The silent work killer that's ravaging workplaces once more

The ticking timebomb of burnout is once again amongst us – it never really left, but as many as 20% of workers have taken time off to deal with its vagaries. That’s a huge percentage of productivity lost to its vices; so, what can employers do to prevent it from happening?

I’m watching a Microsoft News video on the symptoms of burnout, but I stop it almost as soon as it starts because I know myself what they are; chronic fatigue, an inability to focus, a lack of motivation and changes in mood that can’t be explained. The difficulty is that they overlap with a lot of other wellbeing issues and with the complexity of lives many employees can wrongly attribute them to other areas in their life that are proving troublesome.

I am at an age when I sadly know of a few people that have been in the grips of burnout and left their jobs to recover. It is not discerning of industry, skills or seniority and it can strike at any time and with anyone. It never surprises me when the ‘last person’ you’d expect winds up as the one that whispers in your ear that they have fallen victim. Indeed, I believe I have touched upon it myself and yet not recognised it as such – we live blended lives with complex personal and work existences to grapple with – the ebbs and flows of ‘adulting’ means we become better at managing ourselves but not immune to issues catapulting when we don’t bring in the squat team to diffuse the first signs.

What’s worrying is that a quick Google search easily uncovers just how many reports are out there about it and you can go back to the start of the industrial revolution to find it’s a problem that hasn’t ever seemingly gone away. It’s the wasp caught in the jar, the walk through the mud that never gets easier, the feeling of being calcified in a game where the start point beats down on your brow without your go-ahead and yet the endpoint fails to be polite in offering up a date or anywhere close to the decency of that.