Burnout can hurt productivity, so it is crucial to address its root causes.
According to Gallup, the causes of burnout are factors such as unfair treatment, unmanageable workloads, unclear communication, a lack of support from managers, and unreasonable time pressure.
To solve these issues, Gallup suggests a holistic approach that includes setting realistic job expectations during the hiring process, ensuring that employees are a good fit for their roles, providing practical onboarding experiences, promoting a culture of engagement where everyone’s opinions matter, offering constructive feedback and clear expectations, encouraging employees to use their strengths and grow, and showing appreciation for their work.
Additionally, we are observing that work design has become overly complicated due to technical debt and a lack of integration of systems and processes. To enhance productivity, organisations can deliberately design work systems to reduce technical complexity and streamline processes to make work more accessible and less time-consuming.
Further, burnout and decreased productivity can be caused by role conflicts and internal friction. We are frequently seeing challenges with collaboration and internal competition, with the causes often involving misaligned incentive structures, outdated organisational design, and a lack of an overarching sense of purpose.
Given the widespread problem of productivity and burnout, it is essential to explore new modern ways of thinking to address these issues.
