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What is the impact of Workplace Burnout on employers?
From an employer perspective, workplace burnout can have a range of negative consequences. It isn’t just the employee that will suffer from the effects of burnout – the employer will too.
Financial problems are one of the main consequences. For example, research has found that burnout may cost the UK economy as much as £700 million per year [1]! However, there are other problems too, which we will explore.
To recap, workplace burnout causes both physical and mental distress, with it arising from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.
Lost productivity, low engagement, low creativity
A key element of workplace burnout is how those that are exhausted will tend to struggle to work at a regular pace. Inevitably, this will result in crucial work not being completed.
Moreover, those with workplace burnout will typically have a low mood which may affect those around them, which can cause low morale throughout the company.
Clearly, this can have a company-wide effect, with the lost productivity resulting in less innovation, less hard work and ultimately, less success for the company.
Then there is also the effect of an employee becoming less committed and aligned to the company’s goals. They will commonly no longer value their contribution to the company.
Days off
Following on from the above, many people will ultimately need time off work to handle workplace burnout.Sickness, intense tiredness and poor mental health are all common causes of needing to have time off work.
Research from MetLife has found that more than 10 million workers in the United Kingdom have called in sick as a result of feeling burnt out [1]. This colossal number represents approximately 40% of the UK’s workforce, and results in more than 80 million hours being lost each year on burnout [1].
Reputational damage
There is also the threat of reputational damage. All it takes is one disgruntled employee to complain to their family, and before you know it, word spreads quickly. The last thing that an employer wants is to become renowned for being difficult to work for.
This can result in it being much harder to hire new staff, in less customers wanting to engage with the company, and in other businesses wanting to limit their dealings due to the potential for their reputation to be damaged.
High staff turnover
One of the worst consequences of workplace burnout is the inevitability of a high staff turnover. This is where multiple employees leave their job, meaning a situation involving a revolving door of workers is created.
The cost of recruitment is high and time-consuming. Creating job adverts, selecting interviewees, interviewing candidates, fine tuning contracts and onboarding is a long process that needs to happen every time that someone leaves.
Suffering from workplace burnout makes employees want to leave. Therefore, employers will find that they must frequently hire new staff. With more experienced team members leaving and a lack of workers to fill the roles there will be a knock-on effect on the success of the company and quality of the production.
Lack of use of wellbeing resources
Many companies spend time and money in investing in making wellbeing resources available to their staff but infrequently their freelance workforce However, many employees are unaware of the support offered and it is often not easy to access and ineffective. In fact workplace EAPs price themselves based on the assumption of low engagement (2-3% ) and actively make the services harder to access, in order to keep the usage low. Standard EAPs are notoriously ineffective for Film and TV production personnel and workers in the creative sector who have little time to hold on the phone during the working day and jump through numerous hoops to access support.
For example, research from Mental Health UK has found that just 23% of surveyed employees know what plans their employers had in place to assist with chronic stress and burnout [2].
Unless individuals are informed of the existence or workplace support schemes, they are frequently reminded and they are easy ton access many will not use the resources available. This can lead to expensive resources going to waste.
When a person is burnt out, having effective, professional and easily accessible support available for them is crucial..
Conclusion
As we’ve discussed above, there are many negative consequences of workplace burnout on employers.
These can have a disastrous overall impact, and negatively impact the success levels of the company.
Sources
[1] MetLife. (2022). More than 10 million brits take time off due to burnout. Available: https://www.metlife.co.uk/about-us/media-centre/media-centre-archive/2022/march/10-Million-Brits-pull-sickie/. Last accessed: 4th March 2023.
[2] Mental Health UK. (2022). Burnout. Available: https://mentalhealth-uk.org/burnout/. Last accessed: 4th March 2023.
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