Preventing Burnout

“Burnout”, although currently a hot topic, is by no means a new concept. Even in our pre-pandemic lives this was a very real danger, especially in the workforce (although it can also happen in our personal lives as well). Luckily, Wharton’s own Adam Grant has come up with one of their simple yet highly effective nano-tools for leaders. His new article highlights his approach to preventing burnout, using a model he dubs “Demand-Control-Support”.

In this model, he highlights the strategy in the following ways:

• Demand: Make structural changes that lighten the load on the person doing the job or redistribute tasks.

• Control: When you can’t eliminate demands, you can at least give people the autonomy and skills they need to handle them.

• Support: Create cultures that make it easy to request and receive help.

It is interesting to see how differently these changes are exemplified in different industries. In some, for instance, tasks forces were created to identify where time-consuming tasks were holding people up, and new systems were put in place to correct them. At a Cleveland hospital, it was discovered that doctors were spending an inordinate amount of time charting in an outdated electronic health record system. Once this “demand” was identified, new management software was put into place and doctors were able to spend more time with patients.

While some companies may be able to address these issues immediately, others are more reticent, especially in the face of a predicted economic downturn. Many companies are already facing lay-offs, which, if not handled properly, will only increase burnout, not decrease it. Should a company find itself here, it is important that leadership take into account the “Support” aspect of Mr. Grant’s model. This step is able to really highlight top-down changes, as leadership must sometimes make the shift to the idea that asking for help is a sign of strength, not one of weakness. When leadership opens up about personal struggles, this culture is normalized, and employees generally are less prone to burnout, even if their workloads increase.

With “quiet quitting” coming into the modern lexicon, burnout has been blamed for this drawback from work life. Ideally, using these nano tools will prevent burnout, and thus embolden employees to set these healthy boundaries without taking away from what they are able to offer in their jobs. Take a look at Mr. Grant’s newest piece and see how your company can integrate these measures. Economic fluctuations and workload shifts are inevitable, but burnout is not.

Not to Worry About Quiet Quitting

By now most everyone has heard the new trendy term “quiet quitting”. This in fact, has nothing at all to do with quitting, it simply indicates when employees choose to do the bare minimum that their job requires. Never going above and beyond, never putting in unpaid extra hours, never responding to emails past COB. Some may see this as employees setting healthy boundaries in the quest for work/life balance, while some see it as laziness and a detriment to the company. Over the last month the term gained a lot of traction thanks to one TikToker, whose video on the subject quickly went viral, garnering over 8 million views in just a few weeks. But does this new concern have staying power? Is it actually something that businesses and leadership need to be concerned with? The brains over at Wharton give a resounding ‘no’.

Matthew Bidwell, a management professor at Wharton, has a new quick read (and quick listen on Wharton Business Daily) about what the real issues are that management needs to be worried about. While leadership is of course always interested in getting the highest performance out of their employees, the much bigger issue these days is keeping employees, period. Let’s go beyond the “no one wants to work anymore” mentality here. There has always been those who do not want to be defined by their labor and seek more freedom in their chosen lifestyles. In August, however, 4.3 million workers voluntarily left their jobs, setting a new record. So who has time to worry about quiet quitting when actual quitting is so much more detrimental to a company? Take a few minutes to give Professor Bidwell’s article a quick read, and listen to his discussion on the wider labor market, and where this trend may be going.