Are you experiencing feelings of mental or emotional exhaustion or burnout? Well, you’re not alone.
A large number of people who work in the business world have probably had days when they felt helpless, overworked, stressed out, or underappreciated. If you start to experience symptoms like these, it’s possible that you’re heading down the path towards suffering from burnout.
The shift to a work-from-home setup has caused work to pile up, mainly because there are employees who juggle their responsibilities at home with their job commitments.
After almost two years of constant quarantines and working from home, everyone had to make a lot of emotional and mental adjustments just to think about going back to the office. Not only that, but companies that use micromanagement are more likely to see their employees’ productivity go down. In other setups, employees are forced to work extended hours. Worse, some do not receive proper compensation for working over time.
Talking about work-related burnout in general, it is a side effect that is more prevalent in high-stress, high-demand jobs such as customer service and sales.
Working as a customer support agent is no bed of roses. They have to deal with customer problems, show empathy, and think about the long lines of people waiting for their time, effort, and attention every day. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that customer service agents are the ones most likely to feel very stressed out at work and lose motivation.
The question now is, how can you ensure that your customer care team does not become exhausted? What are the repercussions of having a workforce that feels burned out?
What Exactly Is Workplace Burnout?
What is burnout in the workplace?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), burnout is an occupational condition. Usually, a bad attitude toward a coworker, a drop in productivity and energy, and a general feeling of being tired are all signs.
Should you consider burnout a serious issue? Definitely!
All facets of your life, including your interpersonal, professional, and social connections, are negatively impacted by burnout. It is essential to deal with burnout as soon as possible because it has so many negative effects.
However, how does this impact the effectiveness of your customer service team and your company’s sales?
Employee immune responses may be lowered as a result of burnout, which could then result in more absences, which can have a negative effect on a company’s bottom line. Similarly, productivity declines while turnover rates sharply rise.
Effects of burnout in Salesforce
A company can maintain its presence in the market and continue to make money if its sales are successful and consistent. Although your sales team is results-oriented, it is even more important to look out for their best interests because of their integral role in your business.
To better assist your salesforce and even your customer support agents, let’s explore the effects of burnout at work in greater detail.
- Mental health conditions
Overcoming burnout is something that an individual suffering from it can do on their own. In fact, if the root causes of the extreme stress are not properly identified and addressed, things could get worse. Ignoring the early warning signs of burnout could, in the near future, do more damage to a person’s overall health than actually paying attention to those signs would. Untreated burnout and extreme stress can have more severe side effects, including heart disease, depression, anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, and irritability. Others develop an addiction to or misuse of substances.
- Reduced productivity
How much of an effect can burnout have on a company’s overall success?
Workers who are suffering from burnout are unable to perform their jobs as effectively and are less productive. As a result of being unable to work at their highest level, their productivity declines. Efficiency and motivation are negatively impacted as well, both at work and outside of it. Personal motivation, problem-solving abilities, and attention span are all prone to suffer as a result of this phenomenon. Burnout puts a downward pressure on employee retention, as well as the quality of their work and their level of enthusiasm.
- Higher turnover rate
A high employee turnover rate is detrimental to an organization because it raises the cost of hiring new staff and extends the amount of time spent on the recruitment process. Your employees lose the desire to work for you once they reach a certain point of stress and exhaustion. On the other hand, if employees witness their coworkers being overworked and paid inadequately, it deters them from staying on as employees.
To avoid such occurrences, it is critical to carefully examine all employees for signs of burnout and excessive stress. Conduct interviews with them one-on-one as well as in small groups to find out how happy and satisfied they are with their performance, with themselves in general, with the team they work with, and with the company. One-on-one conversations with staff members aid in identifying weak points and areas of concern for both the employee and the company.
5 Tips to Prevent Burnout In the Workplace
As the owner of a company, you have a responsibility to ensure that your staff is happy and healthy. In the workplace, preventing burnout has the potential to create a positive environment where both individual and group performance can thrive. So, the question now is how to help employees with burnout?
Below are five ways to prevent employee burnout.
Take a break
Being a customer service agent is not easy. If you want to reduce the likelihood that employees will become burned out at your company, you should make it possible for them to take breaks at regular intervals throughout their workdays. The difference that can be made by taking two breaks of fifteen minutes each during the day’s first and second halves is significant.
Provide sufficient time for employees to relax and recover from the strains of their jobs. Leaving them to deal with piles upon piles of work and responsibilities without giving them a moment to stretch out and get some fresh air raises the likelihood that they will develop sleep disorders and cardiovascular diseases.
It is no longer acceptable for companies to foster a culture in the workplace that encourages excessively long work hours, short breaks, and job responsibilities that intrude on personal time. Employee contribution and effort are essential to a company’s success; without them, success is impossible. As a result, it is the duty of every employer to make sure that employees are given a fair share of the workload and to support them in finding the ideal balance between their work and personal commitments.
Improve employee engagement
According to research conducted in this area, engaged workers have a significantly lower risk of experiencing burnout and a significantly higher risk of feeling connected to and satisfied with the organization in which they are employed. Employee engagement is significant for a variety of reasons, the most important of which are that it helps to contribute to the development of a more positive work culture, reduces employee turnover, increases productivity, improves working relationships among coworkers and customers, and helps the company gain more profit.
People who have meaningful social relationships report higher levels of happiness and report being in better physical health. Physical and emotional wellness are both beneficial for enhancing employee performance and efficiency. Because employees are eager to form friendships and work together to achieve a common objective, business expansion becomes more feasible.
People are known to become more social after sharing a cup of coffee and a meal together. Why not give your employees time each month to talk about themselves and get to know each other better by scheduling coffee or lunch breaks?
Make their work purposeful
If a worker feels that their company’s mission aligns with their personal goals, they are much more likely to be engaged and motivated. The likelihood of employees handing in their resignations in quick succession is reduced as a result of this measure.
Finding meaning in one’s work can potentially improve an employee’s overall well-being because it contributes to the personal and professional growth of the individual. When employees feel as though the work that they do contributes to something larger and more meaningful, it has a positive effect on their mental fitness and well-being.
Focus on their abilities and strengths
It’s possible that employees will become significantly more valuable to your company if you assign them tasks that let them fully utilize the expertise they’ve developed over the course of their employment with the company. It’s possible that this will make them happier with the work they do and encourage them to try new things that are outside of their comfort zone. If your sales representatives believe that the company is making good use of their specific set of abilities and experiences, they may be more motivated to put in additional effort on your behalf. Employers who are aware of the areas in which their workforce excels will therefore be in a better position to appropriately delegate responsibilities among their employees.
Wrapping Up
Burnout does, in fact, result in a decrease in productivity on the part of the individual worker as well as the organization as a whole. This is true both for the individual worker and for the organization as a whole. It does not matter if a person works in the healthcare industry, the business process outsourcing industry, or the electronic commerce industry; they are not exempt from the possibility of experiencing excessive amounts of physical, mental, social, and emotional exhaustion.
It is possible to avoid an employee reaching the point of burnout through the implementation of a number of significant preventative measures. Establish a routine in which you check in with each member of your staff on an individual basis and meet with them. You should ask them for an overview of their workload as well as honest feedback on how satisfied they are with their work in general. You could also inquire about their family, inquire about how their home life is, and inquire about the hobbies that they participate in.
If you are interested in gaining an understanding of how to deal with burnout in the workplace, the tips that were presented earlier may be of assistance to you.
Of course, preventing burnout before it starts is the most efficient way to deal with the problem. Many people experience workplace burnout, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to normalize ongoing exhaustion from the job. It is something that can be avoided or treated, and doing so is essential to maintaining a positive workplace environment for your team.
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