I know many, many of you are the same way.

Here at the Exchange, we’ve spoken at-length about two critical pieces of the greater Future of Work puzzle: worker burnout and employee wellness/wellbeing:

“Workers that have moved to fully remote or hybrid models still routinely face a “blurring” of work and life balance, with care for children and their homes (on top of an additional workload) contributing to late nights on the computer, extended time on mission-critical projects, and work on the weekends. Worker responsibilities have surged, as well, as businesses seek to align staff shortfalls with the existing workforce.

Unlike pre-pandemic times (when burnout was still very much an issue), employees facing the epidemic of burnout now also have to contend with additional social, political, and health issues that are all comprise today’s world. And it’s so much more than simple “stress,” too: mental anguish stemming from a workplace environment (and YES, a home office counts!) can have significant ramifications on business professionals, including irritability, physical illnesses, mental health issues, waning productivity, and, worst of all, a constant questioning of if the position/role (or, even worse, the career itself) is worthwhile.”

On the flip side, worker wellbeing is just as critical: workplace environments that encourage physical and mental wellness are typically the ones that tend to thrive, even during challenging times. Leaders of these organizations understand just how crucial wellness is for the long-term success of their businesses and their workforce, and, subsequently so, enable their staff with time, perks, and flexibility for exercise, as well as providing the necessary mental health services that can be needed in times of stress.

Anyways…back to the issue at hand: unplugging and how hard it can be to do so.

My family booked a nine-day stay at a friend’s lakeside cottage on Rust Pond in New Hampshire (Rust Pond is connected to the well-known Lake Winnipesaukee). I entered vacation with a major goal: unplug as much as I could, enjoy the company of my wife and children, and rest and recharge before coming home to a deluge of emails, projects, research, media commitments, etc.

The “as much as I could” phrase from above should have been “unplug completely.” I spent too much time perusing LinkedIn. I popped my laptop open at night while drinking a Downeast Cider. I wrote original content for this very site. I scheduled some social media posts. My kids swam in the lake only a dozen feet in front of me as I used my iPhone’s Notes app to generate some ideas for a top-secret project.

I look back now with some harsh lessons learned. Bringing my laptop wasn’t the issue; spending an hour or two several days during vacation on the laptop was the issue. Needing to write content wasn’t the issue; spending the time writing at night when I could have been sitting next to a firepit was the issue.

For many business leaders and professionals like myself, it can be incredibly difficult to make that big leap and ignore email, turn off the smartphone, and snub the FOMO that we usually have when keeping up with LinkedIn posts. I even realized that I never even set an out-of-office note on Outlook.

After posting something to LinkedIn on Thursday morning, I tucked my laptop into my messenger bag and hid it in the corner of my upstairs bedroom in the cottage. I left my phone behind on the kitchen counter. I took off my Apple Watch and left it on the nightstand. I waded into the relaxing lake water, had a water-gun fun with my six-year-old, and watched my nine-year-old improve upon her already-stellar swimming. I made s’mores with my wife later that night on the firepit right on the lakefront. We all slept in on Friday morning, made pancakes together, and spent the entire day in and around the lake. For the rest of the weekend, my laptop stayed shut. Work email went unread. LinkedIn’s feed was ignored.

I got some reading in (Sequoia Nagamatsu’s incredible How High We Go In The Dark, which is equally enthralling and heartbreaking) and spent hours completely unplugged from the business and social worlds. There’s something about sitting in front of an open body of water, listening to nature, and truly relaxing. Not many of us take the opportunity to do this and it shows: Future of Work Exchange research estimates that 70% (or more) of today’s workforce has felt some semblance of burnout since the beginning of 2022.

It doesn’t have to be this way. If the trends towards better conscious leadership hold steady, as well as trends pointing towards workers continuing to fulfill purpose and work-life integration by reconsidering their career paths, it will mean that burnout and wellbeing/wellness may become even more critical than compensation in the months ahead.

I failed to completely unplug last week, having every reason to shut down my laptop and ignore the business arena for a nine-day stretch. As I look at the above picture of my children peering out into the perfect blue of Rust Pond, the tinges of a perfect summer landscape all around us, I realize that unplugging isn’t just something that I’ll consider for my work-life balance…it’s something that’ll be a required element for my family and me in the future.

Unplugging is difficult…but it’s worth it to rest, recuperate, and enjoy the non-work-related aspects of the world all around us.

The post The Difficulty of Unplugging appeared first on The Future of Work Exchange.

During my first couple of weeks, I thought I landed a dream job…right out of college. I was covering political issues, police budget cuts, school committee meetings, and so much more. During my second or third week as “designer version” of my role, when I had to put together nearly 50 pages of ads, stories, features, pictures, etc. using Microsoft Publisher, the owner saw me yawn and rub my eyes. “You’ll do great in this industry, kid,” he said. “As long as you don’t get tired, you’ll be fine.” I thought he was joking, so I smiled. And less than a year later, I left the industry for good.

I clocked more 18-hours days than I could remember. I once worked 28 straight hours because a co-worker up and quit during an argument with the owner. In order to attend a Red Sox game (during their magical 2004 season, no less!), I had to make up the work when the game was over (at 10:30pm). When those same Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 86 years, I wasn’t at home celebrating; I was in front of a desktop computer putting together my second of three newspapers that evening. At the age of 22, I was burnt out, unhappy, and regretting having a dream that involved writing for a newspaper.

Nearly 17 years later, the very problem of worker burnout is unfortunately all too-common.

Business professionals are facing an epidemic on top of a pandemic: extreme burnout and work fatigue. Eighteen months of combating an increased workload on top of managing remote learning, an extreme lack of social interaction, and a rollercoaster ride of anxiety during the worst public health crisis our our lifetime. Some industries (such as healthcare and human medicine, veterinary medicine, light industrial, etc.) have experienced such an increased level of work that employees are facing the worst burnout issues of their careers. Staff shortages have been to blame for the majority of burnout cases, as businesses are often forced to “do more with less” in a period of continued uncertainty. And, within sectors that have experienced “boom” times over the past year, there has been a greater demand for products and services, resulting in organizations placing even more pressure on their workforce to perform.

In addition, workers that have moved to fully remote or hybrid models still routinely face a “blurring” of work and life balance, with care for children and their homes (on top of an additional workload) contributing to late nights on the computer, extended time on mission-critical projects, and work on the weekends. Worker responsibilities have surged, as well, as businesses seek to align staff shortfalls with the existing workforce.

Unlike pre-pandemic times (when burnout was still very much an issue), employees facing the epidemic of burnout now also have to contend with additional social, political, and health issues that are all comprise the world that is 2021. And it’s so much more than simple “stress,” too: mental anguish stemming from a workplace environment (and YES, a home office counts!) can have significant ramifications on business professionals, including irritability, physical illnesses, mental health issues, waning productivity, and, worst of all, a constant questioning of if the position/role (or, even worse, the career itself) is worthwhile.

Here at the Future of Work Exchange, we’ve talked at-length about the value and impact of flexibility and empathy in how executives manage their workforce. Business leaders can extend these concepts to ensure that they address the core issues behind worker burnout and improve overall work-life balance. To start, organizations must:

• Institute deeper communication between managers and staff. Workers aren’t always willing or able to give away information in a conversational setting with managers, and, managers shouldn’t be playing coy with their workforce’s emotions. Open up the proper channels of communication and get right to the issues at hand: leaders asking if their employees how they feeling and allowing them to freely discuss the physical and mental impacts that all avenues of work are having on their work-life balance. Communication may seem like a gigantic obstacle, but more often than not, once the gates of discussion are open, both sides will begin truly understand the perspectives of what is occurring from a burnout perspective.
• Provide a more flexible system of paid time off, vacation, and mental health support. Scroll through LinkedIn on any given day and you’ll read about various companies taking a progressive approach to workforce management, whether it’s offering extended time off, additional benefits for fully-remote workers, and services/offerings for mental health support. No worker that’s currently clocking 60-hour weeks will turn down an opportunity to develop a better plan for vacation or time off. Although workers with mental health issues may be hesitant at first, once they feel comfortable taking advantage of such benefits, they should utilize whatever the enterprise offers for mental health support.
• Consider a dramatic short-term shift in the overall workplace structure. The long-vaunted “four-day workweek” has been effective for some businesses over the past several years, however, not all organizations could shift to this model and be successful from a productivity perspective. With that said, though, running such a dramatic short-term experiment could reveal so much about its longer-term success a viable option…quite simply: if you haven’t tried, how do you know it won’t work? Now is the perfect time to move to a four-day workweek, especially with many return-to-office plans on hold due to the continued impact of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. If a two-month experiment reveals that workers are happier, more productive, and better engaged with their roles and with each other, then it’s an experiment worth conducting.
• Develop a direct line of collaboration regarding upskilling and reskilling opportunities. Although not a front-and-center issue when it comes to worker burnout, there is sometimes a hidden root cause: a misalignment between a worker’s total skillset and the work they are performing within a stressful or demanding environment. It’s not so easy juggling a career with an anxious home life in what was supposed to be the waning months of a pandemic but has now turned into a horrifying repeat of the early months of 2021. Managers must institute a direct line of communication about career paths and “where” workers want to be in the future. If there is an opportunity to undergo training for a different unit or department, there’s no better time than now to kickstart that initiative before burnout gets worse. The last thing executives want to experience is another period like this past spring, which were the largest on record regarding worker resignations across the United States. Existing experience and expertise is always going to be an incredible benefit, even if the long-term fit between the worker and his or her current role isn’t set up for long-term success. Employers must give these workers the opportunity to leverage their unique talents and apply those skillsets to other facets of the greater business.

The post Let’s Not Ignore Worker Burnout appeared first on The Future of Work Exchange.