Mitigate the Risk of Burnout as Your Team Returns to the Office

 Wed 24 Nov 2021 

Mitigate the Risk of Burnout as Your Team Returns to the Office

There’s a lot of stress about returning to work. Add that to the anxiety that many employees were already feeling after the last year and a half and you’ve got a recipe for burnout. If you want to help your team make it through this transition without suffering, there are several things you can do. (1) For example, be mindful of how much socializing you’re asking employees to do in the early days of returning to the office. Start off by scheduling smaller group meetups before getting the entire company together. (2) And be sure to factor in time for people to recover between social events. One of the downsides of in-person work is interruptions. Make time and space for deep work. You might carve out certain days or hours where you hold “quiet hours” — meeting-free periods where people can focus uninterrupted. 3) Give more “mental health” days so people have time to rest and recover. Remember, the long-term impacts of burnout outweigh the short-term costs of giving workers more time off.

This tip is adapted from “Don’t Let Returning to the Office Burn Out Your Team,” by Rahaf Harfoush