5 tips to keep your employees from burning out

If there are people who work extremely hard it has to be entrepreneurs. These people can put in serious hours of work time and not feel like they have done enough. There are those people who just want to show up at the office at nine in the morning and leave before five. The moment you own your business and you want to achieve something from it, you will work yourself like a donkey. The reason for working hard could be a motivation to attain success or simply to avoid failure. The most surprising thing is that some people do not know why they work hard.

As an entrepreneur, there are several things that will make up your daily activities. One of these things is interaction with people. You will be interacting with your employees and your clients- the employees more. While you might not have a problem staying in the office till midnight, your employees may not be as motivated. As a matter of fact, they are going to resent you if you force them to do this. There is no work that will be done in that office after a certain hour. They will be on the internet, replying their messages using your phone services and such things. Who is going at a loss now?

When employees experience burnout

Learning a bit of psychology is very important if you are entrepreneur. You want people to take you seriously and at the same time, to understand why you are doing things the way you are doing them. Most of all, it will be very beneficial to figure out when your employees are experiencing burnout. They will always be tired and not be interested in coming to work. Burnout can make your business’ productivity to drop at the most vital moments. This is why you should make sure that you have detected and controlled burnout early enough, even before it shows.

Stressed up employees are not productive. They are not able to get things done the way you want them. It is not because they do not want to but rather, they are just not able to do so. Burnout can make your employees quit work at the time you need them most, go on ‘strikes’ and even fall critically ill. This is why you should be looking out for some five vital conditions that may cause your employees to burn out.

1. Lack of a mission

What is it that you want your employees to miss their families and warm beds for? Lacking a mission in your business is one of the leading causes of employee burnout. Think of it like a marathon. Marathon runners can run for hours without stopping. Do they get tired? Of course, they do! However, since they know that there is something that is awaiting them at the finish line, they work even harder. They have a record to beat and prizes to be won.

The same case with your business; If you can manage to get your employees to see the targets the way you are seeing them, then you will be in for some really good results. You will keep them from burning out and they will not find it to be a challenge to be in the office for a few extra hours. Give them a mission, tell them where the finish line is and give them the motivation to focus on something exciting and burnout shall not be your business’ major problem.

2. Setting impossible standards

This is not to mean that you should lower your standards. If your business has been operating on some high standards and it has been doing extremely well, then you should not lower those standards at all. What you need to do is modify the standards of your business such that they work not only for you and the business, but also for the other participants in that business. When you set ridiculously high standards, then you will definitely have a problem getting people who are willing to meet them.

The other alternative is to set strategies that are going to work excellently for your employees to meet those standards. Create a strategic plan that will help your employees meet the goals of the business within a given time. The time should not be too short, otherwise, this will be a problem as well.

You should develop your strategies and put them in your managerial database. Data is a vital asset to all businesses. You can review the previous strategies — even those that did not work — and make corrections. Of course, you will need DBA expert services to maintain the data your business is collecting. A well-maintained database is always healthy for your business.

3. Vague requirements

When employees do not know what they are expected to do, it becomes difficult for them to do their job. It also becomes hard for them to enjoy their work since they don’t feel that they are actually doing something. When you are developing the strategic plan, you should communicate it to the employees. Next, you should make sure that you inform these employees of everything that you would like them to do as per the strategic plan.

If the requirements are unclear, the employees will do things the way they feel is best, which is probably just guess work. Employees want to feel appreciated when they work hard on something. It is not beneficial to work all night long, only to be told that you were expected to do something totally different. The thought of it is just exhausting.

4. Poor recognition of efforts

Regardless of what your business is dealing with, you can appreciate your employees in different ways. When you do a job excellently, you will want to be rewarded. This does not necessarily mean that you give your employees a raise or a promotion. Calling an employee to your office to let them know that you are happy about the way they are doing their work is good. It goes a long way to make someone feel valued.

5. No downtime

Everyone needs to rest and recover from the daily hassles of this world. People are working harder to maintain good standards of living and to be better than the competition. A little time for resting and just being out of work is great for employees. During those periods when business is off-peak, your employees should have an opportunity to go and recharge themselves in readiness for the peak period.

Conclusion

Focus on these five conditions and you can be sure that you will be able to keep your employees from suffering burnout. At the same time, you will be able to keep your business performing extremely well. Set goals and have a plan to achieve these goals. On the way to achieving these goals, encourage and appreciate the effort that each of your employees is putting in.

Feature image: bark via Flickr.