How Companies Can Prevent Remote Employees from Burning Out

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By Greg Kratz

Of all the concerns employers have about keeping workers motivated, preventing employee burnout may be the most complex. For one thing, it may be difficult to recognize symptoms of burnout, since they differ from employee to employee. Employee burnout may also be hurting your bottom line.

Creating a corporate culture that embraces openness, support, and inclusion can help prevent burnout in your staff. However, burnout is complex. Preventing burnout in staff requires a nuanced and deliberate approach to staff wellness. And with many employees working from home or remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s especially important that employers pay closer attention to this.

What Is Burnout?

Job burnout is a type of work-related stress that occurs as a result of cumulative strain. While not a medical diagnosis, burnout causes physical and psychological symptoms.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are three characteristics of burnout:

Feelings of energy exhaustion or depletion
Increased mental distance from the job, or feeling negative or cynical about the job
Reduced performance

The WHO also notes that burnout is specific to work and not other areas of life, so don’t confuse job burnout with other types of work-related stress. Though work-related stress can contribute to burnout, they are not the same thing. Work-related stress can be due to:

Low salary
Lack of professional growth or advancement
Work that’s too easy or not interesting
Unclear performance metrics

Causes of Burnout

Though many things can contribute to employee burnout, a 2018 Gallup study of 7,500 full-time employees identified five factors that are most likely to cause burnout:

Perception they are treated unfairly
Overwhelming or unmanageable workload
Not understanding their role
Lack of support from their manager
Unreasonable deadlines

What Happens When Staff Are Burned Out

When an employee burns out, they will feel the physical and psychological impacts. However, it’s important to note that the company can also suffer when an employee is burned out.

For example, 23% of workers from the Gallup poll felt burned out at work “very often or always.” Another 44% felt burned out “sometimes.” Put another way, nearly two-thirds of full-time workers felt burned out.

Burned-out employees are 63% more likely to take a sick day. They are also half as likely to discuss their performance with their managers and 2.6 times more likely to look for another job.

How Companies Can Help Prevent Employee Burnout

Fortunately, employers can help prevent burnout before it starts. And whether your staff are entirely in-office (aside from the pandemic), partly remote, or fully-distributed, preventing burnout is an essential part of maintaining a healthy workplace.

Self-Care Is a Start, But Don’t Stop There

Though taking care of oneself is an integral part of living a healthy life, self-care has not been proven to prevent burnout. Coaching staff to engage in self-care activities (such as yoga, eating healthy, or meditating) can help them manage stress, but it does not address the underlying issues that cause employee burnout.

Listen to Work-Related Problems

Employees want to know that their manager backs them up when things go wrong. While this doesn’t mean excusing negligence, it does mean providing a supportive and caring environment for employees to discuss the challenges and problems they face at work.

Though providing effective solutions should be the goal, that may not always be feasible. In that case, simply offering a supportive and sympathetic ear may be enough to help the employee feel supported and heard.

Include Everyone

Actively ask for employee input when you can. While you likely can’t include every idea or opinion on every product or process, allowing employees to voice their opinions helps them feel that they have some control over their work lives.

This can be especially important for remote employees. It’s easy to forget about team members that aren’t in the office. And with a fully remote team, not everyone may attend every meeting, or teams may not communicate as often as they should.

Include remote staff when soliciting input. Even if you can’t utilize their suggestions, simply asking for their thoughts can go a long way toward helping them feel like they are a part of the team.

Make Work Meaningful

No matter where they work or what they do, employees want their work to mean something. Specifically, they want to know that their individual contributions contribute to the company’s mission or purpose.

When staff are connected to and engaged with their jobs, they are more likely to enjoy their work and perform better than when they don’t understand why or how their individual performance helps the company.

Preventing employee burnout starts with a company culture that helps each staff member understand why their role is important to the organization. To learn more about building a company culture that thrives read:

Hand Over Control

An MIT study found that employees who have more control over their work experienced, among other benefits, less burnout.

During the experiment, some workers learned how to take more control over their work life by focusing on practices that concentrated on results instead of being in the office. These employees were allowed flexible work options, including shifting their work schedules, working at home, or reducing the number of meetings they attended in favor of email or chat.

At the end of the experiment, these workers reported that they felt more in control of their professional and personal lives. They also stated that they felt more job satisfaction, less stress, and less burnout.

Though not every workplace can implement flexible work policies, the essential finding here is that allowing employees to have more control over their jobs and schedules can help them feel better about their work, which can, in turn, help prevent burnout.

Managers Can Burn Out, Too

It’s also important to remember that just like staff, bosses can burn out, too. Though the boss is “in charge,” the boss is, in most cases, also an employee. That means they are not immune to the stresses that can cause burnout.

As a leader, make sure you aren’t missing the signs of burnout. Do you still feel engaged with your job? Are you still performing your best? If you’re answering no more often than yes, consider that you, too, may be burned out from your job.

How to Help Burned Out Employees

Sometimes though, culture changes aren’t enough to help prevent burnout. If you notice the symptoms of burnout in one of your employees, consider speaking with them about their experiences.

There might be ways to tweak the job to help someone reconnect with their role and to light the spark in them. When meeting with a potentially burned-out staff member, offer some of the following adjustments (when possible) to help employees reconnect with their work:

Offer to add (or remove) responsibilities
Reallocate the work among the team
Hire additional help (freelancers, for example, to help pick up some of the workload)

However, if adjusting the role isn’t possible, or the adjustments don’t help, try recommending a few of the below tips. While self-care alone won’t eliminate burnout, it may help employees cope with the symptoms until you and they come up with an action plan.

Help Them Respect Boundaries

Whether your team is in the office or fully remote, in our completely connected world, it may be tempting to ask staff to handle “one quick thing” after hours or on weekends. After all, with cloud-based everything, it’s easy to update a spreadsheet or send a quick email no matter where you are.

However, asking staff to work outside their regular schedule sends the message that work comes first no matter what. That message can make it very difficult for staff to unwind and disconnect from the job, which can contribute to burnout.

Help prevent burnout by respecting staff schedules. Don’t expect them to answer you after hours or on weekends and encourage them to stay away from company email. And then make sure you set a good example by not sending emails or assigning tasks in the middle of the night.

Encourage Healthy Breaks During the Work Day

Frequent breaks during the day are a great way to stave off the effects of burnout and keep productivity high. Effective breaks away from work-related tasks can help employees maximize productivity by offering them a chance to refresh and reboot. Employers who provide inviting spaces in the workplace for employee breaks send the signal that employee morale matters.

Tell Them It’s OK to Say “No”

Sometimes employees feel the need to impress their boss by working extra hours or volunteering for every project that comes along. While it’s great that they take that initiative, doing so too often could lead to burnout.

You should be clear about your expectations in this regard, as it may be difficult for some workers to find the right balance. If you notice someone is always working long hours or always taking on additional work, meet with the employee and explore why they always say yes.

For some, it could be that they like to work and they enjoy being busy. If that’s the case, it’s probably best to let them do what makes them happy. But watch for signs that they are burning out and maybe not realizing it (like a drop in the quality of their work).

However, if you find they are saying yes for other reasons, like not wanting to look like a slacker for example, talk to them about how saying no is sometimes the best way to be the most productive and efficient employee. Overloading on work could result in missed deadlines or sloppy work, which isn’t a good look.

Prevention First

Though it may not be possible to stop burnout in every employee, creating a company culture that values employee opinions, helps staff engage with their jobs, and encourages autonomy and self-direction can help decrease workplace stress and prevent employee burnout.

For more advice on building a strong corporate culture and coaching a remote or in-person team, check out our employer blog.

FlexJobs has been a leader and advocate in remote work since 2007. And, we’ve been recognized for our company culture throughout the years. If you’re looking for guidance on how to succeed in the remote environment, get in touch with us today!

Talk to a FlexJobs Expert Today >>>

Originally published Dec. 20, 2017.

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How Companies Can Prevent Remote Employees from Burning Out