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Did you hear about LinkedIn giving its 15,900 full-time employees a paid week off? Facebook did the same over Thanksgiving. Why? Because their people are just burning out. In fact, investment by big business in staff wellbeing is at an all time high as the individual and organisational effects hit a peak. 

Fact: The health and wellbeing of your teams and employees have a direct link to the well-being of your bottom line. It’s why big companies like Linkedin, Facebook, Google and Cisco are proactively investing in the happiness of their people. Yes, yes… the irony, investing in care practices to save the bottom line but if you or your employees are out of whack, it will affect your business, whatever its size or industry.

Signs of Burnout

Burnout is a slow burn, often overlooked and misinterpreted. 

• Burnout can look like ‘a difficult or busy person’, someone snapping or being grumpy or angry. 
• Burnout can look like ‘the office cynic’ or the one who is so defensive (due to feeling threatened or panicked or just to prove oneself). 
• Burnout can look like the team member who regularly has that extra glass of wine or is a caffeine fiend. 
• Burnout can also be a sign of a toxic culture.

More signs 

Lower productivity, missing deadlines, being regularly late, unable to make decisions, procrastination, forgetfulness.

A highly noted study by Winona State University has found there to be Five Stages of Burnout which we have republished here. 

1. Honeymoon -marked by high job satisfaction, commitment, energy, and creativity, the key issue is what patterns of coping strategies you begin to develop when facing the inevitable stresses of the job. In theory, if the patterns of coping are positive, adaptive, then you will remain in the honeymoon stage indefinitely. But few people do.
2. Balancing Act — as opposed to the unbridled optimism and positiveness of Stage 1, you now are clearly aware that some days are better than others regarding how well you are handling the stress on the job. An awareness of a noticeable increase in the following is indicative of Stage 2:

• 2.1 job dissatisfaction
• 2.2 work inefficiency, including avoiding making necessary decisions, “losing” stuff at work (even on your desk!), etc.
• 2.3 fatigue (a general fatigue, often accompanied by deep muscle fatigue)
• 2.4 sleep disturbances (often that you are so “busy” in your head that you can’t get to sleep)
• 2.5 escapist activities of choice (including eating, drinking, smoking, zoning out in front of the TV, etc.)

3. Chronic Symptoms — marked by an intensification of some of the same indicators cited in Stage 2, including

• 3.1 chronic exhaustion
• 3.2 physical illness (remember that stress is a risk factor in many diseases)
• 3.3 anger, depression

4. Crisis — the symptoms become critical

• 4.1 physical symptoms intensify and/or increase in number
• 4.2 obsessing about work frustrations
• 4.3 pessimism and self-doubt dominate thinking
• 4.4 you develop an “escapist mentality”

5. Enmeshment — The symptoms of burnout are so embedded in your life that you are more likely to be labeled as having some significant physical or emotional problem than you are to be called a burnout case.

Burnout Busters

Here are a few ways you can get proactive about dealing with burnout and help your people. 

• Encourage regular exercise. Tell your people to go out for a walk – and go with them.
• Encourage healthy habits. Have bowls of fresh fruit around the office.
• Encourage positive communication. Get people talking to each other. Do daily casual check-ins with people ‘how are you today?’ ‘anything you need?’ Set up routine catch-ups with the team. Have some facilitated by a coach. 

• Create a culture where feedback is welcomed. 
• Create a space of trust where people feel free to say I’m struggling (with a deadline or a project or even something more personal) or even where managers can ask ‘are you okay?’ 
• Engage in coaching for team managers to make sure they are fully supported with individualised, one to one coaching.
• Promote mental health days, flexibility for family, encourage holiday leave.

Making these self-care and team alignment strategies the norm in your workplace culture can make a huge difference. As are understanding why burnout can occur. Aside from the enormous impact of a global pandemic, Gallup identified the top five reasons for burnout to be:

1. Unfair treatment at work
2. Unmanageable workload
3. Lack of role clarity
4. Lack of communication and support from their manager
5. Unreasonable time pressure

Understanding and being able to recognise the signs of burnout however should not only rest on the shoulders of HR, managers or C-Suite. It needs to be an individual and team effort which can only come out of team alignment, open and positive communication, growth mindsets and a culture of having each other’s back.

Our Colarity Coaching programs do just that. Call us for a chat about how we can help.

A whitepaper reviewing key trends and predictions in HR from global leaders and 2020 Australian HR Awards Finalists.

There is an intense awareness of change perched on the shoulder of Australia’s workforce right now. Here’s how to stand firm in the face of uncertainty.

Are you thinking about what matters to your stakeholders – employees, customers and community?

Recession and global disruption were not at the top of any HR Management list heading into 2020, yet here we are – with HRDs and teams stepping up to the enormous evolving challenge. It goes to show just how agile, resourceful and innovative people can be given the chance.  

There’s no dressing up the very real challenges business face but the opportunities to tap into are also as plain as day. 

I recently sat in on a Gartner webinar discussing business impacts from Coronavirus, cost optimisation, and the top priorities for Human Resources. As you can imagine, the financial, fiscal and economic outlook was sobering but the suggested response to it was filled with opportunity and achievable. 

Out of the Nine Trends for HR Leaders That Will Impact the Future of Work After the Coronavirus Pandemic, there are three opportunities I see returning the greatest success that is all based around the employee experience.

1. Separation of Critical Skills and Critical Roles 
2. Increase in Remote work and Contingent Worker Expansion
3. Shift from designing for efficiency to designing for resilience

1) Separation of Critical Skills and Critical Roles 

“Separating critical skills from critical roles shifts the focus to coaching employees to develop skills that potentially open multiple avenues for them, rather than focusing on preparing for a specific next role,” said Emily Rose McRae, director in the Gartner HR practice. 

Why do I see this returning the great success? Successfully developing outside the normal scope makes way for creativity, innovation and growth mindsets. Developing such a culture where you are exploring people’s potential to benefit everyone in the organisation, just like working on values and team alignment. 

2) Increase in remote work and Contingent Worker Expansion

This is, of course, is something many employers are already looking at as a more permanent business model – not only for the obvious cost-saving measures but because it does work! 

Why do I see this returning the great success? Here is how your organisation can expand on a budget, how you can invite highly skilled professionals into your team without investment in desk space. It broadens the talent scope to include people you may not have considered before such as those in rural areas, people who need shorter or flexible hours, or workers with a disability. 

We now all know how efficient we can be as individuals using technology to work and meet. With the right application, organisations can also work more effectively as networks and in teams.

The key to success here will be in creating a culture of inclusion (which Gartner listed Humanization (Or Dehumanization) Of Workers) and having strong team alignment measures in place. 

Importantly, as this McKinsey article points out, we must not: ‘overlook the risks faced by self-employed professionals, informal workers, and small businesses. These groups are often not receiving sufficient support. But their role in the economy is vital, and they may be noticed only later when it is too late’. 

Creating a culture of inclusivity for company alignment however, doesn’t only mean great team meetings, it means looking after your people with Social Safety Nets, another identified work trend by Gartner.

3) Shift from designing for efficiency to designing for resilience 

This point is possibly the most exciting and like an HR manager in a pandemic will move the company forward faster. 

For too long we have been almost blind-sighted by a focus on efficiency that some of us worked ourselves efficiently into a corner. But as we’ve seen in the past few months, it’s the ones who adapted and adopted early, learned on the run and moved with the times that have kept their heads above water. 

The most important thing to know here is:

And the key is in adopting a growth mindset to be open to:

• Providing more varied, adaptive and flexible careers for employees. (source: Gartner)
• Smarter ways of delivering work (gig economy, contingent workforce, remote workplaces).
• Exploring and adopting technology for greater team alignment (meetings, coaching, professional development).
• Discovering and developing the leadership hiding in your teams.
• Listening and drawing out the needs and ideas of your employees.
• Developing your greatest asset – your people. 

Final word

2020 has made us rethink everything. We’ve been forced to reflect, evaluate and get innovative to survive and we’ve had to connect with what really matters. This not such a bad thing.

Please reach out to me if you or your people need coaching to adapt, grow and align to the new normal of work. We have great success with our flexible, 1:1 virtual coaching platform.

It’s a time for tough and open discussions. Honesty, in order to maintain and reaffirm a level of trust, should be a top priority for leaders – at all times but particularly in a crisis.

The traditional career path of university graduates who go to work for large organisations is on the wane, with increasing numbers of them going to work for themselves, either in a freelance capacity or in a startup enterprise.

As many as 50% of employees will be working in a freelance role in 10 years.

This cohort is nearly twice as likely to reskill, because they realise more than most, that education is a lifelong process. Their willingness to upskill and remain in touch with technological advances will mean that their services will be in high demand.

With digital developments changing the way we do work so rapidly, most organisations won’t have the necessary talent already on the payroll, and so will need to recruit skilled workers from the outside. It is likely to come from freelancers or contractors, which statistics show are the fastest-growing segment of the workforce.

The rise of the contingent workforce, along with the skills gap that new technology will create, a war for talent.

Organisations will compete for a workforce that is skilled and relevant, as they jostle to stay relevant in an ever-changing digital landscape.

In turn, this offers two possibilities for organisations:

1. pay top dollar for permanent, freelancers and contractors knowing the costs to recruit are high
2. capitalise on the need for continuous learning, by becoming learning institutions within themselves, and thereby attract and retain talent.

Opportunities for organisations

According to a study by Deloitte on the digital readiness of companies, the second most important characteristic of a future-ready organisation — after flexibility and adaptability — is learning ability and a skilled workforce. 

Not only do companies need to identify employees with the right education, new talents and necessary transferrable skills, but they need to reinvent themselves as learning institutions if they are to attract and retain employees.

Organisations will be ideally positioned to develop ‘professional development hubs’ of learning to keep their workforce up-to-date and competitive. Family commitments, work pressure and other factors are often barriers to workers committing to further skills development and training. However, if organisations provided relevant training for the emergent leader, they could reduce the amount of time and money spent on hiring, and invest it into growing their people instead.

Building a culture of lifetime learning promotes a motivated, engaged and loyal workforce. Investing in people and their continued development not only ensures companies can compete successfully in the new world of work, but it sets the organisation up to be an employer of choice. This makes it easier to recruit new talent and retain the talent that already exists.

Check out how we at Colarity are able to provide the most affordable, accessible emerging leader and professional development coaching

Whether we like it or not, the job market is influenced by new technology and organisations need to respond to attract and retain the talent they need for success. 

In 2018, an average of 71% of total task hours across 12 industries covered in The Future of Jobs Report by the World Economic Forum was performed by humans, compared to 29% by machines. By 2022 this average is expected to have shifted to 58% task hours performed by humans and 42% by machines.

In real terms, this means nearly half of companies expect to experience some reduction in their full-time workforce, by 2022. However, 38% of businesses expect to extend their workforce to new productivity-enhancing roles, while more than 25% expect automation to lead to the creation of employment. 

To cope with this rapidly changing landscape, between one-half and two-thirds of businesses expect to expand their workforce to include contractors, temporary staff, and freelancers who will perform specialised work.

They also intend to engage workers on a more flexible basis and to embrace off-site working arrangements. 

While this solution may fill skill-gaps, it raises other questions including how organisations can best manage a more fluid workforce of contractors and project teams, while simultaneously continuing to instil the values, culture and purpose to their workforce.

Jobs of the future

Two concurrent trends which are driving business growth are the continued rise of tech jobs and skills; and ‘human-centric’ jobs and skills — those that depend on intrinsic human qualities.

These trends mean that over the next five years, there will be an increasing demand for:

• Data analysts and scientists
• Software and applications developers
• Ecommerce and social media experts

We can also expect to see new specialist roles, such as:

• AI and machine learning specialists
• Big data specialists
• Process automation experts
• Information security analysts
• User experience and human-machine interaction designers
• Robotics engineers
• Blockchain specialists.

Roles leveraging those distinctive ‘human’ skills will include:

• Customer services workers
• Sales and marketing professionals
• Training and development experts
• Organisational development specialists
• Innovation managers.

Jobs expected to become increasingly redundant over the 2018–2022 period are routine-based, middle-skilled white-collar roles which are susceptible to advances in new technologies and process automation. These include:

• Data entry clerks
• Accounting and payroll clerks
• Secretaries
• Auditors
• Bank tellers
• Cashiers.

From what I am seeing in trends, even in the organisations, I work with, you can add middle management to this list, particularly in large businesses who have worked under a structure of layers of management. 

By far, providing high-end personalised coaching seems to be the most effective response for organisations to attract, retain and keep talent at the top of their game for success.

Here is how we help.