More employees are bailing on their jobs than ever, a phenomenon that’s been coined “The Great Resignation.” It’s scary stuff for managers and undoubtedly leads to this question: What can you do about it? How can you prevent burnout from creeping up and sabotaging your team? Here’s a hint: manageable workloads
How To Maintain Reasonable Workloads (And Expectations) On Your Team
Striking the balance between satisfying obligations and keeping things in check for your team feels like a tightrope walk, but it’s doable.
- Like anything else, it’ll take some planning and thoughtfulness.
Maintain Open Lines Of Communication
Have honest and candid conversations with team members
- Ask them how they are feeling about their workload
- Maintain a high degree of psychological safety on your team so that employees feel comfortable approaching you-scheduled sit-down or not-when they have capacity issues, without fearing punishment or disappointment
Lead By Example
Ask yourself: How’s your workload?
- This will ensure that the entire culture and philosophy of your team supports reasonable expectations and workloads
- It won’t solve all the logistical issues, but it will help you ensure that everyone is on the same page about workload.
Keep a Watchful Eye
It’s your job to know what’s happening on your team (without somebody blatantly telling you). So, equip yourself with the tools you need to understand the who, what, when, where, why, and how
- Using a work management or collaboration platform gives you the transparency you need
- You’ll have visibility into what everybody is working on
- Dashboard view
- Timeline view
Help Your Team Feel Successful-Not Stressed
If you want to prevent burnout and keep them around and engaged for the long haul, it all comes back to the basics: a manageable workload
- Try the tool below to help your team stay connected, productive, and inspired
Take Action On Feedback
If your goal is to help your team, you need to be prepared to not just collect feedback, but act on it.
- When you identify or hear about a workload issue, take steps-big or small-to improve it
- Example: Too many meetings are monopolizing employees’ work time
- Potential solution: Choosing one or two days per week that are designated as meeting-free
- Problem: Last-minute and urgent requests from other departments put your team in a bind
- Solution: Building a buffer into your team’s schedule to accommodate those unpredictable projects
Learn To Make The Hard Decisions
A priorities matrix can be helpful for figuring out what your team should be focused on-and what can be pushed to the back burner or fall off the stove entirely for now.
- Urgent and Important: These should be at the top of your team’s to-do list, and everything else can take a back seat (e.g. urgent and not important).
- Not Urgent And Important: If it’s possible to offload these to other resources (i.e. freelance help, automations, etc.) do so. Otherwise, tackle them next. Get these off the team’s plate entirely.
