Tips for Empathetically Dealing with Burnout

Want a workplace culture that is empathetic for employees? Employers must experience and demonstrate empathy toward their employees. Valuing your workforce’s mental health and overall well-being is foundational in any values-based workplace culture.

At the same time, individuals are responsible for recognizing their mental health needs. Self-empathy is a compassionate approach to nurturing personal well-being at work and home.

Employers: Companies must prioritize employee well-being and create a work culture that fosters positive mental health. This means showing empathy by understanding your employees’ needs and developing supportive policies such as working from home or a hybrid workplace.

Individuals: Taking care of yourself is key. The first step is to recognize your need for mental well-being and treat yourself empathetically. By prioritizing your mental health, you’ll be better equipped to handle stress at work or home and contribute your best.

This dual strategy of employer support and individual self-care establishes a mutually beneficial situation for all involved.

Why Is Burnout Increasing?

The current work environment exacerbates the need for safety to secure comfort and the search for emotional positivity. Employee burnout is on the rise for several reasons.

The lack of work-life boundaries: Technology shackles people to work 24/7. The constant pressure to be available blurs the line between work and personal life, leaving you feeling drained.

Heavy workloads: Feeling overloaded with tasks and tight deadlines is a recipe for stress. Many people struggle to keep up with work and home commitments, leading to constant pressure and exhaustion.

Lack of control: Powerlessness over your workload, projects, or schedule breeds helplessness and frustration. This lack of control intensifies the pressure, leading to burnout.

Unclear expectations: Unclear goals or ever-shifting priorities make it difficult to focus and achieve a sense of accomplishment. This ambiguity leads to confusion and demotivation.

Political and values-based differences:  These concerns polarize people and make discussions about real issues difficult, if not impossible.

Lack of recognition: Feeling undervalued for your contributions is demotivating. When your efforts go unnoticed or unappreciated, burnout becomes a significant threat. When you fulfill your family’s expectations without a word of appreciation, the lack of empathy leaves you feeling weary.

These factors combine to create a perfect storm for personal or work burnout. You and your workplace can foster a healthier and more productive environment by addressing these issues.

How Can Individuals Effectively Address the Issue of Burnout?

Everyone in the workforce (or at home, for that matter) can experience burnout. It can range from simply not enjoying your job to feeling completely overwhelmed by the quest for work-life balance.

Leaving your job or home might not be an option, so people need strategies to manage burnout. While the root causes often lie within the work environment, people can build resilience against burnout and maintain a fulfilling career by taking proactive steps and prioritizing well-being.

Remember that tackling burnout is a collaborative effort if you are an employer. While people can take charge of their well-being, a supportive work environment that demonstrates empathy for an individual’s circumstances is crucial for long-term success.

7 Tips for Dealing With Burnout

Explore these seven tips for handling burnout.

Direct your attention to the aspects of your life you can influence.

Sure, not all aspects of your job and life are controllable, but many components are your choice. Instead of focusing on feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself questions throughout the day, such as, are you checking email 24/7? Yes? Then, stop. Resist the pressure to be constantly available.

You need to enforce work-life boundaries for positive mental health and personal empathy. Disconnect during off-work hours and resist the pressure to be constantly available. Protect your personal time for relaxation and rejuvenation.

Do you need to attend the next Zoom meeting? What will happen if you skip it? Yes, your phone is ringing, but do you want to interrupt your focus on a project to answer it? Take charge of the factors in your work life that you can control, essentially a choice, to overcome your feelings of burnout.

Is taking your kids to practice every afternoon the best use of your time, or can you carpool with other parents and do the pick-up one day a week? Ensure you spend an hour doing something you love several times a week.

Communicate openly with your manager.

Discuss workload concerns with your manager. Don’t be afraid to advocate for yourself and seek adjustments to deadlines or project scope.

You can also talk with your manager as soon as possible when you experience the symptoms of burnout and ask to take a break—not a five-minute break or a couple of days off at home. For self-empathy, you need a complete and total cut-off from work—you need a vacation.

This is how you can ask to increase your chances of achieving a positive outcome. Explain to your manager why you need time off without whining or becoming emotional. Use a rational approach when you lay out all of the reasons why you need to take a break. Emphasize how you will be an even better employee when you return refreshed.

Ideally, ask for at least two weeks with zero office contact, and don’t make yourself available for calls or check your emails. If possible, go somewhere the opposite of daily work and home life and do whatever makes you genuinely happy. Whether that’s lying on a beach drinking cocktails, climbing mountains, or whitewater rafting with the family, please do it.

Ask for or create a change.

People can experience burnout from overwork, repetitive tasks, or working with the same few clients for months. Identify tasks that drain your energy and discuss them with your manager. Look for ways to delegate, streamline, or find efficiencies. As the old saying goes, “A change is as good as a rest,” so talk to your manager about taking on different responsibilities.

Will your manager assign you to a different job? Can you work with clients who require you to leave the office more often for meetings and events? Perhaps you can swap accounts with someone else who is also feeling worn out with the same.

Perhaps you always rent a cottage on a lake for summer vacation and love this ritual time away. Consider asking to work remotely and stay a couple more weeks. If making dinner has become a drag, find ways to eat healthy that save time, like a chicken pot pie from a superstore or pizza and salad from a local pizzeria.

Find ways to release your energy.

Burnout can build, leading to a pressure cooker of stress. If you don’t open that release valve occasionally, you will explode. Perhaps not literally, but you’ll crack emotionally, have outbursts, or maybe do something that could hurt your career or family.

Generally, physical activity is ideal for stress release. For some people, it’s doing CrossFit or martial arts. For others, it’s paintball battles, soccer, pickleball, or bowling. Many people enjoy video games, while others prefer a shooting range or a dozen laps in the pool.

How you release your aggression and frustration is not important as long as the act is not harmful to yourself or others. What matters is that you find a way to let off steam. Physical involvement is crucial in battling employee burnout.

Prioritize empathetic self-care.

Maintain a healthy work-life balance. Sleep well, eat nutritious meals, and schedule regular breaks for exercise and stress management techniques.

When stressed, people look for ways to soothe and comfort themselves. For many, that involves eating comfort foods, drinking alcohol, and collapsing on the sofa to binge-watch TV. However, those activities rarely cure burnout and can make you feel worse.

Don’t reach for the chips and the remote. Instead, create a plan to exercise more, eat healthier foods, and get a good eight hours of sleep every night. After a few weeks or months of making changes in these areas, you will feel ready to take on the world.

Change your environment to foster self-care.

A change of scenery can do you a world of good, even if you’re still working 12-hour shifts seven days a week. Most employers will let you work remotely occasionally, especially if you seek inspiration. Others allow their workforce to work where they flourish daily, at home, in the office, or in the UK.

Find a local coffee shop, museum, or park with WiFi. You can also consider working from a home office space, especially if you are willing to set strong boundaries between work time and family interactions.

Take advantage of the FMLA and other employment laws.

Known as the Family Medical and Leave Act, the FMLA is a federal law that guarantees certain employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year without the threat of job loss. It’s often used for a major life event, such as the birth of a child or a significant illness of an employee or immediate family member. It is also used to provide for military leave.

However, severe burnout and mental stress can qualify as a reason to use FMLA protection. Talk with your HR department to identify whether you may be eligible for FMLA time off. See if you might qualify for short or long-term disability time off or to use any other employment law-governed time.

You can use your employer’s policies to apply for a leave of absence or a sabbatical. You can also use your employer’s employee assistance benefits program to seek counseling or speak privately with a mental health professional or therapist.

Burnout is serious—and must be taken seriously—as its effects on mental, emotional, and physical health shouldn’t be underestimated. You need to understand how grave and widespread the problem of the factors that contribute to burnout is. As an employee, do whatever you can to relax and recharge and find a way to maintain a good work/life balance.