How to MANAGE Cases of Stress and Burnout Among Employees?

How to MANAGE Cases of Stress and Burnout Among Employees?

As a manager, how should you deal with employee stress or burnout cases in the workplace? Thanks for your inputs...

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John Evans, UK

What is Employee Stress? Description

Stress is the response of people to unreasonable / excessive pressure or demands placed on them.
Stress is not always negative. It may also bring out the best in individuals at times. It may induce an individual to discover innovative and smarter way of doing things.
But usually, the term stress has a negative implications.

Gene Evans, UK

Causes / Sources of Employee Stress: Stress Factors

Obviously, the best way to deal with work stress or burnouts would depend on what's causing it. There are several ~categories of stress factors you may want to consider:
A. ORGANIZATIONAL FACTORS. For example:
- Rigid, centralized or formal organization structure
- Low degree of participation in decision-making
- Excessive control over the employees by a manager
- Conflicting goals
- Ambiguous goals
- Ineffective communication
- Peer pressure
- Poor opportunities for advancement
- Discrimination in pay / salary structure
- Strict rules and regulations
- etc.
B. JOB-RELATED FACTORS. For example:
- Monotonous nature of work
- Unhealthy working conditions
- Dangerous working conditions
- Lack of confidentiality
C. EXTRA-ORGANIZATIONAL FACTORS. For example:
- Economic crisis
- Inflation
- Technological change
- Social changes
D. INDIVIDUAL FACTORS. For example:
- Conflicting / not understanding / inability to comply with expectations from family members, peer, superior and subordinates have from the employee.
- Certain personality traits such as being impatient, aggressive, rigid, feeling time pressure, etc.
- Family issues, personal problems, financial problems, changes.
Hope this helps you to get started.

Myriam Baaten, Netherlands

Establish Awareness that Stress is a Company Issue at Board Level

Reducing employee stress should start with commitment of the company management. Leaders should be aware of the stress indicators as mentioned by Gene. Employee stress must be a topic which should be discussed on the working floor and in the boardroom. Often, the company culture inhibits people to be open and honest about their personal situation with respect to stress.
It should be part of the company culture not to indicate stress just as a personal problem but rather as a problem of the company itself. Getting insight in the financial consequences of stress will motivate top management to address this issue.

antoniaweldin

Executive Coaching to Cope with Burnouts and Work Stress

Job stress or we can say work stress or burnouts are very common these days. Thousands of peoples in almost every profession are suffering from stress. But nowadays we are lucky to have many business and executive coaches who can help us to deal with work stress in a smart way.

Jaap de Jonge
Editor, Netherlands

Dealing with a Case of Burnout or Stress as a Manager

1. Fact: The top-5 reasons for a burnout are all management/organization related. In other words, YOU will have to fix things as the burnout is most likely NOT due to this person. It's you and the organization!
2. Fact: On the contrary, perfectionists and people feeling responsible for your company are most vulnerable to stress and burnout. This person is likely to be one of your best and most loyal people!
❗So do not fall in the trap of immediately calling HR, a psychologist or coach or act as one yourself.
Rather, ask the person themselves what in their work is causing their burnout situation and take appropriate actions as soon as possible.

💡Here you find what can be done at the personal, individual level to prevent/cure stress/burnout. But remember this is just part of what you need to do and it is perhaps NOT the main part.

Jaap de Jonge
Editor, Netherlands

Sustainable Empathy by Managers

These are difficult, VUCA times and partly as a result of the pandemic many people are suffering from burnout symptoms. For managers, I think there are at least 5 key things to keep in mind when confronted with employees suffering from a burnout:

Your main role as a manager is to fix the work-related causes of burnout.
You should obviously be empathic towards feelings of employees suffering from stress or burnout.
You are not immune to burnouts and stress yourself. On the contrary, you are at an increased risk.
The good news is that being empathic towards other persons (employees) is a key cure against feelings of stress and burnout of yourself. More information about that is in the topic: "Preventing Burnout and Treatment".
The bad news is that giving too much empathy (or doing it in the wrong way) can be emotionally and physically draining and is normally unsustainable in the long run for most people.

Sustainable Empathy

Regarding this 5th aspect I just read an illuminating article by Professor of Psychology Zaki. He talks about sustainable empathy and recommends to clearly distinguish between 2 attitudes towards empathy:
A. EMOTIONAL EMPATHY (mirroring; taking on someone else's feelings).
B. EMPATHIC CONCERN (wanting to help and improve someone else's well-being).

Empathy in Medicine

From the world of medicine we know for a fact that doctors and nurses who are highly emotionally empathic (in that they take on the feelings of pain, misery and fear from their patients) are much likelier to burn out than those with a high urge to help. Therefore in the long term and in the interest of all (other) patients, it's better for nurses and doctors to avoid compassion fatigue by firstly caring about their own health. They can and should accomplish that by taking a professional stance and focusing mainly (but not only!) on empathic concern (B).

Consequences for Managers

❗To avoid compassion fatigue and burnout in themselves and to make their empathy towards their employees sustainable in the long run, leaders and managers are well advised to be aware of the lessons learned from medicine. In case of an employee burnout, combine your organizational improvements with self-compassion and empathic tuning and be mindful in how you apply empathy towards your people.

After all, most employees with burnout are not so much looking for managers who empathize with them very intensively and merely reinforce their feelings, but rather for managers who come up with practical solutions to help them out of their problems.

Source: Zaki J., "How to Sustain your Empathy in Difficult Times", HBR Jan-Feb 2024, pp. 62-69..

Dr. Winston Lynch
Director, United States

The Driving Force Behind Burnout

Dedicated employees who have a sense of obligation to work at an unsustainable rate are highly at risk for overload burnout. In most cases, these individuals see themselves as the engine of the organi...

Narasimhan R
Business Consultant, India

How Managers can Deal with Stress and Burnout

It is important for the manager/leader to understand the cause of stress and burnout both at personal and at subordinate level. Stress can be caused by two factors: work pressure and work tension. My...

Kelvin Sovi
HR Consultant, Zambia

Be Approachable

As a manager, you need to create a conducive environment where employees are free to approach you and discuss their view on things like the work culture. This will enable you to get an understanding o...

Jaap de Jonge
Editor, Netherlands

How to be Approachable as Manager?

@Kelvin Sovi: Great point! A big plus of being approachable as a manager or leader (about the work culture etc.) is that you can be proactive in improving your organization and prevent employee burnou...

Dr. Winston Lynch
Director, United States

Addressing Issues that Cause Stress and Burnout in the Workplace

Trust and effective organizational culture can be considered as a great measure to manage, and in some instances avoid cases of stress and burnout among employees. Managers should be willing to promot...

Maurice Hogarth
Consultant, United Kingdom

Management/Leadership Aspects for Preventing/Removing Stress

As demonstrated here there is no "one right answer" The emphasis should be on prevention, "dealing" implies that the cause will continue. There are different causes and one person will cope while an...

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