Employee burnout continues to be on the rise, with more than 50% of US workers experiencing at least moderate burnout. As a product leader, keeping a pulse check on your team members can help you spot burnout tendencies before they arise.
There are several risk factors to burnout:
Workload - everything you are responsible for, along with the access to the resources and support you need to meet those responsibilities
Control - your ability to direct or change your own work, setting your own goals and boundaries (can you say no to a request)
Reward - are you receiving recognition, opportunities, a sense of accomplishment, or simply positive feedback for your work
Community - a psychologically-safe environment, where you feel supported and connected, unafraid to show up authentically. Additionally, is the community consistent and fair, or reflect your values.
Three symptoms characterize workplace burnout:
Exhaustion
Cynicism (including distancing yourself from work)
Inefficacy (or feelings of incompetence / lack of achievement)
Being transparent with your product team about what contributes to burnout and if your team is feeling any of the symptoms can help identify where changes might need to be made. It is important to note that while personal factors may complicate or compound burnout, it is by definition a workplace phenomenon. It is about the systems, structures, and demands of the workplace, not the individual employees.
There are many ways to pulse check with your team. The below is based on a weekly survey by Boston Consulting Group that they instituted while experimenting with predictable/mandatory time off. Awhile back I wrote about a tool called Care that provides a questionnaire as well as actionable insights. Regardless of how you do it, these discussions with your team should be a regular part of product team health check-ins.
STAND-UP EXERCISE
Using a survey or the matrix below, ask your team a series of questions based on two factors - control and accomplishment. These are two of the major risk factors when it comes to employee burnout. For control, ask how much predictability or stability team members might have regarding their workload and their schedules. For accomplishment, ask how much value they feel they are providing or if they’ve learned something useful lately. Understanding where team members fall on these axes can provide some insight to their potential levels of burnout.
To push the exercise further, ask team members what type of activities or interactions provide them the largest sense of accomplishment. Potentially think about answers on a timescale of daily, weekly (or by sprint), quarterly, etc. Are there ways you can facilitate or cultivate more of those types of activities?