This week’s thrive in five is three powerful things to look out for in your team that may indicate the early signs of burnout at work
I want to give you three powerful things to look out for in your teams to try and spot signs of early burnout or chronic stress as it builds. So here’s 3 signs of burnout at work and what to look out for with your teams.
The first one is quite simple really, do they seem tired?
Do they seem consistently tired and consistently under energised?
Now you’ll need to be subtle in the way that you approach this. There could be any number of things going on outside of work and you need to be mindful of that.
The first thing to observe is do they seem to show tiredness and this lack of energy a lot?
If you watch last week Thrive In Five, we talked about the five signs of burnout in yourself, so things that you could notice in yourself to see if you’re sliding down that spectrum of chronic stress.
So look at tiredness, look at energy as number one.
The second thing to think about would be, do they always say yes?
Do they say yes to things a lot because that can often be an indicator of certain personality traits that can predispose someone to burn out. For example, people-pleasing, and always putting yourself last in the pecking order. Does this person always take on more work? Even though it might feel like they’ve already got quite a lot going on?
The last thing to observe is, are they often working late?
We tend to see people emailing out of hours. There’s such a culture of seeing people who work late as they really go in the extra mile and put in the effort. But this can be a sign of burnout. Now most of us are working remotely. So we also need to be mindful that people’s working patterns have changed. We don’t see them at their desk or away from their desk anymore. But do they appear to be working late a lot? And if you see that combined with saying yes to lots of work and rarely turning an opportunity or a piece of work down. Plus they appear tired and under energised, you may be getting a picture that you need to have a direct conversation with them. Handled, of course, with subtlety and nuance and discretion.
I hope that’s been helpful. We have put together a 12 stages of burnout resource, with what to look out for in yourself and others, and what to do at each stage should you be on the burnout spectrum. Or if you have any questions, or need further support please drop me an email.
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