Your employees are your greatest asset. That’s why you should do everything you can to make sure they have the physical and emotional capacity to perform their jobs. The first step in enhancing job satisfaction and overall employee well-being is to make sure your employees aren’t working in a burnout culture. Healthcare can be a stressful work setting so it’s even more important to minimize burnout in this field. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to create a work environment that reduces burnout and maintains optimal productivity.
Here are three impactful ways to reduce employee burnout:
Provide emotional intelligence training.
How your employees manage their emotions can significantly impact their ability to maintain health and wellness in the workplace, which in turn can affect productivity levels. Providing your employees with tools and resources to improve their emotional intelligence will enable your employees to manage their emotions in healthier and more productive ways, build stronger relationships with colleagues, and gain better mental clarity on the job. Whether it’s an in-house seminar or online course, providing emotional intelligence training can help set your employees up for success.
Promote work-life balance.
Despite all the articles and published data about the importance of work-life balance, a study from Project: Time-Off indicates that 55% of U.S. workers in 2015 did not take paid time off from work, resulting in a record-setting 658 million vacation days unused. This is just one statistic demonstrating a general pattern of over-working employees.
It should come as no surprise that employee burnout is strongly associated with a lack of work-life balance. When employees feel overextended at work, they will be more likely to develop feelings of stress and anxiety which can reduce workplace performance and hurt productivity levels. Giving your employees flexibility and a fair amount of vacation time is important for promoting work-life balance and decreasing the likelihood of burnout. It’s also important to encourage employees to actually use vacation time once you provide it and to create a culture of acceptance around utilizing paid time off.
Encourage team-building.
In healthcare, employees often find themselves working in silos. According to this article in Forbes, effective team-building creates trust, mitigates conflict, encourages communication, and increases collaboration. It’s important to create a team-building atmosphere in which all employees can engage and learn from one another daily. Types of team-building activities can include monthly volunteer activities, shared meals, or professional development events. Not only can this foster meaningful relationships among your team, but it may also help to build a positive company culture in which employees will feel energized and valued.
The factors above may not seem obvious at first, but they can have a dramatic impact on your employees’ health, energy levels, and attitudes toward their work. Though some changes involve an investment of time and resources, being proactive about reducing and reversing employee burnout can ultimately save your company thousands of dollars in the long run.