Better Understanding Burnout Through Employee Engagement Surveys

It’s the elephant in the room no manager wants to address. Employee burnout is reaching epidemic levels, and few leaders feel equipped to properly address it. According to a recent Leadership IQ study, only 25 percent of managers feel that their employees are thriving emotionally and mentally. Additionally, 71 percent say they fully expect their high performers to quit because of burnout, and 81 percent feel they don’t know how to tackle the problem successfully. One often overlooked tool, though, is the employee engagement survey. By focusing your survey, management can get perspective into identifying where employees are beleaguered and get to the root causes. For instance, you can put your finger on the pulse of your most stressed employees. Have they lost optimism? Are they running low on resilience? Unless you understand the causes, you’re not going to be able to address burnout effectively.