09/07/2021

Leading Through a New Brand of Burnout

COVID has expanded the range of things stressing out leaders and staffs

Welcome back from your Labor Day break! You’ve made it through the summer, maybe had a chance to use some vacation time, and now you’re ready to tackle a busy fall feeling calm and refreshed, right? Right?

There’s a good chance you aren’t as relaxed these days as you might like. Nor is your staff. A May 2020 report by the project management technology firm Asana found that 89 percent of U.S. workers experienced burnout at least once in the past year. And that was before the COVID-19 era hit full swing. Now, with a new array of stressors—remote-work arrangements that challenge work-life balance, Zoom fatigue, anxiety over the virus itself—the idea of what it means to look after your staff’s well-being requires a rethink. The usual rhythm of vacations and holidays may not do the trick.

The evidence of that is in reports on the “Great Resignation,” referring to the sizable proportion of Americans who are quitting their jobs—4 million in April 2021 alone. More break time alone won’t crack the problem of retaining burned-out workers looking for other opportunities, wrote workplace expert Liz Fosslien last week in the MIT Sloan Management Review. The struggle is more existential: “Lacking a sense of meaning and not receiving the emotional support you need to thrive are also strongly related to feeling stretched too thin,” she writes.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.