3 ways companies can combat and prevent employee burnout, backed by science
Kamila Sip is a neuroscientist, behavior-change strategist, and keynote speaker.
She says job burnout can't be fixed with individual solutions like more time off.
Address your company's culture, like workload expectations and aligning talent with the right roles.
Job burnout isn't new — but if the tremendous talent attrition at companies around the US and beyond is any indication, it's reached critical mass.
When the pandemic struck, many people lost a sense of security in their jobs, finances, and health. As efforts to stay afloat continued, our stress levels rose and tensions arised unveiling the severity of workplace challenges.
The critical role organizations play in contributing to their workforce suffering from burnout became clear. But instead of preventing burnout at an organizational level, they try to manage it on a case-by-case basis with Band-Aid solutions like more time off, yoga retreats, or cash bonuses that don't address the root cause.
Misunderstanding job burnout has led many organizations to push the burden of preventing and managing it onto individuals. But job burnout is an "occupational phenomenon" — a chronic stress response to chronic and unresolved stressors in the workplace. As such, the causes are more rooted in organizational culture than in the individuals' ability to cope and withstand prolonged stress.
Following decades of research by Christina Maslach, an expert in the field of studying burnout, we know that job burnout has six leading causes: unsustainable workload, perceived lack of control, insufficient rewards for effort, lack of a supportive community, lack of fairness, and mismatched values and skills with roles and responsibilities.
To remedy the problem, organizations should consider these three solutions with the brain in mind:
1. Focus on people's psychological needs
Our core psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness that we have as humans are the lens through which we assess, often unconsciously, whether we feel taken care of. When we feel respected, understood, included, treated fairly, or in the loop, we inadvertently do not need to spend time wondering if we are. Instead, we have many more cognitive resources to do other things like effective collaboration, problem-solving, or managing crises and conflict.