Overworked Employees: Signs to Keep in Mind

Organizations have always wanted their employees to perform at their best and bring in as much efficiency as they can. In that process, organizations often tend to forget that they are humans, after all.

Thus resulting in higher rates of burnout levels by overworking the employees without even considering the usual signs. Employee overworking or burning out employees is the most common issue faced by organizations in this ever-growing corporate world.

How to heed to this problem, and what signs do you need to look out for if you want the organization to perform well??

Let us have a look at it.

Signs of a burned-out employee

To solve the issue of burn out employees, these are the signs you need to consider and devise solutions accordingly.

  1. Drop in performance

Your once high performing employees suddenly face a dip in their performance levels, which is one of the most prominent signs that your employees face burnout due to overworking—resulting in error-prone work and diminished efficiency.

What do you need to do?

To heed into such situations, it is important to re-think the work schedule that an employee sticks to. You can delegate specific tasks so that employees do not feel the pressure of completing it over a certain period of time. Moreover, you can also set limited targets for your employees to have less work but plenty of time to complete it.

  1. Issues related to Mental and Physical health

When your employees succumb to overworking and face burnout, they are more likely to face mental health issues in anxiety, depression, and sleep disruption. This also harms physical health and a loss of appetite and employees become more prone to drinking and smoking for comfort.

What do you need to do?

If you see your employees struggling both mentally and physically, then it might be a good time to conduct one-on-one sessions that focus on the problems that they are facing. You can also conduct programs solely focusing on minimizing burnout and heeding more on employee well-being within the workplace.

  1. Increased Absenteeism

Overworked employees lack the enthusiasm and energy to work, which is why they frequently are late for work or skip work more often, giving rise to an organization’s absenteeism levels. This not only hampers productivity levels but also negatively impacts the overall work environment.

What do you need to do?

Whenever you see an employee struggling to be on time or skip work often, it might be time that you have a one-on-one conversation with them. Discuss the difficulties they face and, most importantly, give them some time off so that they can rejuvenate their energy both mentally and physically and start fresh.

  1. Highly Emotional

As a manager, you might have observed employees getting irritated over trivial matters that create a rift between team members. Such scenarios disrupt a good functioning team’s balance, which eventually hinders an organization’s daily operations.

What do you need to do?

Employees who are highly emotional need special care and attention to work around their problems with the organization’s help. You need to get to the root cause of what is bothering them and what factors cause an emotional rift. You can also provide counseling sessions for them to help them overcome the difficulties they are facing.

  1. Communication Gap

Employees that feel high burnout levels in an organization are tough to talk with. They do not connect with their team members and try avoiding everyone they see. This is one of the prominent issues faced by overworked employees because they can only connect with their work and no one else. Thus, making them mentally unhealthy, which further increases stress and anxiety levels.

What do you need to do?

The communication gap can create serious concerns for organizations that want to perform well. To avoid such situations, a manager can bring the team together and help them connect no matter what the scenario is and improve internal communication. Doing this will help you figure out where the real problem lies. Once you are aware of what needs to be done, devise all the necessary solutions, and implement them. If it does not work, try coming up with more answers and work around them to make the team more successful.

As a manager, you can also try some excellent team building activities. Such activities connect the team members and increase cohesion for better productivity and engagement.

Summing it Up

To resolve the growing issue of overworked employees, you need to consider how to reduce the amount of work without affecting the overall outcome of how the organization performs. Plan the schedules properly that focus on work-life balance, provide adequate awards, implement benefits that solely reduce burnout levels, etc.

It is never easy to achieve a workforce that does not succumb to burnout; however, with a little bit of planning and adequate solutions, an organization can avoid burnout and keep their employees happy.

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Author: Mrinmoy Rabha

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