Unchained Coaching and Counseling: Can Your Company Afford Burnout?

(I've been reminded that I've been neglecting the corporate consulting topics. So, here.)

Managers, CEOs - this is your wake-up call.

Every business is different, so unless I'm working with you, I can't tell you what employee burnout is costing your company. I'm going out on a limb and guessing that if you're upper-level management, a) you don't really want to know, and b) it's more than you think. But I can guarantee it's costing you something.

Here are the ways burnout costs organizations:

Loss of productivity
Decrease in performance (especially for front-line workers)
Turnover and absenteeism (In March of this year, over 2 million U.S. employees quit their jobs. Yes, quit. Voluntarily. In fact, that number has been steadily increasing since June of 2009.)
Risk of substance abuse (Alcoholism costs U.S. employers about $20 billion per year.)
Stress and depression (Stress costs more than $300 billion every year, between the decrease in performance, absenteeism, turnover, medical and insurance costs, work-related accidents and worker's comp claims, legal fees, and PR damage control when things go really badly.)
Physical illness (as a result of stress) and higher insurance premiums
Decreased organizational commitment
Incompetent or unethical behavior (including the occasional case of corporate sabotage)
Major mental health compromises (threats, stalking, "going postal" in your office)

What causes burnout? Quite simply, your organization.

Plain old life stress seems to have hit an all-time high in the past four years. Stress is a vampire, and we're only human. We have a finite amount of resources to get through the day. On top of the stressors of daily life, there's an entire set of work-related stressors:

Some people are seriously underemployed and never given the opportunity to prove themselves.
Many people, worried about their jobs, have taken on too much responsibility and willingly spent too much time at work, and have been taken unfair advantage of.
Plenty of people take vacation so they can actually relax and replenish energy, but they feel guilty because their employers see vacation as a sign of lacking commitment.
Micro-management is a critical hit. Big Brother thinks it knows when people might need to stretch or go to the bathroom, and punishes unscheduled breaks.
Crowding and noise distractions keep people from focusing, which means lower performance, which they are keenly aware of.
Conflicting KPIs - a recurring issue - are also contributors to worker stress and burnout. But employees can't question them, because the organization's unspoken attitude is that if the worker can't figure it out, maybe it's not the right career path.
Hostile work environments are brutal. Everybody is under more stress, and some people get snarky or even downright sneaky, backstabby, and abusive. Something else employees don't dare mention, for fear that they'll be told to quit worrying about their social lives and focus on work.
Finally, being nickel-and-dimed or written up for time off to attend to family needs forces workers to choose only one. The corporate attitude seems to be "if family is so important, maybe you should just quit."

And valuable workers do just that. They leave. Maybe high turnover rates are the standard for your industry. But which costs more: tweaking the work environment or losing a golden goose? More to the point, can you afford to be wrong?

It's not just me saying this. Read these recent articles for more: