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How To Help Your Team With Burnout When You Are Burned Out Yourself 

The corporate world is gradually shifting towards a primarily remote one. Studies show that the number of people who work from home has increased by 140% since 2005. However, despite this change in workplace dynamics, many remote workers still find themselves facing intense burnout.

Burnout is an all too familiar feeling for people who are working in the corporate world. If you are a writer, you must have experienced days when all you wanted to do was shut down and take a break without having to write a word.

When it comes to work, it’s normal to want to help your team members when you notice they seem burned out. But how do you do this if you’re feeling burned out yourself?

Trying to help your team with job burnout when you’re feeling burned out yourself can feel like trying to pour water from an empty jar. However, it’s not impossible. With the right steps, you can alleviate your stress levels and that of your team members.

Wondering how to do this? Read on.

Take care of your health

When it comes to dealing with burnout, you should make your health a priority. A lot of people get so consumed by work that they forget to take care of themselves. Remember those days you skipped breakfast, lunch and dinner without a care in the world? Even if those days were your most productive work days, they aren’t ideal for your health.

Start by eating healthy, sleeping well and adding exercise to your daily routine. You could also try incorporating health boosting techniques into the routines of your work team.

By taking care of your health first, you can easily convince your team members to do the same too. Once this happens, you’d have a team of healthy people who are energised and ready to work.

Stay Away from Screens

This could seem like a impossible and ridiculous tip for anyone to suggest. After all, remote working involves a lot of screen time. However, studies have shown that excessive screen usage can cause burnout faster than any other factor. Try limiting your screen time and incorporate breaks as often as possible. Your team members should be allowed to take frequent coffee breaks to reduce the mental and visual strain of screen usage.

Set an example

The greatest leaders in the world lead by example. If you’re trying to help your team deal with signs of burnout, you would need to start by setting a good example. But how do you do this?

Let’s take a look at your daily work routine. You probably attend several online and offline meetings during the week without taking a breather every now and then. While this may seem like you’re showing good work ethics, you just might be sending the wrong signals to your team.

When your team members see you working harder than a worker bee, they may feel pressured to do the same. Before you can say “burnout alert”, you’d have a team of people constantly overworking themselves just to meet perceived standards.

Set a good model behaviour for your colleagues by making breathers a priority and encouraging them to do the same.  For instance, you can take longer breaks during work hours, carve out ample time for self-care and equally motivate your co-workers to do so too.

This way, they’ll understand the need to take time off to rejuvenate themselves and disconnect from the buzz of work.

Set a Limit

Have you ever sent a work email to Jessica from Accounting at 9pm? Admit it: you probably have. Even though you’re a hard worker who loves your job, it’s important to handle tasks only during work hours. For most remote workers, the unofficial atmosphere can cause them to lose track of time and they may find themselves still trying to meet a deadline at off-work hours. Try to set a time limit for work mails or tasks and stick to it. This way, work wouldn’t have to eat into your personal time.

Be compassionate and act like a real team

When it comes to work, being hard on yourself and your team is something you may find yourself doing more often than not. It’s important that you try to fight this urge whenever you feel it. Burnout often comes with an immense feeling of failure and if you throw criticism into the mix, you’d only make people feel less motivated to work.

It’s completely normal to feel stressed, tired or unproductive at times. When this happens, you should create a safe space for your team members to share their feelings and blow some steam off. For instance, many organisations often do this by bringing mental health care on-site to tackle mental stress that comes with being burned out.

You could start by letting your team know that you’re always available to listen and help out in any way you can. This way, they would understand that you can relate to their struggles. You could also try out new strategies like yoga or fun mid-work games to help reduce stress.

Speak for your team

Just like we stated earlier, burnout could be caused by work overload or mental health conditions. In today’s world, many employees suffer from mental health issues and this often affects their ability to perform efficiently at work. As such, you should constantly check in on your team members and speak out for them when necessary.

In cases where your team members are stuck with so much to do that they find it hard to keep up, you should act as your team’s advocate and speak up. Talk to management to either provide an on-site mental health team to help improve the team’s mental health and re-assess the workload of each team member.

Final Thoughts

In the typical work environment, burnout is more real than most would care to admit. Staying calm and following the steps above can help you and your team feel relaxed and ready to tackle new work challenges.

Author: James Baxter – Professional Ghostwriter, Editor and Blogger.

Photo credit: Hernan Sanchez on Unsplash

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