It’s easy to brush off these symptoms as short term or reactionary. However, as the pandemic stretches on, burnout is becoming more and more indicative of employee behaviour.

Fortunately, we’ve got both quick fixes and long term solutions to share with you.

What is burnout?

Burnout is defined by the ‘loss of motivation or incentive, especially when the devotion and input fail to produce the desired results’. 

Employee burnout can happen at any given time. However, while 69% of employees are experiencing symptoms of burnout due to working from home during the global pandemic, it is becoming clear that working remotely is no longer a perk – it is taking a serious toll on our health. 

The signs of burnout to look out for in your employees include:

  • Lack of concentration
  • Being easily upset or angered
  • Feelings of hopelessness
  • Disengagement or withdrawal
  • Seeming demoralized, worried, or stressed out
  • Absenteeism

The interweaving of boundaries in the work and home environment, reduced social connection with colleagues, and even the lack of stable future prospects for many add to the levels of stress your employees are already experiencing from their daily lives.

Catch 22

In addition to this, many employees do not currently feel safe enough to commute to the office for work, afternoon drinks, or company events. This creates a further loss of social connection and a catch 22 situation: we’re in need of bonding, but when the opportunity is given, it isn’t actively taken.

So, moving forward, what can you do?

To provide support, increase connection, relieve stress, and re-energize your workforce, we recommend the following:

Quick Fixes

  • Check in: assign an informal mentor, extend the meeting for 10 minutes: you don’t need much to reintroduce meaningful connections at work.
    Simply reaching out in an informal way to check on your employee’s wellbeing communicates that you care whilst opening up more honesty and warmth in your lines of communication.
  • Say a proper goodbye: Mark the end of the workday. Ensure that each employee has a scheduled sign-off time.
    Giving your workforce sign-off times whilst they’re working from home gives them healthy boundaries. Healthy boundaries at work give further incentive to begin bright eyed, bushy tailed and on time the next day whilst also providing headroom and quality time with their loved ones.

Long term solutions

  • Activate your workforce: Offering a flexible sports membership where your workforce can access breathwork sessions, restorative yoga, cryotherapy, saunas, and even sound healing on the app schedule provides an abundance of self-care options.

By offering OneFit for Business, you’re also giving your employees the freedom to pick and choose which workouts or sessions feel the most relatable to them. For example, one of your employees may need to let off steam in a kickboxing class whilst the other may be deeply pulled towards a restorative breathwork session.

Encourage your employees to try out the following with their OneFit membership:

Mindfulness

Restorative Yoga
Our sympathetic nervous system is designed to respond when we feel under threat to fight or flight, releasing the adrenalin and cortisol we need to act fast. People showing burnout symptoms are often in a constant, low-level state of fight or flight. Restorative yoga, wherein you lie in postures for up to 10 minutes each, supported by props, induces a state of parasympathetic relaxation; this is where cellular healing occurs as it is the optimum environment for cellular function. Restorative yoga is intrinsically healing for sufferers of burn out.

Meditation
Meditation works; simple. It reconnects you with your body, your breath, and provides time to check in with how you’re doing mentally and emotionally. It gives your employees more opportunities to take a step back and rest from their busy minds. This alone builds foundations for making decisions based upon more rational perspectives. With OneFit for business, your employees can book plenty of meditation sessions with varying themes: guided meditations, breathing workshops, Yoga Nidra sessions, or sound healing and meditation pop-ups.

Involve their colleagues
Remind your employees they’re not alone. With the OneFit app, employees can invite their colleagues to workouts or scroll through what others are doing and join in. This gives them daily opportunities to see their colleagues in person in an informal setting, fixing the catch-22 situation. Your employees can enjoy bonding and letting off steam in their own chosen time.

It’s a strange and difficult time for all of us, but with the right solutions in place, you will be able to steer your company away from a burnout iceberg towards a brighter, resilient, engaged, and vital workforce. Check OneFit for Business for more info or to schedule a call.

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