Welcome to 2012: Burnout Meter in the Red Zone

 

It's a brand new year full of hope. And, if you haven't experienced it yet in your project, you better you better hope you don't have to deal with workforce burnout .

According to John Boudreau and Ian Ziskin* in the journal Organizational Dynamics,  workers are "just plain exhausted—physically, emotionally and psychologically."

Recent studies back up this verdict. A recent study of HR professionals found that a large majority saw increased workloads, and for those that did, 40% reported increased health problems and 80% reported lower worker engagement. Employee Assistance Plans (EAPs) are feeling the heat. One experienced a "dramatic" jump in 2011 calls as compared with 2010.

• Workers are suffering with increased workloads as employers put off rehiring even though the amount of work is increasing with economic activity.
• In the IT world, there are just not the resources with the proper expertise available in many cases. Yet business leaders still push for their projects to be completed.

Clinicians agree. Randy Martin, director of clinical services for Harris, Rothenberg International warns you to be aware of your project workers

• grieving for colleagues who have lost jobs,
• having to work more hours without a feeling of job security.

Their stress is spilling over into their marriages and may be causing other unhealthy behaviors such as heavy drinking or gambling.

The bottom line is that workforce burnout prevents sustained performance.

Conduct your own assessment. Have you already been seeing symptoms in your workforce?  Think carefully about the workforce as a whole. What have you seen or heard?

• Are you seeing more outages due to health problems?
• Have you seen a lack of trust in company leaders? Are company leaders still respected? Has a sense of optimism about company leadership been lost?
• Are your workers less likely to give 100% and a little extra in short bursts of effort in critical situations?
• Do your workers appear to building a fort around themselves to preserve a small area they can control?
• Do they often speak about a previous golden age with others who worked with them in the past?
• Are project workers taking days off just to sleep or go to appointments?
• Has there been broad, chronic substandard performance where blame has been laid on as many sources as those who express an opinion?

If you are not sure, or are new and just do not know, check with your HR representative to obtain a climate check on your workforce. Don't be surprised if you get an earful. Your HR department may have already been advising leaders against this trend to no avail.

In my next post, I'll list a variety of tactics things you can use to avoid workforce burnout in your project. Some tactics may surprise you. Would you believe "give them more work"? Stay tuned.

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