Stress can be positive but is a significant risk factor for burnout and exhaustion
The role stress plays in human productivity is paradoxical. On one hand, some degree of anxiety and stress is necessary for people to experience motivation. Stress helped keep our early ancestors alive, by alerting them to predators and driving them to amass resources and defend themselves. Today, stress can help individuals identify priorities, sense threat, and stay on-task. Positive stress, sometimes called eustress, can also add stimulation and excitement to life (Angelo & Chambel, 2015). Many employees can recall times when working to meet a pressing deadline or respond to a crisis was exhilarating, for example. A manager’s goal, therefore, should never be to eradicate all stress entirely.
Burnout and exhaustion are linked to anxiety and mental health issues
Stress becomes a problem (and a risk factor for burnout) when it impedes individual performance. Where the line between “positive stress” and “negative stress” should be drawn is highly subjective; some employees thrive when held to a rigorous, high-stakes standard, while others buckle and fail. As a manager, it is your responsibility to be attuned to your employees’ stress levels and their motivational needs (Avanzi et al, 2015). When an employee is given a goal to meet, does he complain, show dread, or seem physically agitated? When you make a team leader responsible for a new task, does she seem motivated and energized? Look, also, to physical symptoms of anxiety: overly stressed employees may sweat, get stomach aches, spend a lot of time in the bathroom, have a dry mouth, or miss work due to illness (Söderlund, 2017). If you see these signs of toxic stress in your employees, you need to withdraw some of the pressure.
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When employees are overworked, dysfunction takes over
Long hours and a lack of breaks can lead to burnout very quickly. When employees lose sleep due to long work hours, overnighters, or just stress, their emotional and physical resolve begins to wear down. This can even be the case when employees are allowed to go home, but expected to remain “plugged in” to their employer digitally, for extended periods (Ter Hoeven et al, 2016). Even the immune system becomes dysfunctional when stress and exhaustion are high. Burnout is also a likely outcome if your demands prevent employees from taking full lunch hours or utilizing their breaks, or if days off are withheld repeatedly (Grossi et al, 2015).
Research suggests that the average person can only operate at their highest level of productivity for between four and eight hours a day; most people cannot place full attention and energy into every task, at all times. Thus, it is your duty as a manager to set appropriate expectations, and assign tasks in such a way that no one is drained. You can also address burnout by correcting for periods of overwork by becoming briefly more lenient and slow-paced. Deadlines and late nights might occasionally be inevitable, but they should never be your workplace’s primary tool. Show respect for your employees’ time, and realism about the needs of the human body and mind, and you will be rewarded with a much lower burnout rate, and much higher employee retention (Mo & Shi, 2017).
Structural problems in the organization contribute to burnout
Organizational dysfunction, disorganization, and injustice are all leading predictors of burnout. Managers who are seeking to avoid burnout must remain vigilant in looking out for, and addressing, these factors. Each one can contribute to employees’ sense that their work does not matter, their presence in the organization is not valued, and that their position is under threat.
Common symptoms of organizational dysfunction include: employee apathy, jaded attitudes, communications problems, missed deadlines, and sloppy mistakes. If two departments do not effectively communicate with one another due to poor organization, broken communication tools, or political infighting, the risk of burnout is heightened (Ter Hoeven et al, 2016). Organizational dysfunction can also occur when there is an emphasis placed on the hierarchy: abuses of power and signs of disrespect are especially dispiriting and demotivating to employees.
Performance management, in particular feedback and evaluation, can help avoid feelings of inadequacy
Furthermore, when employees perceive that they are being judged or evaluated using unfair methods, they are apt to see their work as meaningless, their employers as inept, and their position within the organization as insecure (Herr et al, 2016). To avoid this, make sure you are utterly transparent about how performance is monitored, what tools are used to score productivity, and how each of those scores is calculated. Be open to reasonable critiques of evaluation processes. If employees are not receiving credit for the work they do, or are not receiving fair compensation, they will tend to self-sabotage, diminish productivity, or generate conflict as a result.
Broadly speaking, a manager can reduce the organization-wide burnout risk by attending actively to employees’ concerns (Mo & Shi, 2017). Make yourself available to your employees, and be receptive to suggestions and airings of frustrations, no matter how they are worded. Lower-level employees may have firsthand knowledge of the flaws in work procedures, or areas that require new investment. By listening to your team and incorporating their suggestions, you will increase their sense of organizational fairness, which has been found consistently to lower burnout risk (Herr et al, 2016).
