Tag: work-life balance

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9 crucial employee burnout statistics & trends (2023)

Summary

  • Fifty-nine percent of US workers are burnt out in their current job. – More 

  • Workplace stress was at a record high in the past year. – More 

  • More than half of the workforce cannot find a work-life balance. – More 

  • Employees with the least financial security are most likely to be burnt out. – More 

  • Employees aren’t using well-being perks and benefits. – More 

  • Hourly and shift-based industries are more prone to employee burnout. – More

Employee burnout is by no means a new concept. It was first introduced in 1974 by psychologist Herbert Freudenberger. He described it as an “onslaught” that staff members experience as a result of “excessive demands” on their energy, strength, and resources, rendering a person “inoperative.” 

Decades have passed since then, and our personal and professional lives have become more fast-paced, increasing the risk of burnout and work-related stress. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) listed burnout as a syndrome and an occupational phenomenon in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11).  

The WHO says burnout is caused by “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” It is said to have three dimensions:

  • “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
  • increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and
  • reduced professional efficacy.”

Less than a year after burnout was recognized by the WHO, the COVID-19 pandemic caused people to lose their jobs and frontline workers to fear for their safety, and many people’s homes doubled as their workplaces. This sent job burnout levels through the roof. 

Workplace burnout is a symptom that negatively affects employee well-being, wreaking havoc on the work environment as well as employee output. Here’s a look at some of the latest burnout statistics to help you better understand and tackle it.  

More than half of US workers experience burnout

The American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus (Aflac) conducted a study between August and September 2022 and found that most US workers experience burnout. Thirty-six percent rated their level of burnout as moderate, 15% as high, and 8% as very high. 

These levels of work burnout are significantly higher than those reported in 2021 (nine percentage points more) and are two percentage points higher than 2020 levels.  

Workplace stress is at an all-time high

Stress is one of the main drivers behind burnout, so it is important to look at employee stress levels when trying to understand the prevalence of burnout.  

The latest Gallup State of the Global Workplace report found that workers around the world were experiencing record-high levels of daily stress. Pre-COVID, 38% of respondents said that they experienced stress during much of the previous day. When COVID hit, that percentage rose to 43%, and it rose to 44% in 2021 — the highest Gallup has ever recorded. 

Work-life balance is in jeopardy

A workplace culture and environment that provides workers with a sense of satisfaction and well-being helps people achieve a better work-life balance. Striking that balance means having the time and energy for family, personal relationships, and leisure, as well as employee engagement at the workplace. 

Harvard Business Review found that 55% of employees have been unable to establish a work-life balance. They also found that personal relationships have been negatively affected, with workers not being able to maintain a strong connection with family (25%), colleagues (39%), or friends (50%). 

According to psychologist Michael Leiter:

“These survey responses make it clear that a lot of people are having serious disruptions in their relationship with work […] It’s not surprising that people are more exhausted — people are working hard to keep their work and personal lives afloat.”

The most “financially fragile” are the most burnt out

Aflac’s study shows, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the groups with the most financial struggles are the ones that exhibit the most burnout symptoms — namely younger workers and Hispanic populations. US workers who reported “at least moderate levels” of burnout include:

  • 71% of Gen Z 
  • 69% of Hispanics
  • 65% of millennials
  • 57% of Gen X
  • 38% of baby boomers

They also found that more women reported feeling burnout (62%) than men (57%). The study also found that people who had more than one job were more likely to experience burnout than those with one job. 

Webinar: How to Manage Burnout of Younger Employees

Burned-out employees are struggling with mental health issues

According to the WHO’s guidelines on mental health at work, the workplace can be either a protective or a disruptive force for employees’ mental health. Workplace stressors and burnout have been found to go hand in hand with a number of mental health challenges, according to research done by Aflac. The most prevalent issues are anxiety, depression, and trouble sleeping.  

Webinar: How to Support the Mental Health of Hourly Staff

Job satisfaction, performance, and employee retention are negatively affected by burnout

Burnout also spells bad news for employers. It has been strongly linked with lower job satisfaction and job loyalty. It also affects workers’ opinions on whether or not their companies care for them. This effect can be seen when looking at the difference between employees who experience moderate, high, and low or no levels of burnout:

Job satisfaction rate “I believe my employer cares about my physical & mental health” The likelihood of looking for another job
High burnout 55% 47% 56%
Moderate burnout 57% 51% 29%
Low/no burnout 80% 67% 18%

All of this results in employees who are less productive at work. Nearly half (46%) of employees self-reported that their mental health situation has had a negative impact on their job performance. Similarly, just over half (51%) of employers interviewed said that the poor state of employee mental health has had an impact on the organization as a whole. 

This negative effect on mental health is felt somewhat stronger by hybrid workers (52%) and remote workers (49%) when compared to their on-site (41%) co-workers. 

Webinar: How to Stop Employee Turnover

Employee well-being programs aren’t utilized

In an attempt to safeguard employees’ physical and mental health, organizations are implementing different types of health and wellness perks and benefits for their employees. These include:

    • Paid sick days for the benefit of their mental well-being, to tackle emotional exhaustion, or when feeling overwhelmed.
    • Stipends for health and wellness expenses such as gym membership, therapy, healthcare costs, etc. 
    • Courses on stress management
    • Flexible work hours to help employees better manage their work-life balance.

In one study, Deloitte found that 68% of workers surveyed are not using the well-being resources and perks that their organizations are offering them. This is because they find them “too time-consuming, confusing, or cumbersome.” 

Shift-based industries have some of the highest burnout rates

One study surveyed employees from various industries to see which ones have the highest rates of burnout. The hotel, food services, and hospitality industry topped the list, with 80.3% of employees feeling burnt out by their workload. 

The next highest are manufacturing (77.4%) and medical and healthcare (76.8%). Wholesale and retail ranked sixth highest at 75%. 

One of the main causes of burnout? Your boss

Gallup found that the biggest contributors to employee burnout are “unfair treatment at work,” an unmanageable workload, unclear communication and support from management, and unreasonable time pressure. 

These factors are something management can address to reduce their staff’s burnout.

Download our whitepaper on how to reduce burnout of hourly employees

We’re living through a burnout epidemic, and as employers and human resources professionals, you have an important role to play in helping your employees and your organization. In our whitepaper, How to Reduce Burnout of Hourly Employees, we dive a bit deeper into the causes and costs of burnout as well as how to reduce it. 

Download the whitepaper here. 

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Work-life balance statistics you need to know to build a happier workforce

Husky Astronaut balancing on a narrow beam

Summary

  • US workers are working longer hours and spending less time on themselves than their OECD counterparts. – More

  • Health and well-being have become more of a priority for workers since the COVID-19 pandemic. – More

  • Employee burnout has increased since the pandemic and is wreaking havoc on work-life balance. – More

  • Low engagement and work-life imbalance mean that over 50% of US workers are quiet quitting. – More

  • Workers in labor-intensive industries (particularly restaurants) are unhappy at work. – More

  • Trials across the world have shown that a four-day workweek might work wonders in improving work-life balance. – More

Having a better work-life balance is about much more than just having more time away from the office. A good work-life balance means satisfaction and fulfillment during the workday as well as in other areas of your life. It includes engagement at work and enough time and energy for personal and family life. 

The World Health Organization argues that work can either be protective or disruptive to a person’s mental health. A healthy and well-compensated work environment makes people feel accomplished and confident and is a great way for people with psychosocial disabilities to integrate into society. An environment that creates a poor work-life balance can negatively affect someone’s mental health and well-being. 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s attitudes and approaches to work have been shifting. Employees are demanding more flexibility, prioritizing their well-being and personal time while also wanting more from their professional lives. Human resources executives must create the conditions to help their colleagues achieve the best work-life balance possible if they want a happier, more engaged workforce.      

American workers work more and play less than their OECD counterparts

According to work-life balance statistics presented by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States ranks 29th for work-life balance out of the 41 member countries. Italy, Denmark, and Norway top the list.

Ten percent of American employees are working long hours compared to the OECD average. The Netherlands is the country with the lowest number of employees taking on long working hours at just 0.3%. 

US workers typically dedicate 61% of their day to personal care and leisure activities, which amounts to 14.6 hours per day. This is lower than the OECD average of 15 hours per day. Italy is the OECD member country with the most time devoted to personal care and leisure, with 69% of their day or 16.5 hours. 

For the United States to increase its work-life balance ranking, the OECD suggests improving the lives of working families through policy. The US is the only OECD country that does not have a national paid parental leave program. They suggest that paid leave programs will result in a number of benefits, including better child well-being and more new mothers returning to work. 

More employees are prioritizing their health and well-being 

According to Microsoft, the COVID-19 pandemic caused people to re-prioritize how they approach work. More workers now consider how their jobs affect their health and well-being as a major part of the “worth it equation” — in other words, what people want from work and what they’re willing to give in return.

The research shows that 53% of respondents are more likely to prioritize health and well-being – especially parents (55%) and women (56%). Forty-seven percent of workers are now more likely to prioritize their family and personal life ahead of work.

Employees are now valuing the importance of work-life balance, and their employers need to understand and embrace this shift. This could include extending healthcare benefits to include family members as well as making work schedules and time off more flexible. 

Workforce.com offers a flexible scheduling solution that makes it easier for employees to take time off and swap shifts. Flexible scheduling is particularly useful for caregivers or those with chronic health conditions who might need to take unexpected personal days or want to utilize vacation time to spend time with loved ones. 

Increased burnout is a “career killer”

The level of burnout experienced amongst US workers has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. In a nationwide survey by Indeed, 67% of US workers claimed that burnout worsened during the pandemic.  

In a pre-COVID survey, 43% of respondents were experiencing burnout. In 2021, that percentage increased to 52%. Millennials continue to experience the most burnout, with 59% of respondents feeling burnt out – a 6% increase since COVID. More baby boomers are experiencing burnout — a 7% increase from 24% to 31%. Gen Z and Gen X respondents showed the highest increase in burnout, with 11% and 14%, respectively.  

Gallup has conducted extensive research on employee burnout and the effect it has on employees as well as their companies. Burnt-out employees are significantly more likely to take sick days, require medical care, and search for new jobs. 

Employers can help their teams reduce stress levels and burnout by:

  • Collecting regular feedback about concerns and addressing them through feedback tools and communication apps.
  • Actively caring for employee well-being by organizing health and wellness activities or providing employees with stipends to cover expenses like therapy, health, wellness, and sports activities.
  • Encouraging employees to take regular breaks by incorporating break time into scheduling.
  • Offering hybrid and remote work when possible to employees who want it. 
  • Avoiding stressful understaffing situations by using labor forecasting. 

 

Webinar: How to Forecast Based on Demand

Many unhappy employees are “quiet quitting”

Your employees who are experiencing a work-life imbalance might be quiet quitting. Quiet quitting refers to how people are doing just enough to meet their job responsibilities and not get fired. This is not just bad for employee well-being but also for your organization’s productivity. 

In one study, Gallup estimates that over half of US workers are quiet quitters. By the beginning of the summer of 2022, “the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees was 1.8 to 1”. This is the lowest engagement reported in nearly a decade.  

Companies looking to increase employee engagement to eliminate quiet quitting need to tackle poor management practices. 

Focus on training your managers and helping them adapt to new, hybrid ways of working. If their work-life balance is off, the rest of the team will feel the impact. But if they can model what engagement and satisfaction at both home and work look like in this new work format, employees will likely follow. 

Together, managers and employees should find ways to minimize burnout and prioritize mental health. They should have at least one meaningful one-to-one conversation per week. These conversations could uncover the initiatives and changes management needs to make to create more satisfying work environments. It is also an opportunity for employees to talk about any struggles they may be experiencing outside of work that can be impacting performance. 

 

Webinar: How to Identify Employee Flight Risk

 

Workers in labor-intensive industries are less satisfied at work

Employees in some industries are more prone to worse work-life balance than others, particularly labor-intensive industries with low Net Promoter Scores and high turnover rates.

Statista found that restaurants have the lowest Net Promoter Score among employees, at 14%. The commerce industry (20%) and the public service sector (22%) followed the service industry at the bottom of the table. In August 2021, 971,000 employees quit their jobs in leisure and hospitality – the highest number of resignations recorded.

A report by One Fair Wage shed some light on why restaurant work, in particular, exhibited low job satisfaction statistics and high employee turnover rates. Low wages and tips cause 76% of restaurant workers to quit their jobs.

Many others were leaving due to hostility and harassment at work. Thirty-nine percent of restaurant workers had concerns about hostility and harassment from customers and 26% from their co-workers and/or management.

Restaurant owners and HR staff need to have frequent conversations with employees about working conditions and employee well-being in order to harness better conditions for work-life balance. Regular team and one-to-one meetings need to be scheduled. Anonymous feedback forms should also be available in order to find out more about employees’ concerns.

The four-day workweek could be key to addressing employee work-life imbalance

Many companies around the world have been experimenting with four-day workweeks to address work-life balance issues and to increase employee engagement and retention. 

Between 2015 and 2017, the Reykjavík City Council and the Icelandic National Government carried out two trials of four-day workweeks. The experiment, which involved over 1% of Iceland’s working population, increased employee work-life balance as well as productivity. Microsoft Japan also trialed a four-day workweek and enjoyed a 40% increase in productivity. 

US companies looking to introduce a four-day workweek should start by enhancing their workforce management processes. To do this, they should:

  1. Keep labor costs under control. Scheduling and time-tracking processes need to be fine-tuned to keep overtime under control and mitigate time theft.
  2. Reduce administrative work through automation. Workforce management solutions can automate tedious, time-consuming administrative tasks and save employee time and labor costs. Such solutions include automatic scheduling and payroll integrations. 
  3. Use labor forecasting to schedule shifts in a way that avoids under or overstaffing and increases productivity. 

 

Webinar: How to Rollout a 4-Day Workweek

A well-managed workforce is a happy workforce

There are a number of ways you can help your employees achieve a more harmonious work-life balance, from ensuring they have enough time and energy outside of work to enjoy their personal lives to investing in their physical and mental health. 

An important element of a healthy work-life balance is an environment that reduces workplace stress and brings out the best in people. With Workforce.com, you can create better scheduling and communication processes that foster such an environment. 

Get in touch with us and see how Workforce.com can help you build a happier workforce.

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What is workforce management? Different departments have different ideas

time clock, workforce management, scheduling, time and attendance

The term “workforce management” may be a common term around the office, but that doesn’t mean it’s well understood.

A major challenge is that IT, HR, Finance and Business Operations —  the departments that each have control over some aspect of workforce management —  think about it differently. There is not a consistent definition among professionals in these groups, said Lisa Disselkamp, a managing director in Deloitte Consulting’s Human Capital Practice.

While workforce management used to be a more simple term — mostly encompassing payroll, timesheets and scheduling — now it encompasses a broader array of duties including recruiting, onboarding, training, technology and more, she said. Some of these duties are owned by HR, while others are owned by IT, finance or operations.

Now, workforce management is a business function with many stakeholders, and this can cause confusion or disorder among these departments, Disselkamp said. 

Meanwhile, workforce management has also shifted from purely transactional to strategic, she said. When she talked to clients 5 to 10 years ago, conversations revolved around issues like, ‘‘I have to fix my timekeeping because payroll is not right or there are errors.”

workforce management, scheduling, time and attendance

“You were trying to fix broken processes,” she said. “Today the difference is the outcome. The outcome is ‘I’m spending too much on labor and workforce management. I need processes and I need to hold people accountable to the results the business is interested in.’ The transaction is just how I get the result,” she said. Essentially, workforce management now hinges on owning specific business outcomes versus owning processes.

Conflicts of ownership

Disselkamp explained how different departments may look at workforce management: HR looks at it from hire-to-retire and the HR functions in between like onboarding, training and scheduling. IT thinks about the platforms used to enable workforce management and think about questions like “Am I delivering good technology? Is the system performing properly? Am I assigning people access to the system?”  Finance deals with costs and funding. And business operations thinks about the day-to-day tasks and how to allocate work. 

Also read: Workforce management takes time and effort 

Different departments can share a set of metrics to show how they’re performing rather than relying on different numbers, Disselkamp said. Shared metrics helps unify departments under the same workforce management goal.

For example, grocery stores are famous for bad schedules, she said. From the workforce management perspective, some grocery stores just don’t honor that social contract with employees who need predictability and good schedules to plan their life around.

Management can ask themselves the question, “Can I translate good schedules into financial outcomes?” Disselkamp said. And the answer is yes. This provides the HR and finance departments to work together toward a common goal, combining scheduling and finances. They can connect data like schedule scores versus turnover, which has the potential to make the case for better schedules because turnover costs a company a good amount of money. 

Juggling 4 types of employees

Not only does workforce management mean different things to departments, but it also means different things for hourly/shift workers, salaried workers and contingent workers, Disselkamp said. Front line managers may struggle when they manage all three types. Their definition of workforce management might be how they, on a day-to-day basis, allocate the work that must be accomplished and by which type of worker. Does the company have the right systems in place to manage all three employee subsets? How do you allocate shifts and adjust workloads for types of workers for whom you have different legal obligations?

Further, the rise of nonhuman labor through automation, artificial intelligence and robots complicates workforce management more, Disselkamp said. Sometimes bots need system access just like human users do,  and so they need their own individual “identity” to enter a system and do certain work. In situations like this, Disselkamp said, a front line manager essentially must manage four types of workers — robots included. 

“I think it’s a fascinating issue, and we don’t have the leading practices yet,” Disselkamp said. 

Potential solutions for modern workforce management 

While labor has traditionally be thought about from a supply-and-demand perspective, now the interesting thing about workforce management is the trend of looking at it more from the perspective of the employee experience, Disselkamp said. Employees need to work a certain number of hours a week and know their schedule ahead of time so that they can plan the rest of their life around it. 

A principal called “schedule equilibrium” — an employee-focused way to score workforce management from an employee’s perspective —  can help with that, Disselkamp said. There are three main ideas behind schedule equilibrium: predictability, stability and adequacy of hours.

In workforce management today, companies need to honor the social contract with employees and contractors and create good schedules, she said. 

“A schedule is like a purchase order for your labor, and timesheet is like an invoice. So if we think about workers like we do suppliers, we want to develop good relationships with them. And that means we have a business relationship with them where we are providing work and income and workers are providing us with their labor and availability. People want to be empowered to say when I work, how much I work [and] what I earn,” she said.

Another leading practice in workforce management is developing a workforce management office, or WMO, she said. A WMO is a department that sits high enough in the organization to have executive-level availability, and they’re in charge of tasks like what the organization’s best practices for workforce management are, what enabling technology there needs to be and which staff members will take on specific duties or responsibilities. Further, the WMO department is held accountable to certain metrics and performance outcomes, like any other department. 

“Staff it with people who specialize in workforce management. That’s their job. It’s not part of their job,, it’s not something they do as part of a committee — it is their full-time day job,” she said. 

Further, this could help organizations whose operations, IT, HR and Finance departments are not on the same page about workforce management. 

“[It’s] being managed by all kinds of people and we don’t know what good looks like. We don’t have standards, and it’s hard to come together and agree on what should happen first and where we should spend money to improve workforce management,” Disselkamp said. 

Also, a trend that has emerged in the past five to 10 years is the position of Director of Workforce Management, she said. 

Daniel Smitley, director of workforce management and analytics at World Travel Holdings, has worked with the organization for five years but became its first director of workforce management only three years ago. Prior to that, the highest person in the organization with “workforce management” in their title was a manager. 

Smitley’s team is responsible for scheduling call center agents and forecasting calls, he said. They also manage agents’ time off and any reporting associated with that, and their team is directly invested in the finances behind the schedules. 

Similar to Disselkamp’s “schedule equilibrium” solution, employee experience is a consideration for World Travel Holdings’ workforce management team when it creates schedules, Smitley said. The call center environment can be rigid, and he wants it to be more relaxed for these employees. Depending on the season, there are about 700 call center employees, most of whom are hourly, he added. 

“Work-life balance is my passion, and as the director of workforce management, I make sure that’s a key lens that my team looks through,” he said.  “We’ve always cared about our agent experience, and we’ve continued to progress toward giving them more autonomy and empowerment to create their own schedules.”

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Balancing the 3 Types of Work-Life Balance

I did a candidate interview for an open position recently — during vacation on the beach.

Go ahead and fire up the comments about how my priorities are out of whack. About how I need to take care of myself.

I provide this nugget as a visual to the following reality. There are three types of work-life balance in the world. Two you can choose, one you must earn. All come with a cost. As an HR/talent leader, you should have a point of view on each because odds are they all exist to some extent in your company, but one probably defines your culture.

Let’s break down the types of work-life balance you must choose from:

  1. You have zero work-life balance and zero flexibility. Not only are you working long hours but you’re also expected to be present in the office on the organization’s terms, not your own. You have zero flexibility about when you can leave and you have your smartphone next to your pillow at night.

This situation is relatively easy to find. Just change jobs a couple of times, don’t have boundaries about what you’ll accept and you’ll find the company and boss combination that can provide this quickly. NOTE TO THE KIDS: Sometimes you have to put in time in this situation to pick up the deep experience that can get you to a better place.

  1. You have maximum work-life balance.Congrats! You have found a company and boss that respects your need for time away and even has an unwritten policy that they won’t reach out to you in the evening or on weekends. You come in at 8 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m. It feels good not to have to worry about the chaos after hours. Your time is your time. You found someone who respects that, so if it’s important to you hold on with all your might.

There’s just one little problem: If you hear a ticking sound, it might be the clock counting down on how comfortable you are. You see, progress on earth has rarely been moved forward by respecting labor’s need for an 8-to-5 schedule with a 90-minute lunch, so the tradeoff is that your manager may be mailing it in and putting you and your team at risk long term. Also, just know that by wanting the perfect 40-hour work-life balance, you’re opting out of the corporate version of “Game of Thrones.”

Of the three types of work-life balance in the world, two can be chosen, and one must be earned.

You get more done than the others, or you don’t get promoted or become unemployed. I know it’s harsh. But the ticking clock is real for many who feel great about their work-life balance. It’s all fun and games until you’re on the market as a candidate whose biggest accomplishment was achieving balance.

  1. You have no flexibility and maximum flexibility all at the same time. Most of us would agree that a feature of great work-life balance is being able to leave work when you need to — a late lunch with a friend or an event at your kid’s school. If you have this ability, you agree this is tremendous, and for many of us, it’s the best part of any work-life balance conversation.

For the most part, it’s earned. You can’t put up walls and say you want a 40-hour week to get this flexibility. You have to earn it. The tradeoff for being able to leave any time you want is being indispensable, which in corporate America means your boss — who is likely a complete Type A — can ping you at 9:30 p.m. and get a quick answer.

It’s that access and iteration pace that alpha leaders want out of their people. If you’re looking for work-life balance, that’s the bad news. But if you’re looking for max flexibility about when and where you work and if you can go to the Thursday afternoon soccer game, it might be the type of work-life balance you seek.

As an HR leader, you’re in a tough spot. Odds are that you have jobs at your company with work-life balance flexibility in all three of these categories. But at the end of the day, you’re a performance coach as an HR leader.

You don’t define work-life balance alone at your company as an HR pro. That’s a team sport. But only you — the gifted HR leader who understands potential and life expectations — can customize career coaching for the individual employee in a way that matches their ambition.

That’s it, gotta go. Have another candidate interview coming up. Going to do it in the sun, by the pool. Then I’ll probably hit the beach.