There is one clear cause for mass layoffs. It’s an employee burnout. In a recent survey, more than half of employees said they had burnout, and more than two-thirds said they had increased that feeling since the onset of the pandemic. Given these common sentiments, it’s not surprising that workers are quitting their jobs in large numbers (what they want) in search of more environmentally friendly meadows from other companies.
When business leaders are scrambling to retain their employees, they make the mistake of relying primarily on talent to solve problems. Employee stress and frustration are often rooted in the technology used (or not used) to facilitate remote work. And this means that the IT team plays an important role in the prevention of burnout.
The rapid transition to remote, hybrid workplaces certainly contributes to employee frustration. Many organizations run on cobblestone remote networks with heterogeneous systems and inefficient processes. Without updated technology, this could also create potential security breaches and further increase employee stress.
What you have and what you don’t
When it comes to ineffective and painful processes, organizations often fall into two categories: what they have and what they don’t. Some organizations have an overwhelming number of tools that can lead to application overload in addition to Zoom fatigue, but for others who don’t have enough technology, employees are best. I don’t have the productivity tools I need to get the job done. In the past, casual comments about the lack of technical resources for water coolers may have been sufficient, but now employees are looking for resources themselves and deploying Shadow IT, increasing security vulnerabilities. There is a possibility.
Both types of organizations ultimately fail to motivate and motivate employees, leading to burnout. Employees need access to more efficient and automated processes and the right amount of productivity tools to do their best work and stay happy. Not only does this help reduce burnout, it also helps reduce sales, reduce security vulnerabilities, streamline workflows, and increase productivity.
4 Steps to Reduce Employee Burnout and Maximize Productivity
It’s not just human resources, but IT departments and business leaders who develop solutions to end the layoff. Streamlined processes and tools are needed to enhance the work capabilities of our employees. And when new hires join your workforce, or what I call a “major remodeling,” you need to ensure that these new hires don’t have the same unfulfilled experience as their previous roles.
Here are some ways IT teams and decision makers can intervene to drive innovation and improve employee well-being and workflow.
- Create a culture of feedback. Employees need to feel comfortable and be able to raise their hands to flag their concerns. For example, organizations now use spreadsheets to manually manage customer relationships and data, which employees consider inefficient. We need to create a culture of feedback, provide feedback easily, and enable IT departments to create business cases where it’s time to optimize workflows with CRM solutions. With this culture in place, employees feel they are listening and have access to the tools they need. With direct access to business and IT leaders and the ability to provide feedback, employees are less likely to look at Shadow IT, regain control over IT departments, and minimize security risks.
- Prioritize security. Remote and hybrid work increases the risk of cyber threats. Security is more important to business continuity than ever before. But without secure processes and regular data backups, or with too many tools to create vulnerabilities in Shadow IT, and a cyberattack, employees and their productivity are at risk. You should prioritize backing up your data and continuous software updates, but you can’t rely solely on your vendor. Weekly backups alone are not enough. Create your own backup protocol in case of catastrophe, allowing employees to quickly restore their work. By taking these precautionary measures, you can ensure the security of your entire organization and minimize employee stress.
- Pull data analysis. Data analysis also provides excellent insights that can help reduce burnout and turnover. You can collect analytics from applications such as Microsoft Teams and Outlook to determine employee production time, meeting time, and downtime. Depending on the tool you are currently using, this valuable information may be trapped in the tool, but access to this information is important to minimize burnout of employees. You can use this data to help employees identify areas where they can spend less time on unrelated meetings and instead maximize productivity.
- Invest in super automation. The manual and repetitive process can be a headache for employees and can lead to burnout. To mitigate these issues, introduce super-automation (that is, a comprehensive framework of multiple technologies tailored to your company’s unique needs that helps automate all organizational processes that can be automated). .. Too many tools only add stress to employees, but super-automation allows you to determine which tools you need and the process to automate. You can also expand the use of automation over time to ensure that your organization is investing in the right tools and processes to increase operational efficiency. Super-automation reduces repetitive and mundane tasks, frees resources and allows you to focus on more valuable and engaging tasks. This will minimize the sensation of burnout.
Without the involvement of the right people, the impact of mass retirement in an organization cannot be resolved. IT teams can work with business leaders to support their employees by creating a culture of feedback and introducing automation into the technology ecosystem. With more effective and innovative tools and processes, you can inspire your employees, maximize their productivity, and reduce burnout and turnover.