If you find yourself constantly overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and struggling to muster enthusiasm for work, you could be struggling with burnout. If you have a team that’s grappling burnout, you could be on the way to higher staff turnover, decreased productivity, and, most importantly, an unhappy team.
What is burnout?
Burnout is the phenomenon of feeling totally exhausted, both physically and emotionally. We’ve all needed a break from time to time, but burnout is when you are chronically tired.
Burnout causes
Burnout has many causes, here are just a few:
- High pressure environment
- High workload
- Lack of control
- Lack of support
- Bad resource allocation
- Excessive Workload
Impact of Burnout
Burnout takes a serious toll on individuals, affecting their happiness, sense of belonging, and job performance.
Symptoms include difficulty concentrating, procrastination, cynicism, and a negative outlook on life. Physical manifestations like fatigue, frequent headaches, and easy overwhelm further compound the issue, increasing the risk of depression and substance abuse, and leading to social withdrawal.
Burnout doesn't just impact employees; it also affects teams and organizations. Unhappy employees contribute to higher turnover rates, diminished productivity, and reduced morale across the board. This can lead to a lack of motivation and trust within teams- making it a place no one wants to be.
With 1 in 5 UK employees experiencing such high stress and pressure that they need to take time off for poor mental health, businesses must prioritize this issue. It's not even about optimizing utilization rates; it's about ensuring your employees receive the support they deserve.
How to avoid burnout?
Effectively managing workload
Set realistic goals
When time or knowledge is your main asset, there's pressure to deliver high-quality work efficiently. A great manager aims to balance their team’s overall capacity with a realistic timeline for achieving results.
Prioritize
Agency managers often tell us how they help teams set boundaries and self-reflect on workload. The most common complaint from employees is that everyone is “so busy” and that they need more resources to finish a project. But without evidence, these conversations are aimless and unactionable. “If [a team members] are asking for more freelance resource or anything, unless you have the data to back that up, we can't make strategic business decisions to employ somebody.”
Establishing boundaries and self-care
Setting clear limits on project scopes and estimates helps manage client expectations and prevents overworking. These boundaries build trust and strong relationships with clients. Learn when to say “no” and recognize when tasks are becoming too much.
Taking regular breaks and practicing self-care keeps you healthy and productive. Balancing work with self-care creates a supportive and sustainable work environment. 🧘
Creating a supportive work environment
With a supportive team environment, anything can feel possible. Without it, things can break down quickly. It's important for employees to feel supported, and open communication helps them feel comfortable addressing their concerns with managers. If they're feeling overworked, a flexible work environment can provide a better work-life balance. An inclusive workplace fosters a sense of belonging and purpose within the team. Support systems, like access to mental health resources, regular check-ins, or buddy systems, can make a significant difference. Regular discussions about workload and recognizing burnout early can prevent minor issues from escalating, maintaining overall team well-being and productivity.
Time tracking
Time tracking is a powerful tool for preventing burnout. Increased awareness of how time is spent means the team can identify inefficiencies or time-wasting activities. That means an improved workload management, allowing team members to prioritize tasks better and ensure a more balanced distribution of work. With clear records of time spent on various activities, team members can be more accountable for their time. They have that data to go back to their managers and say somethings not working out, or where they’re stretched. All this promotes a greater sense of responsibility and ownership over one's tasks.
Avoiding Burnout with Timely
I. People Dashboard: Managing Capacity and Workload
Avoiding burnout starts with balancing capacity with workload. An overworked and stressed team is a surefire method to aggravate burnout.
Timely's Projects Dashboard empowers you to oversee every aspect of your projects: capacity, overtime and planned work. Effortlessly track project progress, ensure deadlines are met and areas of under-resourcing are known. Use timesheet data to set personal performance benchmarks and stay on track. This is where Timely has completely changed the game for prioritization. Account managers and team leads use Timely to show their bosses exactly where the business is under-resourced, to prioritise work and re-negotiate resource distribution. This prevents many crises down the line and burnout.
II. Workspace Capacity
With Timely’s Employee Capacity Reporting features, you can at a glance, see overtime, undertime and capacity of your team. Keep your team happy whilst optimizing your utilization rate! Timely allows setting individual capacity for part-time employees, ensuring their workload is manageable. Timely's goal is to be an extension of your business, not just another tool. By tailoring Timely to your workflow, you can maximize efficiency and productivity.
"We use Timely for capacity planning, giving us a data-backed understanding of our team's workload and informing sustainable growth." - Natalie, Wunderkind.
III. Overtime and Undertime: Streamlining Overtime Audits
Timely allows you to prevent burnout by monitoring overtime and using timesheet data to set personal performance benchmarks. You can customize Timely reports to highlight the metrics that matter most to you, making it easy to track performance and productivity. Need to adjust your capacity and working days? Timely’s flexible settings let you make those changes effortlessly. Export capacity and overtime/undertime calculations for audits. Timely simplifies calculating overtime for both full-time employees and contractors with variable work hours.
"Another real benefit to the business is how we use it to indicate to an extent what areas of the business we need to resource further in." - Ellen, OK Cool
IV. Tasks: Optimizing Work Schedules for Burnout Prevention
Timely tasks help you further optimize your work schedule so you can prevent overbooking and distribute workload better across the team. Break down work into individual and team tasks easily, and have real-time indicators that monitor progress and overtime logged on each task, all within Timely.
High-performance has been completely redefined. It no longer means working crazy hours, it mean working smarter.
“My clients pay me to think, not to do admin work” says David K., a management consultant working with top American firms. David gets immediate insights from Timely: where his time went and where he can be more efficient with his approach to consulting services.
Key Takeaway
If you’re starting to feel consistently tired and losing motivation at work, you could be suffering from burnout.
Burnout is a serious issue affecting individuals characterized by chronic fatigue and decreased job satisfaction. Burnout often stems from high-pressure environments, overwhelming workloads, and insufficient support.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, there are proactive steps you can take to prevent burnout. Effective workload management, setting realistic goals, and cultivating a supportive work environment are key strategies.
Timely is a great tool to help with all the preventative measures! Timely’s Project Dashboard helps you stay in the know. Timely’s Employee Capacity Features can keep managers proactive with burnout prevention and enhanced team productivity.
A happy team is a productive team.
