How Human Resources Teams Can Prevent Employee Burnout

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Guest Author
December 12 2022

Employee burnout is a problem that most businesses struggle with. It happens when employees work too hard, and their stress levels get out of control. This can lead to lower productivity and greater absenteeism in the workplace. It’s important for HR teams to take steps to prevent this from happening.

Recognize Stress

The first step in managing stress is recognizing it for what it is—a normal response to change. When your team feels like they’re being pushed into new territory, or if their workload changes, they’re going to feel stressed. If a company reorganizes, or there are layoffs or promotions, you can expect that people will feel stressed about the prospect of losing their job or gaining a new one. There’s nothing wrong with feeling this way; as long as your employees recognize that these feelings are completely normal reactions and don’t try to suppress them with unhealthy methods like substance abuse or overworking themselves (which will only make things worse), then they’ll be able to continue working without burning out.

However, while it’s important for employees to recognize their own personal sources of stress—and learn how best not just cope but thrive under these new conditions—there are also certain things that your HR department can do to mitigate employee burnout before it happens:

Offer Flexible Schedules

Offering flexible schedules or shorter workweeks to your employees can help them balance work and life outside of the office. Flexible scheduling helps employees who have children, health issues, or other responsibilities outside of work.

Additionally, offering flexible schedules is a way for you to show that you care about their well-being. It shows that you value them as individuals who are more than just workers in an office setting. This can go a long way toward creating a culture where people feel comfortable asking for help when they need it without fear of being judged or penalized by their managers or coworkers.

Model a Healthy Work-life Balance

It’s important to model a healthy work-life balance. The most important step you can take is to model that it’s okay for people to be human. Showing your employees that you have interests and passions outside of work helps them feel like they’re not alone in finding ways to decompress from their jobs, whether by spending time with friends or pursuing hobbies.

Whatever approach you decide upon as an organization, building trust between management and staff will help foster an environment where employees feel comfortable making decisions about how they split up their days between the office and other places.

Encourage Breaks

While it’s important not to overwork employees, it’s also important that they take enough time off from work. Experts say that people should get a break every 90 minutes or so, and employers should encourage this by offering scheduled breaks or even just an informal lunchtime walk.

Additionally, if the employer can’t afford to pay for a formal lunch break (or if an employee doesn’t have time to go out), there are other ways of encouraging breaks in the middle of a workday: for example, offering snacks at regular intervals throughout the day or allowing employees to bring their pets in on Fridays (if allowed).

Hold Fewer Meetings

There are some types of meetings that can negatively affect your employees’ moods and productivity levels, while others actually help improve morale and increase productivity within the company. Don’t hold a meeting just because it’s Monday morning or Friday afternoon — if there’s no reason for it, don’t have one! You can easily communicate updates to employees by creating video announcements by using online screen recorder. Your employees can watch it during their free time.

Create a Wellness Program at Work

A wellness program is a strategy that helps employees stay healthy and happy at work. This can be done by offering a variety of employee benefits, like healthcare services and counseling. You can also encourage your staff to adopt healthy habits by providing them with the tools they need to be successful—for example, giving them time off to exercise or encouraging them to eat nutritious meals in the break room during lunchtime.

If your HR team wants their employees to thrive in their jobs, they’ll need to create a wellness program for them as well as provide resources for implementing it in the workplace. For example: if there are ways you can make it easier for people who want healthier lifestyles but aren’t sure how (like providing company-provided gym memberships), then offer those benefits so that everyone gets what they need out of working at your organization rather than just doing their job because that’s what needs doing right now without any regard for long-term happiness or satisfaction which means burnout could happen faster than expected!

Conduct Performance Reviews Thoughtfully

When it comes to performance reviews, the emphasis should be on what you can do to improve. The more specific you are, the better—and that goes for both positive and negative feedback. It’s also important to remember that your employees may not always be in a good place emotionally when they receive this kind of feedback; don’t take it personally if someone needs time before responding or thanking you for your input.

A 360 review process is an effective way of providing employees with timely constructive feedback from multiple sources (colleagues, managers, clients). This approach helps create a sense of fairness and transparency around performance reviews so everyone knows where they stand at any given time.

Be Engaged on Social Media

One way to prevent burnout is to make sure your employees are engaged with their jobs and feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. Social media can help with this by allowing employees to interact with each other via forums or chat rooms.

You can post informative awareness videos about employee burnout. Have your team collaborate to create a meaningful piece by asking everyone to send a video about their personal experience with burnout and how to avoid it. Make sure to use the video compressor so you can easily post on social media without losing its quality.

Another engaging way is to post GIFs for your employees’ birthdays or wedding engagements. Use GIF compressor to easily create these trending animations. It will create fun and involvement in one post.

Minimize the Need for After-hours Work

If you can, get your employees to complete their work during normal business hours. Ideally, you will have flexible schedules that allow employees who have children or other responsibilities outside of work to leave at a reasonable time in order to attend to their family obligations. However, if this doesn’t suit everyone, make sure that your team has access to technology that supports remote working and allows them to do much of their work from home (or wherever they choose).

If you know that there is going to be some extra workload over the next few months, try scheduling some training or team meetings during off hours so employees won’t feel like they’re being expected or required to stay late every day just because they’re not clocking out at 5pm anymore! This also gives everyone a chance for self-care: taking care of ourselves helps us better serve others around us!

As you can see, there are lots of things that a human resources team can do to help prevent employee burnout. There is no one right way to approach this problem, but by working together with your employees and understanding the signs of burnout, you will be able to create a healthy work environment for everyone.

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