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25/01/12 Avoid Burnout at all costs

Avoiding employee burnout has to be at the top of the agenda for any business who is serious about the responsibility to their employees.  Directors, we are talking to you.  Burnout comes to many a top performer, and at an even greater business cost.  Having an effective work life balance policy and ensuring it is followed and not just sitting on the shelf, will reach out to all employees if it is followed from the top.  Managers who fail to realise that employees do need to have a life to be able to perform at their peak are putting their own success into jeopardy. We don’t have to look far to see examples of senior Director’s who have had a big impact on business income by quite literally spreading themselves too thin and burning out.

We launched our wellbeing workshops with Lloyds this week to support the new Commercial Wellbeing portal, Live Life Well.  The programme, designed to provide employees with the tools to understand and actively incorporate healthy living into lifestyles, consists of 5 main areas:  WellMan : WellWoman : EatWell : SleepWell : Resilience.

Each of these elements had a strong effect on employee performance and therefore a direct impact on the business bottom line.  If employees are not sleeping or eating well, or do not have the tools to effectively handle change and pressure in our increasingly pressurised world, companies may notice (or not notice but suffer from) presenteeism.  Whilst absence rates may be dropping, don’t necessarily see this as a sign that things are great.

Presenteeism is defined by having employees who are at work, but not able to perform at their full capacity due to ill health.  In the current climate it is reported that nearly a third of workers will go into work when they are feeling unwell, because they are worried about their jobs.  This is an unsustainable situation, and the costs to Britain’s business is estimated at over £15 billion per year.

So we can do our bit to promote wellbeing and healthy staff and profits, but we really do need awareness from the Board, Directors, Managers, the CEO to be able to make realistic changes that will improve employee happiness, health and wellbeing.