How burnout will create negative employee health

An employee that is under a great deal of stress or one that seems to be experiencing employee burnout can easily create a toxic environment. Employee burnout is one of those things you need to watch out for because your staff is less likely to get all of their work done on time and they also do not help to increase production. Instead these employees can infect their co-workers by demoralizing them and they can also take a lot of sick leave.

Since employees are the reason why the company continues to run day after day, you must be sure their health is taken care of. You must learn to recognize employee burnout and address it as soon as possible in order to prevent it from getting worse and infecting the entire office.

The signs of employee burnout
How can you tell that your employees are experiencing burnout? These are some of the tell-tell signs that you need to watch out for:

• Employees overact to everything, even the smallest requests


• Employees are constantly complaining about their job and health ailments


• Employees are no longer happy or laughing and enjoying their job and the office environment


• Employees seem on edge or they are irritable all the time


• Work is no longer enjoyable to the employee


• The employee starts taking a lot of time off


• The employee seems tired all the time or very lethargic at work


• While it may be easy to see these signs, some managers do not see them because they are simply blind and not in tune with the needs of their staff. It is common for a manager that is "feared" by their employees to cause burnout to occur quickly as they place too many demands on them and do not pay enough attention to the employees needs.

Why should I do something?
Some employers feel like employee burnout isn't their problem and this should be something that the employee needs to figure out on their own. The problem is the employees that are dealing with burnout are likely the employees that are playing key roles in the company. They are typically your best employees and they actually care about their jobs. If you start to lose their work, their example will spread to others in the company and before you know it the entire company is experiencing burnout.

An employee that is dealing with burnout is 3 times as likely to become ill and to take sick leave. Having the employee leave all the time or come into the office with illness is going to frustrate the rest of your staff. Either they will get sick or they will become tired of always needed to shoulder the extra burden when this person is taking time off to get better.

What should I do to help my employees?
If you really want to help your employees and create a healthy working environment again you need to start by meeting with each employee individually. Talk to them about their workloads and their goals. You need to find a way to create a healthy balance with their work and to make sure they have enough time to devote to their family and home life as well. An employee that is always taking work home with them is likely to develop burnout much faster.

Bring laughter back into the office. Laughing and socializing is a great way to help your employees relax and to also enjoy working with each other. Make time to walk around and joke with them for a few minutes. It's also a good idea to treat them to lunches once and awhile along with taking them out to movies or away for weekend retreats. Your employees need to feel your respect for them and your desire to help them.