Beating Employee Burnout

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“It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” Def Leppard sang in its hit song Rock of Ages. Maybe that’s good advice for a hair band, but for financial planners, not so much.

Burnout is real. It is a dangerous threat to your firm and must be guarded against with the same vigilance and determination you use in keeping your online transactions safe. Because burnout, just like cyber-criminals, will cause severe damage to your operation.

The burnout problem is getting a lot of attention. Heavier workloads, a perceived lack of control, and job insecurity conspire to generate high turnover, reduced productivity, and poor mental health. A seemingly 24/7 work pace and constant demands with dwindling resources create situations that breed burnout like mold in a Petri dish. Add an unstable economy, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for employee exhaustion.

Burnout is more than working until you feel tired at the end of the day. Burnout results from working past five o’clock and going well into the night, over weekends, and into holidays and vacation days.

Burnout is the realization that you are worn down to the bone – the feeling that you will drop if you have to walk just one more step.

Worst of all, burnout is infectious and can spread among your team members with devastating results. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to prevent staff burnout. To combat the problem, you must first understand its underlying causes.