Employee Burnout-How to spot it and stop it

Employee Burnout: How to spot it, and stop it

In the Sunday MJS, I read a brief article about how in these tough economic times, umm...basically everyone is stressed out. The common concern is the challenge to make ends meet. As organizations do whatever they can to run a lean and effective ship, employees have to take on additional responsibilities due to downsizing or have to deal with the stress of worrying about their own positions being eliminated.

Experts offer different opinions on when our recession will end. What has been apparent is that employers are relying on their top employees to do more during this economic change, potentially causing burnout. The simple message that everyone knows but we all commonly forget is that your top performers are the ones that can separate you from your competition. Don’t lose your top employees to burnout.

What is burnout?

Webster (or the sourced article below :) describes burnout as “the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one's devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results,” and is a stress-related state.

What are the signs?

Change in attitude: An example would be an employee who goes from pleasant to disagreeable and becomes less sociable or patient with co-workers.
Change in performance: If your employee’s quality of work starts to decrease along with their productivity, they might be experiencing burnout.
Change in attendance: Increased absences, arriving late or leaving early can all be signs of burnout.
Change in work habits: Examples of burnout can include poor time management, disorganization, poor follow up, and lack of concentration.

How can burnout be prevented?

Give a sense of achievement: Identify areas where your employee can feel gratification from completing a task.
Recognize and reward: Congratulate your employees when they finish a task. Receiving positive feedback boosts employee morale and encourages future jobs well done.
Provide opportunities: Give options for personal or professional growth on the job. Offer job shadowing, or the ability to attend seminars, or workshops. By offering opportunities, your employees can create a plan for future growth in their careers.
Communicate and guide: Make sure your employees know what is expected of them. By having frequent communication, you might find out that their current job duties are too challenging or perhaps not challenging enough. Make sure you spend enough time with your employees to help guide them down the road of success.
Cross-train your employees: Rotating job duties or expanding upon responsibilities can inject new challenges and fresh energy into your employees’ daily job performance.
I hope to return with a self-composed article soon. In the meantime, I thought these would be great tips to share.

Hot Jobs List Below: Please contact me or have your referral contact me directly. We can likely provide value to anybody in Engineering or Operations that has been affected by the economy or is fearful of a downsizing. QPS also recently launched an outplacement program for all levels of employees within an organization. Contact me if our team can be of help.

Sales Engineer-Port Washington
Automation Engineer-Hartland
Plant Engineer-Richland Center
Mechanical Engineer-New Berlin

Sources used:
http://human-resources-management.suite101.com/article.cfm/preventing_employee_burnout

http://smallbusiness.aol.com/manage/managing/article/_a/how-to-prevent-employee-burnout/20060213124709990001.

Have a great week!

Regards-Dave

Dave Summerfield
"Your Talent Resource for Manufacturing Companies"
QPS Professional
Phone: 262-754-6352
Fax: 262-754-9008
dsummerfield@qpscompanies.com