According to new research from Gallup, businesses are facing what they call “an employee burnout crisis.” And once burnout strikes, it can trigger a downward spiral in individual and business performance.
The Gallup study of nearly 7,500 full-time employees found that 23 percent of employees reported feeling burned out at work very often or always, while an additional 44 percent reported feeling burned out sometimes. This means approximately two-thirds of full-time workers experience burnout on the job. Take a look around your company: Two out of every three employees are feeling the burn.
While some may think burnout is becoming the normal part of working today, taking a look at the true costs of burnout can shed some light on why landscape business owners should try to banish burnout.
Burned out employees are 63 percent more likely to take a sick day and 2.6 times as likely to be actively seeking a different job. If they stay at their current jobs, they have 13 percent lower confidence in their performance and are as half as likely to discuss how to approach performance goals with their manager.
Employee burnout can bring on a continuous decline in individual performance, as well as overall company performance.
Getting better productivity and performance out of their employees is the goal of many landscape business owners. The good news is that burnout doesn’t always result from hard work; it has more to do with how owners manage employees, Gallup reports.
Banish Burnout in Five Focused Ways
To reduce burnout, Gallup recommends landscape business owners do the following:
- Avoid unfair treatment. When employees strongly agree that they are treated unfairly at work, they are 2.3 times more likely to experience burnout.
- Make sure you and your managers are managing employee workload. “High-performing employees can quickly shift from optimistic to hopeless as they drown in an unmanageable workload,” the Gallup report says.
- Clarify employee roles. Only 60 percent of workers can strongly agree they know what is expected of them at work, says Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report. Employees can become exhausted trying to figure out what managers want from them if it’s not clear.
- Provide communication and support. Employees need to know that managers have their backs when something goes wrong. Employees who strongly agree they feel supported by their managers are 70 percent less likely to experience burnout, Gallup says.
- Keep an eye on time pressures. Unreasonable deadlines and pressure create a burnout snowball effect where missing one aggressive deadline follows another and then another. When employees say they have enough time to do work, they are 70 percent less likely to experience burnout.
Banish Burnout for Good
Addressing the true causes of employee burnout in your landscape company can empower employees to feel and perform their best.
