There has been a lot of talk recently about burnout, digital fatigue and pandemic fatigue in the workforce. In fact, as a human resources leader, you are probably tired of reading about how your employees are exhausted. But did you know that you may also be at risk of losing some of your most engaged and productive employees to these COVID-19-related maladies?
Yale University researchers flagged this problem in a February 2018 Harvard Business Review article titled “1 in 5 Employees Is Highly Engaged and at Risk of Burnout.” The authors report findings from a survey of 1,000-plus U.S. employees conducted more than two years before the pandemic threw a whole toolbox of wrenches into the workplace.
Responses showed close to half of the optimally engaged employees, or “two-fifths of the people who reported a purely positive experience—high engagement and low burnout—also reported having high resources, such as supervisor support, recognition and rewards, and self-efficacy at work, but low demands such as low workload, low cumbersome bureaucracy, and low to moderate demands on concentration and attention.”
In contrast, the majority of those at risk of burnout (64 percent) reported experiencing high demands and high resources. What does this mean for HR leaders trying to help their employees survive in the new digital world of working from home and the blurring of lines between work and life?
According to the article’s authors, the data is clear. Not only do we want employee engagement, but, more importantly, we want smart engagement. This is defined as “the kind that leads to enthusiasm, motivation, and productivity, without the burnout.”
In other words, HR leaders have to find ways to provide the resources employees need to be successful while working through a pandemic and especially while working from home. HR leaders must also ensure demands on employees’ time and efforts are kept in balance.
Defining Burnout and Its Effects
While most are familiar with the term burnout when it comes to work, some are not as familiar with the more recent COVID-19 ailments of digital fatigue and pandemic fatigue. In the spirit of clarification, the Mayo Clinic defines burnout as “a special type of work-related stress—a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity.”
Pandemic fatigue, according to Banner Health, is “a very real feeling of exhaustion as a result of COVID-19’s impact on our lives—from quarantining to lost jobs to the fears of getting sick. These all play into the fatigue many of us are feeling and how we are reacting as a result.”
Digital fatigue is simply the type of burnout that results from constantly interacting with screens and technology.
How to Maintain High Engagement Without Burning Out Employees
So, what can HR leaders do to increase engagement while curbing fatigue? In today’s topsy-turvy pandemic world, the key is finding the balance between high engagement, decreased workload and lowered work-related stress.
This makes what we are dealing with very much related to fostering mental wellness and facilitating work-life balance. Consequently, we should look to mental health care providers and to best practices for work-life balance for answers.
UCLA Health recently shared these “7 Steps to Reduce Pandemic Fatigue”:
- Take care of your body.
- Limit your news intake.
- Lower your stress.
- Connect with others.
- Accept your feelings.
- Try positive self-talk.
- Create new traditions.
This is all good advice for well-being in general, but the suggested habits are especially helpful for combating burnout and digital fatigue. Out of these seven steps, HR has the most influence and control over lowering employees’ stress and increasing employees’ ability to connect with others.
Working to lower the stress levels of employees brings us full circle to where we started. HR leaders can help employees—whether they are highly engaged or not—keep their workloads in balance by ensuring work demands are kept within reason.
One way of doing this is to simplify the technological burden employees have to deal with every day. Another way of reducing stress for remote employees is seeking to understand what stresses they have to cope with, from kids at home with them to poor internet bandwidth and a lack of privacy.
The key, then, is to do whatever is possible to help reduce or eliminate the stressors. Removing all employees’ challenges will not be possible, but employees will appreciate being heard, understood and helped to the extent that is practical. Efforts by the employer should reduce employees’ stress levels simply because action was taken.
Helping employees connect with others is as essential as reducing their stress. An Oct. 2, 2020, article on pandemic fatigue posted to the Kettering Health Network website quotes Glenn Armstrong explaining, “Anytime we’re in an advanced state of awareness for a prolonged period of time, our bodies slip into a ‘fight or flight’ response.”
The nurse practitioner and lead advanced practice provider goes on to observe, “Humans are social beings by nature, and when we take that away, it creates a drain on the human condition. And with that comes a cluster of symptoms, which can include increased irritability, low mood, depression, trouble sleeping or oversleeping, overeating or undereating, feeling run-down, and lack of motivation.”
Solutions are suggested in an American Medical Association web article titled “What Doctors Wish Patients Knew About Pandemic Fatigue.” Dr. Ana Yap noted there is value in finding “ways to stay connected. For me, I’m lucky in that I like playing computer games and I have friends who I play computer games with. We’re on voice chat together and talking to each other while playing video games, so I still have that sense of community there.”
Yap added: “Finding a way to still establish community with somebody or some folks somehow electronically is important.”
While it may seem contradictory to suggest online gaming as a way to combat digital fatigue, it is not. In this example, eliminating technology would defeat the purpose of using technology for fun activities that are not work-related.
In other words, preventing and fighting off burnout, pandemic fatigue and digital fatigue requires staying true to who we are as human beings. This means seeking out social interactions. When interacting with coworkers in person is off the table, HR can do other things to help employees connect with one another. A solution can be as simple as bringing humanity and humor into virtual meetings.
HR leaders have to work hard to increase employee engagement in a work-from-home world while trying to stem burnout and fatigue that can lead to the loss of their best employees. While HR leaders cannot require remote employees to engage in healthier sleeping, eating and exercise habits to curb potential burnout, they can work to create a healthy balance of resources and workload while striving to simplify the technological burden placed on employees.
01 May 2021
Category
HR News Article
