Why band-aid solutions for employee burnout don’t work

Most of the focus in recent discussions about stress and burnout has been on how an individual can improve their own mental health and wellbeing. I believe the real issue is the health of the organisation they work for. 

In the modern workplace, and especially when coupled with remote and hybrid working environments, stress can be common and is often undetected. From relentless deadlines to blurred work-life boundaries, inadequate resources, a lack of managerial support, poor psychosocial safety and more: workplace stressors are proven risk factors for poor mental health in the workplace.

These mental health challenges not only cause individual suffering but also result in productivity losses. Wellbeing has been found to have a high correlation with perceived productivity for knowledge workers, and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates lost productivity due to mental health issues amounts to a whopping US$140 billion annually in the EU region alone.

Instead of making coping with stress the burden of the individual, organisations should accept responsibility for creating healthy workplaces where people can thrive and be productive. 

Why band-aid solutions for burnout don’t work

However, you can’t just pay lip service by plugging in meditation, yoga or breathing classes (not that these aren’t important life skills!) or on-demand professional support via an Employee Assistance Program (EAP). 

No matter how fully featured EAP or wellbeing programs are, they rely on employees knowing they need help and being prepared to accept it, and then taking the step of reaching out. This is not easy, which is why the average use of an EAP program in Australia is only 5% yet a record high of nearly 50% of Australian employees say they feel stressed at work.

These kinds of interventions also treat only the symptoms — and not the root causes — of stress. What’s really needed is identifying the workplace stressors that lead to poor organisational health in the first place. 

Fix the workplace, not the individual

I strongly believe that by shifting focus from individual stress management to proactively addressing poor workplace practices, organisations can cultivate environments where employees thrive. 

Healthy organisations are not just higher performers, they are also more resilient and better able to manage downside risk. For instance, from 2020 to 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, McKinsey found healthy organisations with psychosocially safe work environments were more resilient and were 60% less likely to show signs of financial distress. They also had six times fewer safety incidents. 

What is organisational health and why is it important

A healthy organisation is one that is resilient, adaptable and has higher performance and productivity. The growth and wellbeing of employees is prioritised, so people feel empowered and engaged. 

Leaders often underestimate their important role in creating healthy work environments, especially when it comes to providing their team permission to speak up and support when they do. Leaders are the critical connectors between employees and the organisation. Remember, people join companies, but leave managers.

Decisive leaders who coach and empower their employees to make their own decisions create strong high-performing teams that are agile and adaptive. These leaders identify where stressors are driving burnout and fix them. The three most common stressors in the workplace are the volume of work, the support received from the organisation, and poor work/life balance. 

A fix can be as simple as changing/removing a regular meeting that delivers no value, but has become part of the furniture. Wasting time in this meeting is taking time from another task. When this happens over and over, it leads to people working longer hours to get tasks done, meaning poor work/life balance which can lead to burnout. 

One of our clients found their people all had really high levels of psychosocial safety and resilience and engagement levels were strong. However, high levels of communication and an over-reliance on meetings meant people had difficulty resuming work when interrupted and were losing productivity. This kind of stress can be relieved by removing unnecessary meetings, implementing a meeting-free day, or only holding meetings in the afternoon — leaving mornings free for deep work (which is what I do).

It’s personal

After running a large-scale transformation project that delivered $200 million in savings for an ASX-listed company, I experienced burnout myself. I completely missed all the signs, as did my workplace, although in hindsight they were there. 

I started Pioneera in 2018 to prevent workplace burnout. We use AI to understand organisational health in real-time, so organisations can easily diagnose, improve and measure performance and productivity. 

Our AI uses conversation intelligence to detect the early signs of burnout and we show leaders which workplace practices they could change to meaningfully reduce stress and burnout in their teams. We support leaders to create healthy and productive environments, rather than adding more tasks to their to-do lists.

People will continue to burn out until companies change their work practices to prevent it. Instead of focusing on how individuals can support themselves, companies can (and should) address the work practices and other underlying factors that drive burnout. Those same factors can actually reduce burnout and save our mental health. And it’s now a legal obligation, thanks to our new workplace health and safety laws that cover psychosocial as well as physical health.

Fixing the individual isn’t the answer. Fixing organisational health is.

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