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Welcome to This Week in Benefits, a new biweekly podcast from Mployer Advisor, the company that is changing the way employers search, evaluate, and select insurance advisors online.
In each episode, our team will bring you the latest news and industry updates in the world of employee benefits. We will break down top headlines, bring you interviews with industry insiders, and highlight market trends and stories we’re following.
In case you missed Episode 10, click here to listen.
Date: August 24, 2022
Episode Season and Number: Season 1, Episode 11
Episode Title: Strategies to Identify and Mitigate Burnout in the Workplace
In this week's episode, Abbey Dean sits down with Kari Beam, Founder and Executive Coach of Kari Beam Consulting, and Rebecca Williams, Founder and Chief Dream Officer of Unleashed Potential Executive Coaching and Advising, to discuss best practices to identify and mitigate employee burnout.To listen to Episode 11 of This Week in Benefits, click here.
Webinar: Tips for Managing a Hybrid Workforce and Redefining Company Culture
Mayo Clinic Definition of Burnout
The Best Leaders Aren’t Afraid to be Vulnerable from Harvard Business Review
Leading an Exhausted Workforce from Harvard Business Review
Addressing Employee Burnout: Are You Solving the Right Problem? from the McKinsey Health Institute
How to Recognize and Prevent Workplace Burnout
Webinar: Best Practices to Support Mental Health in the Workplace Looking for more exclusive content? Check out what's new on the Mployer Advisor blog, or listen to past episodes of This Week in Benefits.
Abbey Dean: Hi everyone. Thank you for joining me today for another episode of This Week in Benefits, a podcast from the team at Mployer Advisor where we discuss all things employee benefits. I'm your host, Abbey Dean, Mployer Advisor's Director of Content. In this episode, I'm joined by friends of the podcast and Mployer Advisor, Kari Beam and Rebecca Williams to discuss burnout. Specifically, we're going to talk about the root causes of burnout and the top strategies for mitigating burnout for yourself, your team, and your organization. We're really lucky to be joined by Kari and Rebecca because they've actually conducted some really fascinating research around this topic, and they're going to be sharing that with all of us today. So this episode has a little something for everyone, whether you're an HR manager, a CFO, or just a person who enjoys smart conversations with an even smarter group of women. So that being said, here's my conversation with Kari and Rebecca.
Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of This Week in Benefits. I'm very, very happy because I have two absolutely wonderful people to speak with today. I have Rebecca Williams and Kari Beam. Rebecca, we'll start with you first. I want everyone to be able to identify your voices, but will you guys both introduce yourselves?
Rebecca Williams: Yes, thank you. So I'm Rebecca Williams. I'm out of Atlanta, Georgia, and I am the Chief Dream Officer and founder of Unleashed Potential Executive Consulting and Advising. And in my firm, I do both coaching and I do consulting work in the areas of talent development, so leadership, culture, engagement, diversity, equity, and inclusion. And before that for 15 years, I led the culture engagement practice and served in various roles at Hewitt Associates, which was later Aon Hewitt, which was later Kincentric. And I was also the Chief Client Officer there. So it's a pleasure to be with you today.
Abbey Dean: So excited to have you here. Kari, would you introduce yourself?
Kari Beam: Yeah, absolutely. And thanks Abbey for having me. I'm Kari Beam. I am a coach and consultant, and I help leaders who are in a phase, and it could be a phase due to a transition of some sort at work or at home, but are in a phase of redefining how they show up, so how they set a vision for themselves, how they set boundaries, and basically how they get work done. My background is in healthcare. I spent 20 years working in healthcare systems, worked my way up into VP and Chief Strategy Officer roles, and then jumped into independent coaching and consulting this year.
Abbey Dean: Anyone who follows Mployer Advisor's content closely will remember Rebecca and Karrie from a webinar we did, oh gosh, a few more than a few months ago now about burnout. And since that time, Kari and Rebecca have actually conducted some of their own research around burnout. And so I wanted to invite them on to the podcast today to a hear about this wonderful research they both did, and also to talk a little bit more about burnout for those who are less familiar. So Kari or Rebecca, will you tell me and the listeners why you guys decided to do this research? And also if one of you could briefly define burnout, that would be very helpful. I feel like it's a term I know that I overuse when it is not correctly applied.
Kari Beam: Yeah, so I'll start by just describing how we came about burnout and doing the research on it. And I feel like it kind of was presented to us actually in our original webinar with Mployer Advisor one of the audience members asked us a question and we were talking about culture in the workplace and the hybrid environment, and they asked the question about burnout at the end, and Rebecca and I answered the best that we could with the information that we had on hand, but it created a lot of curiosity within us to go and seek out some more solid and more vetted information about burnout and how to help ourselves and also how to help our teams through that. So that's really what drove us to dive in. And we ended up doing a bunch of research of literature. So we reviewed as much as we could find that was out there that's been published around burnout.
And when we started to get through that, we felt like there really wasn't as much meat as we hoped to find around solutions for burnout. Because we found a lot about what it is and why we're struggling with it, but we didn't find as much about, okay, now what do we do? So we decided to reach out to executive leaders across many different industries and ranging, gosh, from directors all the way up to CEOs throughout these organizations to get feedback from them about what they're seeing and what seems to be working. And that really created all the content for the follow up work that we've been able to do on burnout. Rebecca, was there anything else you want to add about our process there?
Rebecca Williams: No, I mean, I think that's a perfect description of it but I'd love it. Kari, if you could talk about the definition of burnout.
Kari Beam: Yeah, yeah, I will. There, there's many different definitions out there depending on where you're looking. So we decided to go with the Mayo Clinic's definition of burnout, and I'm going to read it to you so I don't get it wrong. They say burnout is a special type of work related stress, a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity. So the Mayo Clinic really focuses burnout around that work related stress, and they talk about it in terms of impact at work.
Abbey Dean: Obviously for everyone listening, burnout has been a topic that has come up much more often in the past several years, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, burnout is not something that is, it's not a new phenomenon it's just simply getting more attention. I believe the World Health Organization has a very similar definition to the Mayo Clinic as well. And what is most interesting about this is that it's specifically centered around work related stress or the idea of being at work and work causing this. Is that correct, guys?
Rebecca Williams: Yeah, it definitely is correct. And the reason they focus it on work is a lot of the symptoms of burnout are actually very similar to depression and things like extreme exhaustion, feeling down reduced performance but where depression really comes in is its low self-esteem, comes in hopelessness and even suicidal tendencies. And that's why they're very careful about limiting it to work is because if you have those additional symptoms, then you need to reach out for medical help or psychological help, which is really important and should be available through your organization. We really came up with symptoms and they fell into three broad categories. The first is you notice a shift in your attitude at work, and this can include everything from difficulty concentrating to feeling disillusioned about your job to being irritable or even just an overall lack of satisfaction from achievements. The second is your behavior at work starts to shift and you notice trouble getting started, staying motivated, that lack of energy to be productive.
You might find yourself in that behavior being cynical or hypercritical at work. You also might find yourself being uncharacteristically impatient towards colleagues or clients, and that's another group of symptoms. And the final group are actual physical changes. So you have changing sleep habits. You could be sleeping more or less, but it's different than normal. You're using food, drugs or alcohol not to feel or to feel better. And the final is you have these unexplained headaches, stomach problems, or any other physical problems that you can't go for anything else. And so you're starting to connect those with work. And those are just some of the symptoms that we see.
Abbey Dean: And like Rebecca said, those are identifying burnout seems like it would be very difficult because when she was first starting to go through that list, I was like, oh, crap, that was me yesterday.
Rebecca Williams: We've all been there.
Abbey Dean: Right? So I think identifying burnout is incredibly difficult and especially when you may already suffer from anxiety or feelings of stress or even depression. Also, one thing I think that is interesting about discussing burnout and mental health and wellness is this, especially in the workplace, is this isn't something that a lot of people, myself included, would maybe have felt comfortable doing five or six, seven years ago. And so I think there's a real shift I'm assuming because of the pandemic, but I'd like to hear from you guys too about why businesses are having these conversations more and what that do you guys think the impetus for that is?
Rebecca Williams: Yeah. Oh, go Kari, please.
Kari Beam: So yeah, I was just going to reflect upon the list of symptoms that you went through Rebecca, and just comment that, okay, we've got irritability, so there may be tension between coworkers, we've got trouble getting motivated and getting started, trouble with focus. So we just think about the impact on productivity and culture that can come to an employer if they've got a number of employees that are struggling with burnout. So it's really hard for me to understand how an employer couldn't care about that because it's going to impact the organization, potentially in a pretty widespread way if they're struggling with it at a large scale.
Rebecca Williams: And I also would say, just to add to what Kari said is the great resignation, one of the big contributors that they're starting to identify to the great resignation is burnout. So in terms of retaining key employees, we have to address this topic.
Abbey Dean: One of the things I really liked and I thought resonated with me when I was reviewing the research you guys sent over was when you get to the top strategies for mitigating burnout and you divided up between for the individual four organizations and then for individual teams. And I like that for teams the first two you guys have on there when we're talking about again, strategies for mitigating burnout is being a role model and building trust because I think there's a real level of vulnerability that you're asking employees to and trust that you're kind of asking for. And so being a role model, creating safe spaces that it seems like a simple thing to say, but that doesn't, not a simple act, it's a different kind of way of building culture. Does that all sound fair?
Rebecca Williams: Yeah, I mean it's definitely fair. It's interesting, I was coaching with the client this morning and we were actually talking about this exact topic is there's a great Harvard Business Review article that just came out on getting comfortable with vulnerability in the workplace because we're going to have to get comfortable with it is basically the point of the article because we need this in order to build the trust that people are looking for to be able to share what's really going on with them. And when you think about building trust, there was this article that came out in March called "Leading an Exhausted Workforce," and they talked about we have to do things like share with each other, how to practice self-care, make sure that you're really bringing your humanity front and center. I mean, when you say vulnerability, Abbey, I mean that's exactly what that is.
And also normalizing and destigmatizing making mistakes. I made a mistake, here it is, and it happens, and I'm going to admit it and let's talk through them. These are things as a leader that you can think about and making it okay to change your mind when new information comes in. I mean, we are getting info so fast. And then finally, making sure that in that being a role model and building trust that we create an emotionally safe place and say, Hey, sometimes it's okay to say I'm struggling today. I was working with a friend recently on a project and I was in a great mood. I was like, let's go, let's move. And we got on the phone and I was like, okay, I've got all these ideas. And I was moving super quickly and she finally said, hey, can we hit the pause for a second?
And she goes, Rebecca, I'm in a little bit of a rough place. I've got a major deadline. I'm struggling being fully here for you. Is there any way we could look at this tomorrow? We had plenty of time. That was perfectly fine. But by her admitting that we saved so much energy and her being vulnerable enough just to say, can we do it tomorrow? So we rescheduled, did it another day, and it worked out great. So anyway, just a little bit around that concept of just, she was a true role model for me, I thought.
Abbey Dean: For organizations who want to address burnout who see it, or their managers are saying like, hey, I want to do something we're not sure what to do what would you guys recommend? I know you have some strategies for organizations specifically one of you mind walking through some of those.
Rebecca Williams: Yeah, I'll walk through those and then Kari, jump in wherever. But I think the first thing, and this is something that came outta the research that Kari, I'd actually love, if you could dig into it now, is upfront, be proactive. Don't wait for the problem to start, but be proactive. Check in with people and understand the root cause. Kari, can you share a little bit around the root cause and the work you did in that space?
Kari Beam: Yeah, and for me, that was one of the most profound learnings that I took away from all the research that we did was around understanding root cause. And I think that's true if you're talking about understanding your own burnout or your team's burnout or an organization's burnout. So the idea behind it is that the symptoms that we're seeing a burnout might be very similar across people or teams, but the root cause of that burnout might be different. And so the solution that you need to take is going to depend upon what it is that's causing your burnout. So it might be that you're too busy and you're not getting breaks you're not taking vacation time or doing self-care. It might be that there's some toxic culture in place or some unhealthy leadership, things like that that are impacting and really creating burnout for people as a whole. So for me, that's a first step at any level, and particularly for organizations to really understand what is it that's going on?
Rebecca Williams: Yeah, I always get and so inspired, Kari, when you talk about that, thank you for that. So that's like the first thing, right, is understand your root cause and be proactive. You can see when, especially if you've worked with someone for a long time, you can see when they're getting there. The next is making sure you offer mental health benefits and that people know about them and where to find them. Often when someone hits a crisis, they don't think to look around everywhere for information. And so making sure that information is accessible is key. The next is that a lot of the companies we spoke with are actually going beyond mental health to making sure that they have purpose-based health, spiritual health such as mindfulness activities. Because true wellness lies when you have four key things, you have mental, spiritual, emotional and physical wellbeing.
And so a lot of organizations are saying, we're going to have a time of mindfulness on Friday mornings if you'd like to join us. Or offering apps like Calm or Headspace that people can get access to. The Peloton app has great meditations and they're like five minutes, and you can even choose a topic, I need courage, and they have them, they're awesome. I use them all the time. That may say a lot about me, but there you go. So <laugh>, another area we heard a lot about that enterprises are doing is making vacation time off, weekends evenings sacred. So things like closing early pre-holiday and when you do wellbeing days off, one of the things they said is letting people choose a day off and everybody's different isn't helpful because you come back and you've got more work for the team. So let's say the three of us were a team, and Abbey you were out, then we would make an agreement.
Abbey, if there's an emergency, we are going to text you so you're not checking email. If anything humongous happens, otherwise don't worry about it. And doing the same thing on weekends and evenings, don't send emails. A couple of other things that we talked about was really thinking about messenger behavior and what that looks like. I mean, haven't you ever been in that scenario? You guys have to answer this for me, where you're trying to focus and you just see the messenger blinking and blinking and it never ends. You're like, ah! And so I hear you laughing, so you must have heard. Yes. So it's creating something around that, or even denoting what it is going on. Even for those of us who are working moms or dads or parents saying something like, one of my kids is homesick. I'm putting that on there so people know what's going on.
And then also the other one that was humongous was rethinking internal meetings. So one of the things we talked about is we have over-rotated on video conferencing. We wanted to see each other and we get it, but instead to actually denote certain meetings as walking meetings so people could go outside and take the call while walking or eating meetings. I mean, how many times are you trying to sneak a bite of food and nobody watches you on video? So it's really making sure. And then also we got in a phase where we didn't wanna offend people by not inviting them to meetings. So we over invited, so being really clear on who has to be in a meeting and who doesn't. And also clearly defining the racy. So who's responsible, who's accountable, who's providing input, etc. So that we know what people's roles are in meetings.
That's just a couple of the things that we talked about. But for me, and this is probably due to my background and culture and engagement, and Kari mentioned this was not tolerating toxic work environments. McKinsey did a study that they published in May and they looked at all of these different causes for burnout. And the number one factor was toxic workplace behavior, which is employees experiencing interpersonal behavior that leads them to feeling unvalued, belittled, unsafe. And this could be something like unfair demeaning treatment, non-inclusive behavior. It can be sabotaging sounds, so big, cutthroat competition, abusive management and unethical behavior. So really also making sure that we're not in a toxic environment. So I know that was a long answer, but there are a lot of things enterprises can be doing to really help their organizations.
Abbey Dean: No, thank you for providing such an exhaustive list. Yeah, actually when you were talking about having well-being weeks, I just remembered that I think Nike is doing that this week for all of their global offices. They've been shut down and it's their second ever well-being week. Love that which gives all the employees an entire week off without having to dip into paid time off. That's awesome. Which is wonderful. One other thing, and this touches on the webinar you guys did too, but I'm assuming that being, well, with so many companies doing some days in the office, some days at home or you being completely hybrid, that also lends a different sort of complication to addressing or thinking about burnout in culture too. Is that fair?
Kari Beam: I think that's totally fair cause I think figuring out how to operate in an optimal way in the hybrid environment is it's about engagement from my perspective. So how do you work from home sometimes and work in the office sometimes and have some people at home and some people at the office at the same time and get engagement across your team that's balanced is super important. And if that engagement gets out of balance, I think that can contribute to burnout.
Rebecca Williams: Kari, when you and I were chatting a while back about this, you told me a pretty powerful story about taking a contact center hybrid at the beginning of the pandemic, and I didn't know if you had any pieces of that you can share about how you managed through that. Cause you had a pretty big contact center you were leading.
Kari Beam: Yeah, it was a challenge. And I've talked to a number of other health systems that have gone through a similar transition with their contact center teams since that point in time. So I know it was not unique for me but it was incredibly insightful, interesting, and powerful is probably the word I should say, to understand how going home meant different things to different people. And then all of our team members needing to figure out how to continue to get work done in an environment at home that at point in time, early in the pandemic we had our children at home with us who needed to eat and needed to do schoolwork, and we had spouses who may be home with us. We had great variation in terms of tools that people had at home, whether they had a strong internet connection or a weak internet connection based on where they lived or the circumstances that they worked within.
So everything was different and every person in their own home had to figure out how to navigate through that. And so us as an employer did everything we could to make sure that they had the tools that they needed and that they had some structure to lean on, but that we all had to understand that we are learning, we're all trying to figure this out at the same time. So having some flexibility around that and knowing that during this emergency, what felt like an emergency crisis period that if you have a kiddo who comes up and asks for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the middle of your meeting, that's okay. That's like we're all going through that at the same time. So I don't know, Rebecca, if that was what you were thinking about, but that is, yeah.
Rebecca Williams: Yeah. I love that story. So powerful and so practical.
Abbey Dean: So Kari and Rebecca, when you were both doing this research, was there anything that really surprised you or did you guys find something that was unexpected?
Kari Beam: Rebecca, I think you should share your story about vitality.
Rebecca Williams: Yeah, thanks. I love that you say that. Yeah, so we were sitting here doing all this research trying to figure out how to solve for burnout. And it was very fascinating. I was talking to a master coach, his name is Paul Wyman, and interviewing him about his thoughts on this. And he said to me at the very end, I said, do you have anything else you wanna add? And Paul goes, Rebecca, you're asking the wrong question. I said, what? He goes, the problem isn't, how do you solve burnout? He goes, the question is, what is the opposite of burnout? He goes, vitality and resilience, they're just not talked about enough. He goes, you don't wanna sit at neutral. You want a life that's full of vitality. And I was like, oh my gosh, Kari, I remember calling Kari and saying we're asking the wrong question. And that for me was probably just the powerful is let's move beyond this. Let's not just go to neutral. Let's say, what would life look like if we were truly living it as vitally as we could?
Abbey Dean: I love that.
Rebecca Williams: Me too. <laugh> I get goosebumps saying it.
Abbey Dean: I love that so much. So in the coming months and years, do either of you have any predictions about how companies will address burnout or evolve to support their workforces more?
Rebecca Williams: Yeah, I think for me, I really think that the pandemic has put pressure on organizations to really think about their cultures. And I referenced earlier that McKinsey study that was done on culture, and they asked a question that I loved, which is, what if we aren't solving the right problem? What if instead of asking how do we fix burnout once it happens, we said, how do we prevent it from ever happening? And that goes straight to what Carrie talked about earlier, which is understanding root cause and in the research that they did, this need to make sure that we don't create toxic cultures. And for me, my prediction is companies are going to become more and more concerned about what is the culture we're putting forward? Because every company has a culture, it's whether you're being intentional or not. So I really do think companies will look at that more. And I also think more when we think about the four aspects of wellness, mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual/purpose, I do think that there's going to be more benefits coming around out around that purpose side because we know coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people are saying, how do I live a life that's truly full of meaning?
So I think we'll see more work coming around benefits coming out in that space as well. Kari, I don't know what you think on that, but wanted to throw it over.
Kari Beam: I so agree with your comments and particularly the part at the end about finding purpose and connecting to values. So I think personally connecting to your values and then organizations helping employees connect to their values as a driver for positive energy and vitality to steal your word, Rebecca.
Rebecca Williams: Paul's word.
Abbey Dean: Is there anything that we haven't touched on yet today? I know we've talked about a lot but is there anything that we haven't discussed that you guys think is really important to mention to all of our listeners?
Rebecca Williams: Kari, I would love if you wanted to talk a little bit about what you can do at an individual level around burnout, because I think that's important for people to understand that they shouldn't just wait for their enterprise, that they too have some ownership of this. And I know you did a lot of work in that space.
Kari Beam: Yeah, I think that's a great point and a great way to end our discussion probably because we talked about all these things that organizations can do and they do have a responsibility and an obligation to support their teams towards that end. But we as individuals have a responsibility to ourselves and we can't depend on other people or other things that we don't have full control of to bring us out of a bad space. So for yourself, if you're struggling with burnout as an individual we talked about root cause.
So first and foremost, get to the root of what's driving your burnout, and that's going to help lead you to some of the solutions that are out there, being self-aware and being proactive. So that might look like taking some time for reflection to really check in with yourself and where you are and thinking about what you can do to move yourself forward to wherever it is that you need to go.
Identifying connecting to your values and setting boundaries. And setting boundaries is one of those things that I think is easier said than done. So connecting the discussion of your boundaries with an accountability partner can go a long way. So whether that's a therapist or a coach or a friend who you can say, this is what's important to me, this is how I'm going to respect my boundaries. And they can help you think about how to do that and call you out when they see that you might be slipping up and helping them make sure that you're staying true to what you need.
And Rebecca, you mentioned mental health resources. So employers have a responsibility to get mental health resources in front of employees and help them know. But employees, you have a responsibility as well to understand where your resources are and seek them out and use them. And lastly, I'll just say gratitude. I think we as a society probably have talked a lot about gratitude, at least in the circles I run, we talk a lot about gratitude and I think it's easy for that to slip by the wayside when we're in a bad spot. So re-energizing your gratitude practice, get your journal back out do your meditation think about what you're grateful for, all those small things in life. And it's always surprised me how far that can take me when I lean into it. So that's what I got.
Rebecca Williams: <laugh>
Abbey Dean: For everyone who is listening, how can they find you guys and connect with you and maybe even reach out for some coaching?
Kari Beam: So this is Kari. I can be found on my website@klbcoaching.com. You can find me on LinkedIn or you can email me at karilbeam0@gmail.com. It's karilbeam0@gmail.com.
Rebecca Williams: Yeah, and I can also be found on my website, which is unleashedcoaching.com, unleashedcoaching.com, or I can be emailed at rebecca.williams@unleashedcoaching.com. I can be found on LinkedIn and my maiden name's Wilson. So Rebecca Wilson Williams. It's going to be a little harder to find me sometimes with my common names, but I can be found any of those ways.
Abbey Dean: Thank you guys. I am really happy that you were both able to join us on the podcast today. You guys always provide such insight and just so much authenticity and I just feel really grateful for that. So thank you both very much. Maybe when you guys some do some more research, we'll have you back on the podcast again soon to discuss.
Rebecca Williams: We would love it. Thank you so much for the honor of being here. We always love chatting with you as well.
Kari Beam: Yes, thank you, Abbey.
Abbey Dean: Thank you guys.
I love talking with Kari and Rebecca, so thank you to them again for joining us. I always feel like I learn a lot and I come away from the conversation feeling smarter, which is a wonderful feeling. So thank you again to them. If you have not yet, please go and visit the show notes for this episode. They are quite full, including a PDF of Rebecca, a sort of abbreviated PDF of Rebecca and Kari's research. So definitely give that a look if you have not yet. We would also really appreciate it if you could subscribe to the podcast, leave us a review, all of those good things. And again, you can even leave us a voicemail message letting me know what other topics you would like to see. You can leave questions for myself, Rebecca, or Kari, and we will answer them. Thanks to everyone for tuning in and I will see you next time.
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of This Week in Benefits, brought to you by Mployer Advisor. Mployer Advisor is changing the way employers search, evaluate, and select insurance brokers. Our intuitive platform connects employers and employees to get great benefits and insurance plans by providing employers with actionable data to easily evaluate and select the best advisor for your company's specific needs. To learn more about Mployer Advisor and our suite of products, please visit our website at mployeradvisor.com and tune in next time. Thanks.
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