Everything when done in excess is bad, similar is the case with over communication. Read this blog to know how to prevent employee burnout due to over communication.
We live in a world where information is all around us, just like air. And such a vast sea of information can become a double-edged sword. We become both famished and overwhelmed at the same time. This especially holds true to company employees. Innovation that led to the eruption of smartphones, tablets, and other technological devices has kept employees tethered to their job 24x7 throughout the year. It has opened the path to easy communication but wait, if we see closely, isn’t communication happening a bit too much. Everything done in excess is bad for health, so is communication. This blog will talk about, “How to prevent Employee Burnout Due to Over Communication?”
The Atlantic has coined this always-on trend as “hyper-employment”. Not too far behind was the development of new communication tools, promising people, a smarter and faster way of connecting to one another. Currently, the market in this field is so lucrative that even tech unicorns like - Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook, Atlassian, decided to take their own spin over messaging, chat, and video communication systems. But, are these tools increasing productivity? Or is the work environment turning into a chaotic, and never-ending cycle of messages, emails, conference calls, and chats?
Did you know that over the last five years companies have had a major employee burnout situation? Avoiding burnout is one of the major steps towards better employee engagement. The always-on phenomenon has ended up draining employee productivity, pushes employees to overwork and neglect their well-being. More and more employees are feeling overwhelmed at work.
According to Deloitte Insights, behaviours and habits around communication tools that people use in their personal lives have mitigated its way to their work lives. Consider text and WhatsApp messaging. Today, worldwide, 18.7 billion text messages are sent every day, and individuals of 25–34 age group send and receive more than 75 texts per day. Instant text formats have become omnipresent in our personal lives; it is starting to find its commonplace at work too. Yes! Communication tools have indeed increased collaboration, connection and a channel for feedback. However, it also comes with its own set of problems:
Employee engagement is the totality of alignment, collaboration, empowerment, and motivation. To increase overall engagement and productivity, we can’t work on one aspect of engagement in isolation and leave all others. Then there is also the aspect of behaviour. Employee behaviour is very much dependent on how your organisation behaves towards them. For example, if your employee posts something irrelevant on the company internal chatbox, and the HR or team lead ignores it, employees will continue the unwanted behaviour.
Employee behaviour and organizational culture are important factors that shape employee behaviour. Remember, Top performers need flexible scheduling to feel comfortable and overcome any signs of burnout.
To maintain high engagement, it is also imperative to set specific rules for your employees and use the necessary means to curb their behaviour according to your expectations.
Special efforts need to be made to reduce stress at work and improve employee engagement.
To form genuine connections, employers and employees need to sometimes consciously step out of their constraining routines and try something new like. Rather than hosting traditional annual meetings, encourage teams to have weekly meetings along with holding discussions on online tools. A combined in-person and online meetings will quench the employees’ need to stay connected with each other, both physically and virtually. Some employees need a stronger disruption from their daily routine. You can offer employee education hours. In these sessions, employees will be able to reconnect with their job role, peers, and the company in a more holistic manner.
Employees can use this hour to shadow a co-worker, learn a new skill, or draw inspiration from a favourite podcast. These tactics are nothing but a unique way for employees to find a new and exciting take on work.
When an important business technology suddenly stops working, you immediately try to identify the problem and take all the measures necessary to get it up and running. However, with it comes your most valuable and significant business asset, your employees, many HR leads and business heads aren't very brisk to respond. There is indeed no quick fix to employee engagement. Some solutions may seem easier to implement while others might require more company-wide coordination. The key here is to be on the lookout for signs and act intelligently, without delay.