any more massive changes at us?
What is Burnout and Why Does It Matter?
Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, or physical exhaustion that’s severe enough to affect your work.
- According to one WHO study, burnout costs us a staggering one trillion dollars in lost productivity every year.
- It’s also a major driver of employee turnover.
Create A Culture of Empathy
Employees aren’t machines-we’re real people with lives, loved ones, and personal responsibilities. For us to do our best work, that needs to be respected.
- To beat burnout, distributed teams should be led by compassionate, human-centric policies that support employee health and happiness.
Beat Video Fatigue
Keep it short
- 30 minutes is a great sweet spot for video meetings. Don’t bump it up to 60 minutes without a really compelling reason.
- Hide your self-view
- Consider audio-only meetings wherever possible.
Support Work and Home Separation
Providing employees with dedicated office equipment or paying for co-working memberships
- Implement team-wide routines to get out of work mode at the end of the day
- Simple things like sharing the day’s high and low points on Slack can help
How Can We Overcome Remote-Work Burnout?
If approached with thoughtfulness and care, remote work doesn’t need to be a death knell for employee engagement and satisfaction
- It just takes careful planning, and good policies that put people first
- Here are a few ideas to get you started
The Future Is Bright (And Remote)
The last couple years have been full of challenges, but maybe it’s time to step back and think about how far we’ve come together in spite of everything
- During COVID-19, so many companies had to rush into distributed models with very little forethought or time to plan
- Now that we’re well into our new normal, we have a chance to look at the big picture and take real, impactful steps to make this distributed way of working healthier, more productive, and more sustainable for everyone
Prioritize Clarity
Draft policies that get rid of ambiguity around how, when, and where employees are expected to work
Make Working From Home Flexible
Just because you’re working remotely doesn’t mean your job is flexible. Rigid, overly-controlling policies make it harder for people to manage their own needs, taking away autonomy and contributing to workplace stress.
Why Is Burnout Rising During COVID-19?
Overwork
- There’s only so much our bodies can handle, and when many of us switched to working from home during pandemic-related lockdowns, our mental load increased, both in terms of the sheer volume of work we were expected to handle and how cognitively demanding it became
- Remote work can be more cognitively draining, especially video conferencing
- Another (unsurprising) culprit for distributed-work exhaustion is a lack of separation between work and home space
COVID-19, Burnout, and Inequality
Increased financial precarity and more caregiving responsibilities outside the home are major contributing factors to burnout.
- In November 2020, there were 2 million fewer women in the workforce than in November 2019, which is bad news for gender equality but also throws the income of many women’s families into jeopardy.
Set clear boundaries
Managers should set defined office hours and stick to them
- Lead by example
- If workers see their manager turning off Slack notifications and not replying to email outside of work hours, they will understand that on your team, work-life balance is more than just a buzzword
