COVID-19 created a new reality for all of us. And with it comes countless issues beyond sickness, death, and heightened unemployment. Recent studies confirm that while burnout was slowly rising, the pandemic fuelled the fire, with a marked increase in workplace stress from 2020 through 2021.
According to one such survey of 1500 individuals, 52% of workers will experience burnout in 2021, up by 9% from the previous year. The best computer monitoring software can help you to adequately monitor employees and aid your company to minimize burnout instances based on the findings.
Find out why you need an excellent monitoring software to identify burnout and the best and simplest methods to respond.
Why Does Employee Burnout Happen?
In a survey conducted in 2016, the top reasons for employee burnout include:
- Inequitable compensation
- A tedious workload
- Working overtime
- Mismanagement
- A disconnect between workplace functions and corporate strategy
- Detrimental workplace cultures
From the above causes, it is clear that employee burnout mainly rises not from the employees but the defectiveness of your management structure.
Because of the pandemic, more staff work from home. Some surveys point out the increased number of hours the Coronavirus brought about with it. The inability to unlink your work life from home activities and not take breaks can mentally wear out workers.
Financial issues, sickness, extended hours of work and pressure from management, among other stress inducers, can also lead to employee burnout.
Using staff monitoring tools is one of the top ways to identify the causes of employee burnout. And with 46% of individuals agreeing that almost 50% of workplace turnover stems from burnout, it is imperative to point out and set preventive strategies against the sources of exhaustion.
Effects of Burnout
In the short term, employee burnout can result in losing your sense of purpose and feeling tired all the time. It may also lead to anger issues while working, an emotional breakdown, weight gain, body aches, and an inability to focus on your work.
As the unbearable working conditions take root, you may experience effects like employee turnover and reduced productiveness. According to an article on Forbes, employee burnout accounts for up to 34% of losses in unworthy salary payments.
Body Effects
Physical and mental effects of burnout may include:
- Too much stress
- Tiredness
- Increased risk of diseases like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and respiratory infections
- Premature death
- Depression and irritability
- Anxiousness
- Anger
Personal Consequences
Individual implications of employee burnout might be:
- Increased drug abuse
- Mismanaging your finances
- Being unable to conduct your tasks
- Disliking your family or distancing yourself from them
Professional Implications
Burnout can result in job dissatisfaction, isolating yourself from your coworkers, wasting the company’s resources, and ineffective working.
Using Monitoring Software to Detect Early Signs of Burnout
Incorporating a company monitoring software as part of your management plan is crucial in identifying risk factors inducing burnout and ensuring your brand is always at its best.
So, why should you consider getting the best monitoring solution for your company? How does a monitoring software function, and what are the benefits of monitoring performance?
Employee Activity Monitoring
Employee monitoring software allows you to determine which applications and sites that your company accesses in the workplace. You can do this on a company basis, split it into different departments, or via individual user behaviour monitoring. Monitoring software allows you to determine the idle and active hours of your employees.
According to a 2017 study, only one in three employees is engaged in their work. That means that two-thirds of individuals end up wasting the majority of their work time.
A good monitoring software facilitates employee productivity monitoring. You can identify which workers are the most productive and who could be more effective. The software also provides you with screenshots in case of suspicious activity.
Job Attendance
Besides the real-time monitoring of your employees’ activities, a good monitoring tool allows you to identify how frequently workers report to work. Work attendance affects burnout in two ways where you have:
- Employees that attend work lesser times than they should
- Employees that come to work beyond the levels required for optimal performance
Did you know that 55% of employees completed 2018 without using their vacation days? That puts it a whopping 768 million unspent vacation days. Your company might be paying its workers these days. Nevertheless, overworking workers remains one of the reasons for burnout and high turnover.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the absenteeism rate for full-time workers averages at 3.0%, with some sectors like healthcare support experiencing as much as 4.9% absenteeism. That means that 3% of your workers are absent on a typical working day.
Besides determining employee attendance, the software allows you to track the number of hours employees report to work and their productivity. Are their employers working under or overtime? Employee tracking software also permits users to indicate the times they reported to work manually.
Managing employees through monitoring software ensures you can track whoever is yet to use their vacation days and who is coming to work less frequently. With this information, you can act accordingly to ensure you combat worker burnout.
Record Keeping
After gathering data on employee performance, monitoring software draws reports depending on the set duration. You can get feedback on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis of employee attendance and productivity.
A good employee monitoring app will also allow you to access data from up to two years ago. So, you can track the trend of individual employees as time goes on.
Access to information over long periods allows you to identify indicators that your employees are experiencing burnout by reduced productivity or increased absenteeism and lateness.
As you collaborate with your workers to ensure they don’t experience fatigue and get stressed at work, you want to identify whether the efforts are working.
Did their productivity improve? Do they come to work on time and leave at expected closing times? You can also identify their attendance and see whether you created conducive working conditions for your workers.
What Next After Identifying Burnout?
Once you’ve identified the demotivated workers with your monitoring software, it’s time to adjust your management mechanism to suit them and your brand as well.
While multiple reasons cause burnout, there are various ways to improve an employee’s desire to work for you. For instance, you can assign more meaningful assignments as a way of recognizing their efforts. This way, you are likely to change their perspective of your company and offer them a reason to come to work.
Another way of reducing burnout is reevaluating vacation days, working hours and determining whether some workers can work remotely. A good balance between the office and post-work environment ensures your employees are at their most productive when you need them most.
Finally, you can combat burnout by changing the roles of your affected employees. For example, rather than dealing with clientele, they can train new workers to re-energize themselves.
Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich from Pexels
This article reads more like the most effective way to combat employee burnout is through policing. Where is the human-centered, empathetic approach to our people? I understand it sums it up with tips for how we can re-engage and reduce burnout, however I don’t think these are very meaningful examples. I’d love to read an article that tackles this issue (which I agree is a pressing and looming problem organizations will face across the globe) in a more compassionate way.