Who should pay for employees’ burnout?
Or maybe more appropriately: what can we do to prevent it?
The number of burnout cases has increased dramatically due to chronic stress at the work. 60% of sick leaves are considered stress related. Thousands of people are absent for 18-month leaves. The Swiss Confederation indicates overall annual costs of ca. 10 billion francs.
The big questions in Switzerland seem to be:
Is burnout really a sickness? And who should pay for it?
Rather than obsessing about definitions and insurance coverage we’d better focus on how to prevent burnout! Indeed, many organizations do not invest enough to counter employee chronic stress. This needs to change if we care about people and productivity.
We suggest you start by measuring more frequently how employees feel at work!
As you all know there is the traditional, anonymous (and costly) annual or bi-annual employee satisfaction or engagement survey. And most companies are happy with response rates between 80 and 85% and with satisfaction rates between 56% and 70%! You would agree with us that this is not an adequate tool to help prevent burnout syndromes.
In our view, one of the best solutions to address the above is to help people “speak up” and implement a feedback system that takes the pulse of people’s engagement and happiness, individually, on a weekly basis. Then, it is a matter of acting on that feedback without delay.
Like you monitor your health by measuring your heart rate and blood pressure, do the same for your team, department or company.
You know that a good leader is a good listener; takes steps in the right direction.
What do you think?
Contact us, we would be glad to answer your questions.
About Inspiring Culture
At Inspiring Culture, we believe that sustainable performance comes from combining business and people management excellence.
