A Step-by-Step Guide to Boosting Worker Wellbeing and Decreasing Employee Burnout
The next step in your Implementer series to create a kick-ass and memorable employee experience.
This post is part of my Implementer series: long-form articles chock full of expert insights, frameworks, habits, and best-in-class leadership strategies you can implement in how-to action steps. If you’re joining me for the first time - welcome to your leadership development journey! Get started by clicking on that red box below. From there, I promise to do everything possible to provide the pathways to make you that much better and more effective as a leader.
If you’ve been following the most recent Implementer series, you’ll recall that organizations should focus on four strategies to create an impactful employee experience:
Meaningful employee recognition
Click here for a comprehensive step-by-step guide to employee recognition that drives results.
A culture of emotional intelligence
Click here for my three top strategies to apply emotional intelligence at work.
A positive onboarding experience
Click here for your implementation steps to create a memorable and productive onboarding experience.
A culture that supports mental health and wellbeing
According to the research put out by O.C. Tanner, plus other data I have gathered over the years to inform my work as an executive coach and advisor, all these factors significantly enhance the employee experience. Today, we tackle that last bullet: a culture that supports mental health and wellbeing.
Barriers to Mental Health
The stigma surrounding mental health has made it more difficult for employees to work effectively and bring their “best selves” to their jobs. A significant stumbling block stems from the status quo of current management practices, which perpetuates slow progress and prolonged struggles for those barely getting by. But when workplaces eliminate the barriers that keep mental health on the back shelf of business priorities, they can genuinely facilitate healing and growth for their employees. When workers are free from the burden of judgment or unfair labor practices, businesses can concentrate on tangible solutions—such as open conversations, mental health resources, and modeling a commitment to employee wellbeing.
Even though mental health challenges are super common and costly, people still hesitate to talk about them at work. According to a Gartner report, only 42% of employees say they feel comfortable discussing mental health at their job, and just 32% think their company sees it as a priority. According to APA’s 2022 Work and Well-being Survey, 81% of workers say they’ll be looking for companies that care about mental health when job hunting in the future.
Sometimes, terms like “burnout,” “quiet quitting,” or “absenteeism” get used to tiptoe around deeper issues. But the truth is, both employees and employers benefit when mental health is addressed openly and without judgment. Creating a supportive environment can make a big difference—for everyone involved.
So, how can organizations best support employees’ mental well-being? More specifically, what’s the strategy behind doing it to decrease burnout and keep workers engaged and performing at a high level? Let’s transition to your implementation steps next.
1. Change Your Work Culture.
We spend a big chunk of our lives at work, and it’s no secret that our jobs can have a huge impact on our mental health—for better or worse. Unfortunately, poor mental health (and companies not doing enough about it) is a common issue in many workplaces. In fact, according to Mind Share Partners' 2021 Mental Health at Work Report, 84% of employees feel that workplace factors—like emotionally exhausting tasks, trouble balancing work and life, and not feeling appreciated—hurt their mental health.
To dig deeper into mental health issues and the role employers play, O.C. Tanner surveyed employees with nearly two dozen yes-or-no questions about how their work environment could contribute to mental health struggles. If employees are more likely to answer yes to these questions, it’s a sign that their workplace might be increasing the risk of issues like burnout, anxiety, and depression. The table below highlights the top five factors that predict these mental health challenges.
Workplaces with poor cultures and practices might unintentionally make things worse for their employees’ mental health. But there’s good news: by making positive changes and creating an environment where employees are more likely to answer ‘no’ to those questions, companies can lower the risk of these problems.
But here’s the thing: these changes can’t just be superficial or left to individual employees to figure out. When people are facing tight deadlines, toxic work environments, unkind managers, or team conflicts, they’re often told to just "power through" or "stay tough." However, O.C. Tanner’s research indicates that this approach fails to address the real issues behind mental health struggles. In fact, it often exacerbates them.
Instead, organizations need to focus on building a healthy workplace culture, which my coaching and training firm has been doing for over a decade. Prioritizing connection, community, care, servant leadership, and appreciation can go a long way in reducing the odds of burnout, anxiety, and depression, as shown in the following table:
2. Empower employees to give and receive recognition.
Having a way for employees to express gratitude and recognize each other at work also cuts down on missed work, accidents, and complaints. But just having a program isn’t enough.
Like I’ve mentioned in the past, the tools and solutions you use should make it easy for people to give recognition frequently, in the moment, and in a meaningful way. There should also be plenty of reasons and options for showing appreciation and praise.
When people give and receive recognition, it boosts feelings of belonging, connection, and gratitude—things that can fight off a lot of the stressors that hurt mental health. That said, recognition isn’t a replacement for real mental health care like therapy. Employees dealing with serious mental health challenges should always reach out to qualified professionals, and organizations need to back them up with resources and support.
Since I’ve covered this area extensively in the past, I’ll point you to a useful resource. Click here for a step-by-step guide to employee recognition that drives results
3. Provide skill-building and career development.
The pandemic has drastically changed the way we work. Roles have shifted due to new priorities and needs that have evolved over the last five years.
But as quickly as employees’ work expectations and job descriptions continue to change, the attention to re-skilling and learning for these new roles has lagged behind — adding to people’s stress and anxiety.
According to the State of Skills 2021 report, released by workforce upskilling platform Degreed, nearly six in 10 (55 percent) workers, managers, and business leaders said a lack of confidence in their skills makes their job more stressful. Additionally, nearly four in 10 (38 percent) say their mental health suffers as a result. Yet we’re finding that upskilling is rarely included in employee wellness programs, despite poor skills leading to people feeling less confident in their role.
To help with retention and engagement efforts, more employers are turning to upskilling opportunities that are tailored to the needs of each individual.
To get more perspective on the matter, I connected with Chris McCarthy, CEO of Degreed, who outlined four tips on how companies can implement learning and development in an effective way.
Ask what skills employees want to learn.
Instead of pumping out training with no direction or as a tick-the-box exercise, make sure there is data behind the opportunities you are offering employees. This helps people feel motivated to learn because they’ve chosen topics they’re passionate about.
Going further, it’s important to give managers a heavy hand in how they are leading their team in the ongoing learning process. This offers them an opportunity to identify new skills that are directly tied to business goals and makes them more likely to be bought into the program and encourage their teams to learn.
Provide career mobility options.
Pay and praise are often used as positive reinforcement, but rewarding employees with mobility options based on their learning interests is another approach. This doesn’t have just to be moving staff to another full-time role — stretch assignments or secondments (think job rotations in other areas) also offer a chance for progression. Historically, this challenge has led to positive feedback and happier employees. Additionally, it allows employers to develop and retain skills that are necessary for the business.
Help workers learn skills that are going to be used immediately.
Don’t force employees to watch hours of webinars or sit through e-courses to gain skills they aren’t sure will be useful. Make sure learning is tailored to each employee and that expectations are clearly communicated that you see them using these skills in the future. There should be opportunities for employees to flex their skills on a new project soon after, which also reinforces the learning and makes it relevant.
“First, figure out what skills you have and also where the gaps are,” McCarthy told me. “Then, develop a learning program where each employee can build skills that are vital to the business but are also going to develop their own career. Re-skilling should be as much about the employee as it is about enhancing the business.”
Reward ongoing learning in all of its forms.
Ongoing learning in whatever form should be rewarded the same as formal training, since each person learns in unique ways. The key is to track learning in a way that recognizes the various skills people have to offer, which most organizations aren’t set up to do.
The Ebbinghaus “forgetting curve” shows that we forget 90 percent of what we learn within one month of learning it — unless it is regularly reinforced through work. Therefore, lifelong learning takes dedication by both the employee and the employer, and reintroducing learning in many forms can help with retaining knowledge over time.
When rapid change occurs, the key to happy and productive employees who aren’t prone to burnout is investing in their career development and showing how their skill advancements are contributing to the success of the business. This is an opportune time for companies to provide the kind of environment where workers feel curious and motivated to continuously upskill themselves.
4. Allow for more flexibility and autonomy.
Gallup data suggests that three billion people globally work in miserable jobs for managers who don’t care about their wellbeing. Many end up burning out. Current workplace dynamics suggest that we often need to be in a total crisis before we raise our hands and say, ‘I’m not at my best right now.’ I’m sorry, but this cannot continue. So, what can we do to reclaim some sense of work-life balance, especially in digital work environments? And how can we establish digital boundaries to protect ourselves and our teams from burnout?
Rather than investing billions in pushing wellness programs and telling employees they need to download the latest meditation app to boost their happiness, leaders should prioritize the key drivers of wellbeing, as identified in Indeed’s largest study of workplace wellbeing. These drivers include, among others:
Appreciation
Belonging
Fair pay
Flexibility
Trust
Provide autonomy and flexibility.
When we offer employees the autonomy to own their work, make decisions around how they do their work and where and when they work, we empower them. Micromanaging and inflexible policies around remote/hybrid work stifle the all-important key drivers like trust.
A report from the International Labor Organization found that those with more flexibility, such as the option to work remotely or stagger the time they start work, were more productive, leading to better work-life balance.
For every Return-to-Office (RTO) mandate, it’s often a working mother who pays the biggest price. There are more mothers with children under five in the workplace than ever before and a large reason for that is flexible working. When we force people back to offices we are forcing parents out of work. Sure, certain roles require in person proximity, no doubt. New joiners, client-facing colleagues, need for synergetic collaboration, etc. But all roles? All the time? In fact, recent reports show no major change to financial performance after RTO mandates but significant declines in job satisfaction.
As a leader, you cannot say, ‘At this organization, no one is expected to work evenings and/or weekends’ and then fire off emails at 7:46 pm on a Sunday. If emails must be sent, leaders must establish rules for team members to cease emails until Monday morning, including their own. For the leader, it’s the behavior modeled and paid forward, not the words.
Modeling behavior like this offers an example to your team and sets boundaries around what is expected of them. Of course, when employees know that their home lives are respected in this way, they’re more likely to be happier in their work lives, feel a sense of belonging, and improve work-life balance. This re-emphasizes what we already know are the main drivers of happiness at work.
Taking this further, technology should be used to set boundaries to reclaim and respect everyone’s time automatically. For example, auto-scheduling all meetings to finish 5 to 10 minutes early, rather than just setting them to 30 minutes or an hour long. If you have six meetings per day, this will save 4.8 work weeks per year. If 1,000 people do the same, you will all save 24,000 days, equivalent to hiring 102 new employees.
Regardless of whether burnout, stress, anxiety, or worry is the issue (or all of them), the solution is the same, and that is often fewer solutions. Mental health and well-being are the outcome of creating an environment where individuals can prioritize what they need to be their best selves daily (spoiler: they already know).
5. Foster a place of belonging for all.
Gender gaps in the workplace have been prevalent for years — from the pay and promotion gaps to paid leave or funding gaps — and the pandemic has only made this strain worse, with millions of women leaving the workforce.
Now another gap has emerged, which may be discussed less often, is not less important. Women are 41% less likely to feel a strong sense of belonging in the workplace compared to men. That’s according to the 2021 Culture Report on belonging at work from Achievers Workforce Institute, the research and insights arm of Achievers. The report surveyed more than 3,500 employed adults to uncover what it takes to create a sense of belonging in the workplace, and the impacts on employee retention and attraction, as well as the success of businesses overall.
So what impact does belonging have on companies and their workforces, especially when we look at gender discrepancies, and what will it take to help equalize this sense of belonging among employees?
Women feel a lesser sense of belonging.
According to the report, women are 25% less likely than men to feel comfortable sharing a dissenting opinion at work, and women are also 20% less likely than men to say their unique background and identity are valued at their company.
“The clear gender difference we found in the report when it comes to belonging is a concern when we’re looking at how to empower women to come back to the workforce during this new normal,” said Dr. Natalie Baumgartner, Chief Workforce Scientist at Achievers Workforce Institute. “The bottom line is that women need more support, and specifically the right kind of support, if leaders are hoping to attract and retain women. This means leaders need to talk to their employees to really understand what’s missing and how we can do better.”
While Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are often a solution leaders utilize to help employees feel connected, the report found women are a quarter less likely than men to say there are ERGs that help them feel connected, or that their organization supports them in developing and maintaining friendships.
Gender equality has often been a focus of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, but that doesn’t mean current strategies are working to make all employees feel included and supported. In fact, women are 23% less likely than men to say their needs are being met by their company’s DEI efforts.
There’s a strong correlation between DEI and belonging, as nearly half (49%) of employees with a strong sense of belonging say their organization values diversity, compared to 6% of employees with a low sense of belonging. Furthermore, an emphasis on DEI often comes from the top — employees whose companies are diverse at senior levels are 2.4 times more likely to feel a strong sense of belonging.
Success is reliant on giving employees a sense of belonging.
“Belonging impacts indicators of organizations’ success including productivity, retention and engagement, as well as factors of employee health — both mental and physical,” said Baumgartner.
In fact, according to Baumgartner, of employees with a low sense of belonging just three percent said they feel supported to take care of their mental and physical wellness, compared to 40% and 41% of employees with a strong sense of belonging respectively. “Ensuring employees are welcomed, known, included, supported and connected at work is crucial in maintaining a successful organization from talent to the bottom line,” said Baumgartner.
Outcomes of belonging in the workplace that extend to organization success include:
51% of employees with a strong sense of belonging would recommend their company as a great place to work, compared to four percent with a low sense of belonging
45% of employees with a strong sense of belonging report being their most productive self at work compared to six percent with a low sense of belonging.
50% of employees with a strong sense of belonging feel a strong sense of safety at work, compared to six percent with a low sense of belonging
As organizations continue to face labor shortages and hiring challenges, creating a sense of connection and a culture of belonging will allow leaders to put their best foot forward in attracting and retaining talent.
Conclusion
Now is the time to step up and tackle the causes and effects of mental health challenges at work. Mental health issues are part of life, but organizations can make a big difference with powerful changes. Simple things, like giving and receiving recognition, can go a long way to improve emotional well-being.
As the guardians of your workplace cultures, use your influence to create spaces where employees truly feel cared for. I can’t stress enough: When people feel supported, they’re empowered to give their best at work and in their personal lives. My call to you, as leaders, is to cultivate care that inspires growth, connection, and success for everyone.
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