Burnout is a serious issue for professionals with increased demands on productivity. Employees are looking to Human Resources (HR) for support in managing their stress and wellbeing, but burnout can affect HR employees just as much. In fact, it turns out that HR leaders ranked the highest among other professionals when it comes to two key burnout metrics, according to Executive Networks 2023 Future of Working and Learning Report. Fears of economic downturn and day-day stressors have caused more than two-thirds of employees (69%) to experience burnout. Equally important is understanding that HR leaders are also suffering from fatigue, overwhelm and burn out, and according to Executive Network, 2023, they are most likely to leave their current employer. According to Allessandria Polizzi, founder of resiliency training and stress-reduction firm Verdant Consulting, states that “she and her team are feeling all the same things as everyone else, but we have to keep a steady hand and keep the organization moving forward.” This is an important challenge as for the past three years HR leaders have been front and center trying to help everyone, and often neglecting their own health and wellbeing.
Stressed out HR employee
Your HR department is responsible for managing your employees life cycle and administering benefits. It often falls upon the shoulders of the HR department to create and integrate wellness programs to support the health and wellbeing of your employees. And yet they are the demographic most likely to leave. You may not be able to alleviate the anxiety caused by fears of economic downturn, but you may be able to help reduce the day-to-day stressors your employees are experiencing by focusing on recovery, renewal, and resilience.
Recovery is a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength. If you are experiencing burnout or already past the breaking point, trying to push through the exhaustion and continuing as you have been doing only to cause further emotional and physical damage. Now is the time to pause and change direction by learning how to help yourself overcome burnout and feel healthy and positive again. It’s challenging to move into renewal and resilience iff you haven’t yet recovered from a burnout cycle.
Here are a few ways to address day-to-day stresses and recover from the day.
- 5-minute Daily Journal—Take time each day to write down the thoughts that are reeling through your mind, reflect on all the positive things that happened in the day, venting about the struggles, thinking about and journaling a close friend or relative that you love, or even writing down what fun activities you want to do this week.
- Reframe your priorities— Prioritize your health and make time for exercise, healthy relationships and not working after you leave the office/home office. There needs to be action steps toward change to break the toxic habits that led to burnout. If a reprioritization on health does not occur, the individual will most likely be stuck in a burnout cycle.
- Hard times, think about 3 hard times in your life and how did you get through those challenges - did you reassess your perspective? Did you reach out for personal or professional help? Did you start to focus on Positivity? Don’t do this alone, humans are social creatures and we need connection.
Renewal is to undo the damage of stress, anxiety, fatigue, apathey like headaches, bone disease, cardiovascular disease, strokes, and diabetes etc. Burnout has a devastating effect on our bodies, but it happens ghvery slowly, so that we hardly notice it at first. But we need to start recognizing the damage burnout reaks on our bodies so that we can increase our awareness and begin to address the issues
- Rest and restore, Getting enough exercise, sleep and nutrition can support the body while supportive professional relationships, boundaries, mindfulness, and positivity (gratitude and optimism) can help restore the mental and emotional bodies.
- Community. Create a supportive culture collectively at work to support their wellbeing worklife balance.
- Nature. Deepen your relationship in nature; it could be as simple as eating fresh fruit, maintaining a regular schedule, or getting some sunlight and warmth on the patio.
Resilience is about responding well to disruptive change7. Resilience is being able to cope with and recover from setbacks. It does not eliminate stress or erase life's difficulties,10 but rather gives people the strength to tackle problems head-on, overcome adversity, and move on. This can be incredibly challenging if you are stressed out from the day-to-day challenges, but is a skill that can be strengthened by looking at situations in more positive ways, getting support from others, and focusing on what you can control. Resilience is what gives people the psychological strength to cope with stress and hardship.8 It is the mental reservoir of strength that people are able to call on in times of need to carry them through without falling apart. This usually is depleted when caught in perpetual, seemingly endless, stress cycles. Someone who is in burnout lacks resilience due to their nervous system being dysregulated and most likely caught in fight/flight response. This is a heightened stress state that leads to exhaustion. The good news is there are different types and modalities to help improve resilience.
Resilience grows stronger through adversity. Resilience gives a person the capacity to deal with things and adapt in a positive way. Resilient people live longer because they often have a sense of purpose. There are various types of resilience.
- Physical Mental Resilience is a person's ability to adapt to change and uncertainty. Ability to be flexible and calm during times of crisis. Use mental strength to solve problems, move forward, and remain hopeful even when facing setbacks.
- Emotional Resilience is the ability to regulate emotions during times of stress, be aware of their emotional reactions, and tend to be in touch with their inner life. Because of this, they are also able to calm their mind and manage their emotions when they are dealing with negative experiences.
- Social Resilience involves people connecting with others and working together to solve problems that affect people individually and collectively.
Another important strategy is for leadership to acknowledge what is weighing heavy on the HR team and hire appropriately to ensure HR can rest and recover as well. Expecting an already exhausted and burned out department to research, create, and implement a wellbeing program may actually burn out that department even more. Hiring a professional in the field to help your HR department roll out a program may be the best support you can offer. In order to break the burnout cycle for your employees, something needs to change. Recovery, renewal, and resilience are the first steps in supporting your people, but creating a culture that doesn’t lead to burnout in the first place is key. Take care of your HR department by bringing in wellness professionals that can help create sustainable change that ripples through your organization.
