As a professional with HR responsibilities, your usual stresses have been amplified substantially by the ever-changing nature of the workplace. You are not alone in feeling the strain. In a study presented by Blind (teamblind.com), 77.3% of HR professionals surveyed reported experiencing burnout, up from 59.6% in February 2020...and that was already a significant number. When it's your job to support employees, including those feeling the effects of burnout, what do you do when the burnt-out employee is you? Here's why burnout happens -- and how to protect yourself against it: There are many workplace predictors of impending burnout. Some include: It's easy to notice when there's an abundance of work-related stress. But how do you recognize when you may be genuinely burned out? While it's not a medical diagnosis, the Mayo Clinic does define job burnout as "a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity." So, self-assess the state of your stress: If you answered yes to most of these questions, you are likely experiencing job burnout. Fortunately, many techniques to alleviate burnout are also useful for preventing it down the line. Anyone who has ever flown on an airplane knows the instruction: If the oxygen masks drop, put on your mask first before helping those around you. The obvious truth is...you can't help others when you cannot breathe. In human resources, you are tasked with keeping employees safe and happy. In order to execute that role, you first must ensure that you keep yourself safe and happy. There's another strategy that helps alleviate untenable overload in HR: offload administrative and time-consuming aspects of staffing, hiring or training by partnering with a staffing firm. How can a placement agency help you avoid burnout? They can save you a lot of time and headache in multiple ways by taking on the burden to: Being super busy, valuing the hustle, blurring the lines between work and personal time -- it's easy to fall into the trap of not recognizing burnout when it's happening because we tend to tolerate being overwhelmed. We live in a society that likes to glamorize the grind, but you do not have to feel burned out at work as a measure of productivity. In fact, burnout is the antithesis of success. Normalize working hard but not overworking. Know the difference between tolerable stress and that which exhausts you mentally and physically. Learn the difference between hard work and harmful work, utilize your strategies and resources, and you'll be able to be "all in" but not burned out.
SPOT THE WARNING SIGNS
PUT ON YOUR OWN MASK FIRST
STRATEGIES FOR KEEPING BURNOUT AT BAY
UTILIZE A STAFFING FIRM
BURNOUT IS NOT INEVITABLE