Strategies to Reengage a Burnt-Out Team

The past three years have been tough. With fewer people in the workforce and the number of unfilled jobs in manufacturing continuing to grow, employees are working longer and harder than ever just to keep up. You’ve probably heard terms like quiet quitting, great resignation, great reassessment, and the big quit. On the management side, you also have “quiet firing,” where managers purposely mistreat employees, hoping they will quit.

With all these trends happening, employees are facing burn out in record numbers. On top of that, think about how company leaders often reward their best employees – they give those employees even more work. Here’s how it works. You have your best employee on one side and your biggest slacker over there. You have an important assignment, and you need to give it to one of those two workers. Who do you choose? The chances are good that you give it to the rock star who you know will get it done and done well. Managers need to stop doing that. Not only are you burning out your people, but the best ones may not only leave your company, but they will also potentially leave the industry.

How do you reengage a burnt-out team? Here are five tips to get started.

 1. Survey your employees on their level of burnout. This question may be a little scary because you think employees take advantage of the situation and request three-day work weeks or only wanting to work three hours a day. Fortunately, that’s not what happens. When you trust your employees to tell you what’s happening with them, they will. Kronos conducted a study to determine the three main factors that lead to burnout. The three factors are: unrealistic workloads, too much overtime, and unfair compensation.

2. Conduct regular check-ins with your employees. At the beginning of this process, sit down at least once a week or every two weeks to assess your staff’s workload and see where they need help. Consider bringing in a temporary service or perhaps adding people to the payroll. After three years of doing more with fewer people, it may be time to reverse the trend and hire more help.

3. Let your employees control their calendars. Minimize the number of meetings that employees are required to attend. Think about it – nobody enjoys meetings. If there’s food involved, people will tolerate meetings. But for the most part, they can be a total time-suck. Give your employees the freedom to decide if they need to be there or not so they have more control of their day.

4. Give additional time off. Time is the one thing we all have in common with Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Oprah. We all have the same 24 hours of the day, making time the best gift you can give your employees. Some ideas include ensuring they use their PTO, implementing “core hours” where people must be there during specific hours or adding a flexible scheduling component to your schedule. If the shifts are covered, does it really matter by whom? Having effective communication in place is essential to successful flexible scheduling.   

 5. Incorporate self-care opportunities. Maybe you don’t have a yoga, mindfulness, or meditation program in your plant, but offering an EAP (employee assistance program) will give your employees the resources to get the help they need. Likewise, putting in a gym or offering gym memberships, hosting walking meetings, and making sure people take their breaks and get away from their work to refresh for a few minutes can make a huge difference in energy levels.

Over time, and with sincere effort, you can reengage a burnt-out team by incorporating these ideas into your plant. 

Lisa Ryan, Founder and Chief Appreciation Strategist, Grategy, helps organizations develop employee engagement strategies that keep their top talent from becoming someone else’s. Lisa is a Certified Speaking Professional and best-selling author of eleven books, including “Manufacturing Engagement: 98 Proven Strategies to Attract and Retain Your Industry’s Top Talent.”

Lisa will be speaking at FABTECH 2022 in Atlanta.