posted 16th August 2024
Intro
Often I’ll work with companies and I am brought in for the magical Agile Transformation that will solve all of the organisational problems. Often this will be after someone else has had a crack at selling the all-conquering PowerPoint deck that had the solution this company needed handily in the back of the van ready to go. It's worked elsewhere so it’ll work here right?
Guess what, it didn’t, and now agile is a nasty word as we tried it before and it failed!
“Boooooo to your cursed Agile Transformation!”
“But things are still broken, we definitely need some help here?”
And that is where I come in. OK, all of that has happened so let’s get on and see what we can do now and make things better and go from there.
Now when I show up this is a pattern of sound bites I’ll hear with a fair few folks in teams around their workload:
“Yeah its flat out but we’ll just get through it and then everything will be back to normal”
“It’s not normally like this so I’ll just get my head down and cope for now”
“Yeah well it’s got to get done so we best just crack on”
I hear the above a lot (well I do at least) when I am working with teams that are clearly overwhelmed by their workload.
What is the impact of this?
When I hear these signals we can often then start to see the impact of this so let’s consider it from multiple lenses:
Impact on the Individual
• Physical and Mental Health: Chronic stress from excessive workload can lead to burnout, fatigue, sleep problems, weakened immune systems, anxiety, and even depression. This has a massively negative effect on their overall well-being which can lead to increased sick days and decreased productivity as well as really unhappy and unwell people.
• Performance: Overwhelmed employees are way more likely to make mistakes, miss delivery dates, and produce lower-quality work. Their focus will be challenged, be less creative, and have difficulty making effective decisions.
• Engagement: Being constantly swamped can lead to a sense of helplessness, frustration, and disengagement. Your people may become cynical, lose motivation, and ultimately look for other roles elsewhere.
Impact on the Team
• Decreased Collaboration and Communication: When everyone is overloaded, there's less time and energy for teamwork and effective communication. This can lead to misinterpretation and crossed wires leading to missed opportunities and a decline in team performance.
• Increased Conflict: Stress can make people irritable and less tolerant affecting psychological safety, leading to more interpersonal conflicts within the team.
• Low Morale: Just one person's burnout can easily spread to others, creating a toxic work environment where everyone feels demotivated and disengaged.
Impact on the Organisation
• Costs Increase: Overworked employees are more likely to leave, resulting in high turnover costs. Attrition is often overlooked as a cost but after working in Resourcing Departments for many years I am acutely aware of this one. Additionally, reduced productivity, increased errors, and more sick days all contribute to financial losses for the company.
• Damage to your Company Reputation: Do you want to be known as the "turn them and burn them" joint? If word gets out that your company overworks its employees, it can have a real negative impact on your reputation and make it harder to attract top talent.
• Innovation and Growth Suffers: A burnt-out workforce is less likely to come up with creative solutions or drive new initiatives. This can stifle innovation and hinder the organisation's ability to grow and adapt.
What do we often see in place to combat this?
In all fairness, companies are good at providing support in the form of providing access for their people such as training on topics such as:
• Stress management
• Time management
• Resilience
Many organisations will also provide access to counselling services or employee assistance programs (EAPs).
These are all great and definitely needed and they help. That said, often the ship has already sailed so we are now in the rehab state rather than providing the skills to prehab so we avoid overwhelming our people and get a sustainable and predictable delivery pace that allows our people to collaborate, innovate, and shine.
Not just the world according to Matt
Let’s consider the a view from psychotherapist Rachael Fox of Fox Therapy.
What I see often with many of my clients is:
Guilt - Some clients know they are struggling and need to be off sick, but they feel a lot of guilt about letting their team down.
Lack of support - sadly, many clients express a lack of support from managers. Some have gone to their manager to express their struggles and felt it has fallen on deaf ears. Comments from managers such as 'We are all in the same boat here', can you hang in there until we sort out the staffing issue' and 'You should be able to manage the stress, you have been in the job xx amount of time now' and similar are words I hear. Also to say, is that the managers are also experiencing stress and are close to burnout.
Red Flags - This is one of the biggest subjects that I discuss with clients. They say that they saw the red flags and thought that they could push through.
Self-esteem - This takes a blow after burnout. Especially if someone is not used to being someone who is off with stress. The shock that it has happened to them (suffering from stress) and the worry of judgement from managers, co-workers, friends, and family.
Isolation - Many people shut down during/after burnout causing them to isolate from friends and family. Some stop enjoying things they used to and lack motivation. This causes the situation to take a downward spiral.
Anxiety - people are off work and have lots of time to be in their heads causing them to worry more about money, going back to work, and judgment from others. Anxiety can cause physical health conditions too which in turn causes more anxiety.
Relationships affected - People who are burned out will possibly be acting completely differently from how they usually would. They could be angry, restless, tearful, and distant to name a few. This can come as a shock to someone's partner, children, other family, and friends, causing a ripple effect of burnout.
Personal hygiene - The low mood from burnout can result in people not caring how they look so for some, even washing/showering and brushing their teeth is either pointless and/or too much.
Suicide - And Sadly, people hit burnout and have thoughts that they would be better off dead. These thoughts are extremely painful for clients and they feel a lot of guilt for even thinking about them. They feel helpless and like a burden to others. Many don't want to die, but they desperately want the pain to stop.
For me, just really 'hearing' your employees can make a difference. we all sit and chat but actively listening to someone so they feel heard and understood is priceless and can ease stress. Education about stress and the signs of burnout is vital. When I chat with employees who are stressed and still at work, we talk about red flags and I say to them a red flag is a warning, not a challenge.
So what does it feel like for the individual?
Now let's get the perspective of someone who has actually gone through this. This person has been brave enough to share their story but has asked to remain anonymous. But to give it some context, this is a male who works in the financial sector in a mid-level leadership role. This is a brief view of their experience dealing with exactly what we are looking at here.
"There’s been lots of change in the business and a very fast-paced environment, during and after Covid. Whilst it’s important to evolve with the times, and in addition continue to improve service, our products, and ultimately enhance the business/customer experience, it can be very overwhelming on occasion. With so much change in quick succession whilst working with a new group you have known for a short time it can leave you feeling frozen and sometimes suffering imposter syndrome that you can’t do the job. This had an adverse effect on my physical and mental health, making it difficult to switch off from work and feeling burnt out. There was EAP available but I ultimately battled to control what I could in the work environment and keep learning. Hopefully, there will be some stability going forward as I just want to get to the point where I’m a master at my role to do my job to the best of my ability and get a good work/life balance."
Getting there ahead of the horse bolting
We can see the impact of this hits hard and it’s not something to treat as an afterthought. So what can we do to help our people avoid becoming overwhelmed, overburdened, and ultimately avoid the dreaded burnout?
If we can provide them with the skills and knowledge to be able to:
• Fit for Purpose: Get a collective understanding of what is fit for purpose as a product/service/offering
• Visualisation: Visualise their workflow so we get a shared collective understanding of where the work comes from, the steps it goes through and where it goes to when we are done
• Capacity vs Demand: Gain an understanding of the levels of demand and it’s seasonal patterns and the capacity they have to deal with the demand
• How We Do Things: Create a shared set of policies in how we prioritise and treat our work. This can include setting work in process limits so we manage that capacity by focussing on the most important work.
• Improve Collaboratively Through Experimentation: Build in time to collaborate and inspect our systems' data so we can experiment to improve our offerings and ultimately reduce the pressures people cope with
By providing and building the knowledge and enabling these skills to do the above, our teams have not had a framework imposed on them. However, they may need a coach at first to help when we introduce these concepts. From here, our people can cocreate the above for them by them. They are the best-placed people to do this as they are the experts, not some shiny consultant with the slick PowerPoint deck. With that in mind, let’s give them the skills and knowledge to evolve their offerings to be able to deliver at a sustainable and predictable pace. That we can work with to manage expectations as well as make the required strategic decisions with real and reliable data.
Often I am brought in and teams are already struggling and as I say, the soundbites above are clear signals it is already happening. So when is the best time to do this? Ideally, we’ve already done it so we avoid burnout for our people. However, the next best time is now. Don’t delay any further. Just like the title says, avoiding injury is better than rehabbing once injured.
By addressing the issue of overwhelming workloads head-on and ideally early, organisations can play a critical role in safeguarding the well-being of employees, fostering a positive work environment, and protecting the overall success of the organisation.
If you’d like to have a chat through how you may look to do this then do drop me a line. I’m very passionate about this and love to discuss these topics.