What Are the Causes of Employee Burnout?

Employee burnout is one of the biggest threats to the mental and physical health of employees. For this reason, businesses should find solutions to the factors that cause burnout in their employees and how to create a culture that will promote well-being. In our blog post, we will touch on the causes of employee burnout and make suggestions on how to reduce stress in employees.

What is Employee Burnout?

Employee burnout is a state of emotional and physical exhaustion that leads to a lack of participation in the workplace and the inability to complete daily tasks. This concept was put forward by psychologist Herbert Freudenberger in the 1970s and had a great impact.

If there are signs of burnout in employees in a workplace, it is very important to understand the factors that cause it and how to deal with them.

Causes of Employee Burnout

1. Workload Mismatch

Unrealistic expectations from employees cause employee burnout and put them under a heavy workload. However, workload mismatch is not always due to the expectation of excess work. This is also caused by the fact that employees work in jobs that are not suitable for the skills and abilities they do not have.

How Can Burnout from Workload Mismatch Be Prevented?

•  Do not burden employees with too many tasks at the same time. You can expect greater productivity by multitasking an employee. However, this is an unrealistic expectation. Because multitasking is 40% less productive than single-tasking. For this reason, you need to give employees the opportunity to focus on one thing.
• Set priority goals as you start a new week. Instead of asking employees to work through an endless list of tasks, you can have them focus on the few most important tasks in the new week. In this way, the workload of the employees is balanced.
• Be realistic. Some projects may take longer than planned. By having regular meetings with your employees, you can plan unexpected delays and determine a roadmap accordingly.

2. Lack of Control

It is very important for an employee to have sufficient authority and control to be able to do business. If employees lack this authority and control, they may feel stressed. For this reason, employees should be given the opportunity to do the work in their own way so that they can be effective and efficient while doing their jobs.

How Can Burnout Caused by Lack of Control Be Prevented?

• Allow employees to decide the path they will take to complete their tasks. It is also crucial to establish an open line of communication so that we can take action when needed. Thus, employees can focus on their work by receiving regular feedback from their direct associates.
• Do not involve your employees in inappropriate tasks and projects and do not cause them to be psychologically overwhelmed.

3. Insufficient Rewards

One of the factors that cause the feeling of burnout in employees is the dissatisfaction with the salary they receive. However, insufficient external rewards can also have a negative effect on employee motivation. In other words, the absence of financial rewards is a cause of employee burnout, but the absence of social rewards is also a cause of burnout. For example; The fact that the employee is not appreciated in the works they do well and in the successes, they achieve causes a decrease in motivation.

Considering all these, in order to prevent burnout, it is necessary to first pay the employees what they deserve, and then to recognize their success and the work they do in order to increase their internal motivation.

How Can Burnout Caused by Insufficient Rewards Be Prevented?

• Get to know your employees and their achievements. For example, when an employee achieves greater success than expected or reaches the 3-month target within 2 months, recognize these achievements and praise your employee.
• Share your employees’ successes as stories. Recognizing employee achievements is important, but presenting it as part of a story while doing so will positively affect employee motivation.

4. Transparency

It is very important for employees in a company to have confidence in their managers. Thus, employees know how they will be treated in the future, what their job expectations will be, and how managers will implement their decisions. Thus, uncertainty will leave its place to transparency. This will have a positive impact on employees.

How to Avoid Employee Burnout with Transparency?

• Set clear rules and be transparent when applying the rules. It is also very important to be consistent while all this is happening.
• Make an effort to understand the expectations of your employees. Opinions about goals, expectations, and job responsibilities differ among all employees. So take the time to understand these expectations.
• Focus on how to run a better process and achieve a better result.
• Continuously monitor employee satisfaction. Share results on employee satisfaction with relevant people and collaborate to create better solutions. In this way, you prevent the disconnection between experiences and expectations.

While doing all this, you can use the Suggestion System, which acts as a bridge between employees and managers. With the Suggestion System, you can increase employee motivation, improve company culture, come up with new ideas, and identify and solve problems within the company.