Burnout is not something you want to experience, and this article examines how you can avoid it. The first step in dealing with this issue is spotting the causes and signs of stress and impending burnout.
mental health and wellbeing
Each business will have a set of company values and a company culture that is adhered to by the majority of their employees. It’s important as the boss and the business owner to set these values and culture as they need to go hand in hand with your business brand and image. Although these are internal matters, it helps your employees stay in tune with your business brand. For example, if you are preaching gender equality, your company values and culture need to reflect and support that.
In a recent study carried out by Paymentsense, it was found that female entrepreneurs were better at handling stress than their males counterparts. The research which looked at over 1,000 small business in the UK showed that women are good at handling business stress as well as men and sometimes even better. This should be encouraging to any aspiring female entrepreneurs, who want to take on the rewarding challenge of starting their own business.
Mental health issues plague the workplace as working conditions can sometimes lead to stress and anxiety. Although there is continuous progress being made to destigmatise talking about mental health, there is still a lot of work to do. Small businesses need to actively talk about mental health in the workplace, so employees can feel like it’s okay to talk about how they are feeling. Small business owners need to be the leaders and open up about the challenges and stress that comes with being in the workplace.
Misuse of alcohol or drugs can impair an individual’s ability to perform both socially and in the workplace. Drug and alcohol abuse can have a serious impact on employers and will affect an organisation’s productivity and profitability through staff sickness, overtime costs and recruitment.
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In a recent study conducted by Advanced, it was found that small business owners are on the brink of a burnout due to their heavy workload. SME leaders and managers are close to hitting the boiling point because of the stress and pressure that comes from running a small business. These are issues that can be controlled and maintained. Small businesses are the backbone of the UK economy, and without healthy small business owners to run them, the UK economy could be in trouble.
As a manager, it is your responsibility to promote employee wellbeing in the team. If the workforce is demotivated, stressed and not building positive relationships, the team’s productivity and efficiency will suffer as a result.
Running a small business is by no means an easy feat. It requires so much from one person whether it’s emotional intelligence, being able to effectively manage and lead a team, or passion that will help you get back up after setbacks and failure. Naturally, you will have a heavy workload as a small business owner. Therefore, you will need to make sure that you manage it effectively in order to make yourself and your business a success.
Mental health issues can be damaging to the workplace and the business if not dealt with in the right way, so it is necessary to create a culture and environment in which your employees can talk about any issues they are having. It was reported by mentalhealth.org that around 14.7% of employees have mental health issues, and around 12.7% of sick leave can also be attributed to poor mental health.
BURNOUT. It’s the seven letter word that every employer dreads encountering. As businesses push to meet productivity needs and illicit the best results, employees can become overwhelmed, overtasked and burned out, sometimes without even realising it. Employers then become unwitting participants in the detection of subtle cues that suggest a need for change. Often burnout presents in seemingly disconnected ways. Small gestures that may, on the surface, look like behavioural or emotional anomalies, are sometimes indicators of a burnout silently brewing into an all-out raging inferno.
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As children, there was always time for naps, cloud-watching, or simply to lie around and just ‘be’. But as business owners it can feel as though there simply isn’t the time to kickback, explore, play, and dare we say, go on an adventure. There is always more work to do on the business!
Getting less than 7 – 8 hours of sleep per night on a regular basis can have severe repercussions for your health. Your brain functions, your mood and the way you interact with people will be affected. Those are all vital aspects for small business owners, so the smart thing to do would be not to lose sleep.