Reduce Employee Burnout

A recent article from Talent Management.com‘s Talent Management Perspectives blog offers some advice on how to manage employee burnout. This article, Tips to Combat Employee Burnout, by Lois Melbourne, confronts one of the most critical issues in talent management. Employee burnout is an important factor for the talent manager. How do you keep your employees content? Part of the game plan should be maintaining a consistent work environment because this allows employees to keep a reasonable life outside of the workplace.

According to the article, employee burnout can be identified by four key signals:

– Avoiding or skipping meetings uncharacteristically, an upward trend of absenteeism, irritability, and a lack of attention to details.

When looking at trends within an organization, talent managers need to watch specific metrics to pinpoint large scale employee burnout. Such pinpoints to make note of include higher employee turnover, increased absenteeism, and productivity losses. Keeping an eye out for long-term impacts on the organization should include special attentiveness to rising turnover for high-potential employees.

However, there are several steps that talent managers can take to help prevent employee burnout. Here are a few:

Provide employee training for the new tasks the person is managing: When cuts are made to improve profitability, ignoring the need for training can result in lower productivity. Learn-as-you-go training takes more time and often creates great frustration for the employee.

Ensure employees get to keep activities in their jobs that they like to do: Employees can gain energy by doing things they they love to do, especially if they excel at these tasks.

Offer a change of scenery: If the team typically meets in a windowless conference room, try booking the client conference room occasionally. The change of venue can be inspiring and can boost morale. It can also stimulate different perspectives on the topics at hand.

Extend deadlines when possible: Having a little more time can often encourage the employee to take the time to focus on the quality of deliverables.

Talent managers should not ignore the underemployed – – It’s important to pay attention to these employees as well. These employees may not be using all of their abilities to the fullest capacity. These could be the employees that are key for succession planning and for critical roles through any future reorganization of the company. In successful talent management, it’s crucial to connect with each employee to understand his or her skills and assets, and what each employee’s potential is within the organization. To read more tips about reducing employee burnout, click here to read the full article.

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