Burnout has serious effects on a person’s physical and psychological health. Left unaddressed, burnout can reduce one’s motivation and may even exacerbate various illnesses, including heart disease, depression, and chronic fatigue. If you want to maintain employee productivity, you must take steps to minimize burnout. One step is to use tech your team may already be using.
What is burnout?
The World Health Organization classifies burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” and not a medical condition. It is a collection of symptoms that include exhaustion, negative feelings for one’s job, and reduced efficacy.
Different factors contribute to burnout. For instance, some people may experience it because of overwork, while others may develop it because of a perceived lack of equality or camaraderie in the workplace.
Beat burnout with tech
Because the causes and manifestations of burnout can vary from one person to another, there isn’t a single universal treatment for it. You can start, however, by modifying your workplace and processes to ensure that they promote your employees’ morale and well-being. These tools can help:
1. Collaboration apps
There are several reasons a collaboration app can be pivotal in fighting burnout. First, it helps managers get a solid grasp of their subordinates’ workload. This ensures that leaders don’t assign more tasks than their staff can realistically handle in a day, preventing overwork. The app also helps workers identify which tasks they need to focus on for the day.
Collaboration apps like Trello, Basecamp, and Asana also support file sharing and make it easy to exchange feedback among colleagues. These features help improve the efficiency of your workflow, helping your employees finish more tasks by the end of their shift.
2. Communication apps
Apps like Skype and Slack make staff more efficient by making it easy for them to exchange files, updates, and ideas. Additionally, these apps facilitate casual conversations that foster good interpersonal relationships, camaraderie, and teamwork. They are especially important if your team members are spread out across different locales.
A manager can take advantage of these apps’ private messaging functionality to check on subordinates, inquire about the status of their tasks, or confirm their well-being. Even if all your team members work together in a single location, such an approach may be ideal for employees who suffer from anxiety over face-to-face check-ins.
Read also: 3 Ways to maintain your remote employees’ productivity and motivation
3. Cloud technology
A change in pace and environment can do much to invigorate your staff’s passion and job satisfaction. Because of this, you should consider making flexible working arrangements a permanent perk they can take advantage of.
Cloud technology gives users access to online servers that can be accessed remotely through a computer or mobile device connected to the internet. If company files are saved in the cloud, your staff can access these and accomplish their tasks while they’re at home, at the local coffee shop, or even in another country.
4. Reminder apps
Some people become so engrossed in their job that they forget to take a break. Reminder apps, even the built-in alarm clocks in most smartphones today, can remedy this problem. Just mark specific times of the day for drinking water, taking a breather, or grabbing a quick snack.
The reminders may seem counterproductive, especially if you’re trying to finish an urgent task, but taking some time away from your desk prevents exhaustion, and primes your brain for more activity. But if you really can’t leave your task, you can just snooze reminders for a much later time.
5. Mindfulness apps
Meditation and mindfulness is linked to a number of mental and psychological benefits. Apart from reducing stress, it may also help improve concentration and brain function. It may also uplift one’s mood.
There are plenty of mindfulness apps to choose from in both the Android, Apple, and Windows app stores. Many of them even come with reminder functionalities so you can set specific times to take a break and meditate.
IT issues such as lag and system failures make employees suffer extra stress and make them burn out faster. A functional IT system can contribute to your employees’ well-being by enabling them to finish their tasks and enjoy better life-work balance. At Tech Squared our experts are on standby to resolve any tech-related concern and optimize your IT for your business’s needs.
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