Working from home throughout the pandemic has posed as a challenge for many employees.
Whether this is because they have had to juggle home-schooling and childcare responsibilities, haven’t had the right desk set-up to facilitate comfortable working or the mental toll of being cooped indoors and separated from friends and family, there are many challenges workers currently face.
It is important that employees can properly separate their personal and professional duties and take regular breaks to prevent stress and burnout.
Indeed's annual leave offering
To combat this and to promote good employee wellbeing, the job site Indeed has given 10,000 staff members an additional six days of paid annual leave.
This news comes after positive feedback from a ‘You Day’ which was hosted in May where staff were gifted an extra day off to combat COVID-related stress and racist violence in their communities.
Now, the firm has rewarded staff with an extra paid day of annual leave for each month worked until November 2020.
Helen Durkin, Employer Brand Programme Manager at Indeed, said that the pandemic is affecting employees individually and it is clear that staff members are struggling.
“At Indeed, we felt it was important that our employees could take a moment to focus on their personal lives. While our benefits exist to attract, engage and retain talent, they also play an important role in allowing us to rest and recharge.
“There are huge benefits to taking time off from improved physical and mental health to feeling more energised and as a result being more productive. This is why 'Indeedians' [Indeed employees] are also encouraged to use our open paid time off.”
In addition to this, the firm has also announced that from 2021 election days will be given as a paid leave to allow people to exercise their right to vote.
Yet, Indeed isn’t the only company to have offered additional annual leave to staff members during the pandemic.
Earlier this year, tech giant Google gifted staff an extra day of annual leave (May 22, 2020) to address any work-from-home-related burnout that had been caused during the pandemic.
According to Reuter’s, the firm’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced the holiday freebie via an internal memo to staff.
This news comes as research from LinkedIn (in partnership with the Mental Health Foundation) found that found that three in five (58%) HR leaders feel that the mental toll of homeworking during the pandemic will result in staff taking time off due to burnout.
Particularly throughout the pandemic, it is crucial for employers to regularly check-in on employee health and wellbeing to ensure that staff aren’t feeling overworked, stressed or burnt out.
3 words that may indicate burnout
A recent Forbes article explained that the language people use can give away clues about a person’s mental state, explaining that the following three words may present red flags for the feeling of burnout.
Those who say they feel exhausted (fried or burnt out) are conveying a deeper and more emotional fatigue than just being tired.
If an employee feels that they are unable to accomplish anything and are unproductive throughout the working day, this could be a sign of burnout.
Finally, when an employee is demonstrating signs of burnout, it is likely that they will use more negative language.
