We are in to the third year of the epidemic now and unfortunately the ongoing effect on our mental health is not going away. According to a recent American Psychological Association report[i], burnout is at an all-time high across professions with nearly three in five employees reporting negative impacts of work-related stress, including lack of interest, motivation, or energy at work.

Burn out is caused by long term workplace stress that is not effectively managed, burn out can leave you feeling negative and cynical about your work with reduced professional efficacy[ii]. I think we can all relate to moments of that during the most intense lockdown, and it’s hard to think that the rise in burn out is not related to the high levels of attrition – the great resignation. In fact, in the US, 47.8 million people left their jobs in 2021, a sizeable proportion of which must have been due to burn out.

Whilst teachers and healthcare professionals are the most at risk of burn out, people managers are a class of employee that are reporting increased levels of burn out. This is not surprising as they are not only managing their teams in a completely new way – remotely and with dispersed locations – but they are also having to deal with the stress and disengagement of their personnel.

For leaders, setting a good example for work-life balance, keeping a check on workloads and identifying teams who are consistently working out of hours or having meeting overload, has got to be vital in preventing talent from leaving the organisation.

For more information on detecting burn out risk in teams join our webinar on Monday 25 April. Register here for access to the webinar.

[i] American Psychological Association, Burnout and stress are everywhere, January 2022

ii] WHO, Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases, May 2019