Reverse Burnout: Here’s Three Ways How
In the battle against burnout, HR leaders have tried a slew of strategies to improve burnout and create a better employee experience and better employee engagement. From extra time off to added benefits and everything in between, but we’re still seeing unprecedented rates of burnout and chronic stress reflected in burnout statistics. A whopping 89% of employees have fallen victim to burnout, according to a survey conducted by workplace analytics firm Visier of 1,000 full-time U.S. workers.
With limited bandwidth and budget, where should leaders start? According to Gallup, this is the key to combating burnout: “When people feel inspired, motivated and supported in their work, they do more work — and that work is significantly less stressful on their overall health and wellbeing.”
Let’s break this down into the three pieces Gallup mentions: inspiration, motivation, and support. These are relatively straightforward needs for employees to have met, yet it is challenging for HR leaders to deliver a scalable approach to burnout across a large organization. When done right, these steps are crucial to reducing burnout and increasing employee engagement:
Reversing Signs of Burnout #1: Inspiration
To feel connected to the work they’re doing every day, people need to uncover their intrinsic motivations and strengths. Incorporating moments of inspiration into employees’ daily practices helps both their performance and mental health. Once employees unlock this, it’s much easier for them to connect to the “why” behind their work and feel an underlying sense of inspiration and satisfaction.
Reversing Symptoms of Burnout #2: Motivation
To translate inspiration into action, we need to take motivation a step further. Employees need to understand how they can connect their intrinsic motivations with their daily routine at work. While intrinsic motivations remain fairly consistent for most people, their day-to-day work (how they work, with whom they work, and their specific outputs) tend to change at a higher rate. That’s why a “one and done” intervention on burnout recovery typically has low long-term results.
Reversing Burnout Key #3: Support Work-Life-Balance
Providing clear, tactical burnout support for employees is a powerful lever to pull for several reasons. When employees feel heard, it dramatically improves their sense of engagement. In fact, according to a recent study, 74% of employees report being more effective at their job when they feel heard.
Beyond the power of feeling heard, employees need more than just policies to improve their burnout, they need practical, accessible tools they can use. Without this practical support, it’s not likely that burnout challenges will decrease in any meaningful way.
Maintaining The Antidote to Burnout
Burnout needs to be continually addressed to stem the ongoing tide of stressors people face in today’s workplace (and world) and make an impact on employee experience. These key drivers to reversing burnout must be made available in an ongoing way to meet employees where they are and reverse dangers of burnout and sources of stress.
Imperative’s platform combats burnout by activating all three of these burnout reversal keys on an ongoing basis:
1. Give Adequate Time for Inspiration
At the heart of Imperative is making work feel personal. We start with our proprietary purpose assessment that uncovers how each employee approaches work and uncovers their intrinsic motivations. We use those insights to personalize conversations so each employee can have a relevant, customized experience that can scale across your organization.
78% of employees report having conversations on the Imperative platform made them more successful.
2. Link Motivation to Career Path
After each conversation, both employees commit to an action to take before the next conversation—translating discussion into actual behavior change, which = increased motivation.
82% of employees report completing the action they committed to.
3. Support Personal Relationships
Our platform is an easy to launch and use tool that employees can access on a regular basis to support the initial decrease of burnout and, as well ensure burnout is being addressed in an on-going and sustainable way.
On Imperative, 89% of connections created build a meaningful and sustained relationship
The Simple Cure For Burnout
Reversing burnout doesn’t have to be complex, but it does have to be human-centered, personalized and ongoing. Providing your people with inspiration, motivation and support in the flow-of-work is the key to increasing their wellbeing, fulfillment and success.
Talk to our team about how we can bring this to life for your company!
