How can companies and employees avoid the burnout crisis by Reuters

By Chris Taylor

NEW YORK (Reuters) – In more common times, burnout is an exception.

At the time of COVID, it feels almost commonplace.

According to Jennifer Moss, organizations should look hard in the mirror to promote cultures of overwork that make things worse. The author, speaker, and workplace wellness expert wrote “The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It” to help curb this crisis before we all hit the wall.

Moss spoke to Reuters in part about overcoming the pandemic. The edited passages are below.

Q: You’ve done some research on how people feel now. What did you find?

A: During the second period of COVID, only 2% of people rated their well-being as excellent, and 89% said that their working life was worse. We expected people to be exhausted, working longer hours a day and losing efficiency.

But we also saw that the cynicism was very high: people are starting to feel that they have no control over the results. That’s really dangerous.

Q: How exactly do you define burnout?

A: It is chronic unmanaged work stress. There are six basic reasons: unbearable workload, perceived lack of control, inadequate reward for effort, lack of supportive community, lack of fairness, and inadequate values ​​and skills.

Q: Companies know something serious is going on, so are they doing enough?

A: Leaders are concerned that people are leaving, so they have added some welfare strategies to their portfolio. This has put more staff in the driver’s seat; for example, we are seeing that many companies are delaying their return to work. Self-care strategies can be a good thing, but sometimes they are a solution to a much bigger problem that needs to be managed on the water.

Q: What should companies do to prevent burnout?

A: They need to look at the reasons for the workload. It’s okay to give people a day off, but you also need to lower your productivity expectations.

If you have a culture of overwork, that doesn’t make people more efficient, it makes them sick. Companies need to give people more agency to know how and when they return to work, pay people what they deserve, compensate them if they are working overtime, and make sure they are encouraging people for the right reasons.

Lack of fairness is a big issue here because young people feel that there is no way out for them.

Q: What can people do to ensure that they are not empty?

A: Organizations need to have a lot of responsibility in the face of burnout, but staff can also be part of the solution. We can do a lot of work to identify whether or not we smoke, such as how often we feel tired, lethargic, and cynical. Then we have to start thinking about going back, taking a break every couple of hours, digitally detoxing, going outside, putting on music.

Set boundaries to respond to emails, and manage your customers’ expectations so that everything doesn’t always be so urgent.

Q: Leaders also burn. How can they handle these feelings?

A: We’ve never had a collective trauma like this where every person is going through. We all feel fear and social anxiety, and the same goes for leaders.

Have some compassion, be transparent with your team, and don’t worry about being weak. You also have things, and employees can’t see what they can’t be, so be a role model. If you’re not taking care of yourself, you can’t help the team.

Q: Have you personally faced burnout?

A: It’s been very hard. We need to give ourselves a break from being as ineffective as before. We’re tired, and nothing normal about this.

I really tried to follow my rules and take moments for myself: sitting outside, reading some fiction, walking my dog ​​in nature.

I knew that the only way to get this out of my children in a healthy way was to do this job. And he helped.

Every day, each of us has to look back at the past year and turn our backs and say, “I got it.”