Burnout is classified by the WHO (World Health Organisation) as a "syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed."

This shows burnout is more than just an employee problem: it's an organisational problem that requires an organisational solution. And the pandemic has been an accelerant.

Burnout has six leading causes:

• Unsustainable workload,
• Perceived lack of control,
• Insufficient reward for effort,
• Lack of supportive community,
• Lack of fairness, and
• Mismatched values and skills.

While all these are organisational issues, we will prescribe self-care as the cure for burnout by default. But this is not enough.

Before the pandemic, we believed burnout to be an acute condition rather than a chronic one. Now that it is clear that we are in a marathon rather than a sprint, we are unsure how to manage it in ourselves, let alone address it with our employees.

So, I invite you to take our Burnout Diagnostic here.

Look at the result of your Burnout Diagnostic and assess the top 3 areas that work well and the top 3 areas you need to work on to improve your organisation's resilience to burnout. You will also be able to see how you compare to the global benchmark (average scores of all completed diagnostics) on each of the critical factors.

Afterwards, you may wish to get employees to take the Burnout Diagnostic to see where your team is. At least consider the six leading causes of burnout above and see if you can be creative in changing some work practices to ease burnout in the workplace.

They may include;

• Assist individuals in regaining a sense of purpose,
• Adjust workloads to be manageable,
• Allow people greater control & flexibility,
• Ensure staff feel they can discuss their mental health at work,
• Be an empathetic manager,
• Promote and encourage strong connections with family & friends - both the 'work' family and the 'home' one.
• Or, just give us a call.

At the end of the day, we are all human, functioning under challenging circumstances. Please reach out if you need to and stop the burnout before it hits.

*Ref: Harvard Business Review, Feb 2021.