Signs of Employee Burnout While Working from Home

Signs of Employee Burnout While Working from Home

A survey by TELUS International found that about 45 percent of U.S. workers felt that their mental health is suffering while working from home.

But, as a boss, it’s been harder to care for your employees’ well-being while working from home. You don’t have the ability to properly observe their behavior. It’s been more difficult to properly see the physical signs of mental health deterioration.

However, there are still ways for you to see if your employees are suffering mentally. These are the signs that you can watch out for and how to help them overcome their struggles.

Small Habits That You Can See During Videoconferences

When you conduct videoconferences, you can only see your employees’ faces. You won’t be able to notice if they’re wringing their hands and fingers out of anxiety. You won’t be able to see if they’re leg jigglers. But you might be able to see or, rather, hear if they’re grinding their teeth.

Teeth grinding is a common anxiety tic. It’s important to recognize this tic right away because long-term teeth grinding could lead to temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders. They might end up needing TMJ treatment from a chiropractor.

Once you recognize a sign such as teeth grinding, you can take action by talking to your employees first. Try to understand what causes their anxiety and see if you can help. If they feel the pressure of the work, perhaps you can do something about it.

Another option is to include mental health in the insurance package of your company. This ensures that they could seek help from a mental health professional should they feel the need to.

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An Increase in Absenteeism and a Decrease in Engagement

These are tell-tale signs of employee burnout that you won’t be able to miss even while remote working. Yes, it’s important to encourage your employees to take some days off and rest whenever they can. That’s one thing. But seeing your employee be absent from work too many times is a different matter. It might mean that they’re having difficulty in feeling productive. They might even find it hard to get up from the bed at all. Some people might attribute these to laziness. But for mental health professionals, these are causes for concern.

Another clear sign is a decrease in your employees’ engagement. Yes, it’s different now that you’ve been working from home. Some people find it hard to talk during videoconferences. But they should still be able to feel engaged with the work.

A way to help them find a sense of purpose with work is increasing your efforts in keeping workplace camaraderie. You can conduct some fun events such as game nights. This should remind them that the company is a form of support that can lean on and will help boost their mood.

A Decrease in Productivity

Even if some of your employees don’t take too much time off, that doesn’t automatically mean that they’re productive. They might be turning in their assignments late or with lesser quality. This doesn’t always mean that they must be reprimanded. It’s better to understand first the reason behind their decrease in productivity.

There are ways to make sure that your employees can get all the help they could as they go through these trying times. You can make adjustments such as enforcing a more flexible work setup. You can also enforce a fixed work schedule to avoid unnecessary overtimes that would lead to overworking. It all depends on what works best for your employees.

As the boss, it’s part of your job to look after your employees’ well-being while they’re at work. And this includes their mental health. If your employees are riddled with stress and anxiety, then it would affect the whole office. It would affect the workplace camaraderie, the quality of the work, and, of course, their overall health.

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