“The Great Resignation.” “Quiet Quitting.” “Acting Your Wage.”

Many of the recent trends in labor behavior have reflected a level of exhaustion on the behalf of employees. In other words, there’s an epidemic of employee burnout that is translating into negative work-life balances, poor productivity, and high employee turnover rates.

Obviously, businesses need to turn employee wellness into a top priority. Unfortunately, many of them don’t know where to start. So, what can companies do to reduce burnout and create a culture that enriches employees? We explored this critical topic in a recent webinar, led by Sogolytics’ Melissa Krut and Natasha Safronova.

Want to see for yourself?
Fight the Burnout: A Master Class on Prioritizing Employee Well-Being

What determines employee well-being?

There’s no single magic key for unlocking employee happiness and eliminating burnout. An employee’s well-being is made up of many separate components, which fit together like a puzzle—or a wheel.

Which spoke of the wheel is most important? Obviously, they’re all essential, and different individuals will prioritize them differently.

But for management, the “Occupational” slice is the one that leaders can exercise the most control over. Consequently, it’s the lens through which many leaders will look at the issue.

How do leaders see well-being?

Leaders should look after the well-being of their employees. But how are they supposed to determine which team members are doing well, and which ones aren’t?

A leader’s assessment of their employee’s well-being is always going to be handicapped in a variety of ways, including:

• The influence of personal biases
• The influence of past experiences
• Limited by scope of interaction
• Measured by productivity
• Lack of complaints

Leaders can always talk to their employees to get a better, truer understanding of their feelings, rather than making (potentially biased) assumptions. Yet many questions about well-being will feel too personal or invasive to ask an employee directly.

So how can leaders assess an employee’s well-being?

If it’s impossible to know someone’s state of mind just by guessing, and potentially problematic to pry into their personal life, how are organizations supposed to gauge wellness?

With data. Specifically, three distinct types of data:

• Evidence-based data: Operational and performance data, including an employee’s productivity levels, the amount of PTO they have taken, and other metrics.
• Perception-based data: The experience of observing or speaking with an employee to try and subjectively assess their state of mind.
• Break-it-down data: Segmenting employee engagement data can reveal important trends and patterns. For example, are remote employees more or less engaged than in-office employees? Is one department or team feeling more or less stressed than another? Demographic data can reveal critical stressors and causes of burnout for specific employee groups.

A lot of this data can only be collected using an employee experience platform like Sogolytics. It’s important to use employee engagement surveys to ask the right questions, including:

• Pulse checks: An anonymous survey that asks “in general, how’s it going for you?” A follow-up question will ask “is your response based on your work, personal life, or both?” There is also a space where participants can share open-ended feedback.
• Work-life balance surveys: An employee wellness survey that asks about specific components of well-being, including work satisfaction, work environment satisfaction, personal life satisfaction, balance, stress, work brought home, time to de-stress and loyalty.

Looking for the right questions to ask?

Get started with our employee engagement survey template!

Once you actually have some hard data related to employee engagement and well-being, it’s easier to make decisions about which wellness initiatives to prioritize. Identifying the causes of burnout is the first step towards ultimately eliminating burnout (and creating a much happier workforce full of better balanced employees).

Reducing employee burnout and prioritizing well-being

Obviously, there’s a lot more to be said about the topic of reducing burnout and improving work-life balance. And Natasha and Melissa continued that conversation by examining many elements of the issue, including both proactive and reactive approaches to employee well-being. You can watch their entire discussion on well-being initiatives by viewing the full webinar recording.

Ready to elevate your company’s employee engagement? Connect with us today and we’ll be glad to share how we can help! Plus, check out additional sessions on our SogoX series to broaden your professional development!