I’m a businessman and founder of a company. My manager has shared that some of my employees are feeling burnout since WFH started. What should I do? What are the costs of burnout for employers?

Hi Anon,

You are a great leader for caring about your guys' wellness - Respect! When it comes to burnout, I identify it in 2 manners - Physical and Mental. As much as we can do to change the environment (Clara has answered quite a fair bit, thank you Clara!), sometimes our guys may need direct solutions to the problem.

For wellness, there is this problem called the Office Worker Syndrome and it is very common in Singapore considering that we work very long hours compared to the rest of the world. The hours has also increase while we are working at home as you have noticed. Even though it is common, most singaporeans don't know what OWS is.

Main causes of OWS

• Prolonged sitting/standing

• Poor pad support

It's a vicious cycle where they start to feel body discomfort - poor focus - unproductivity - stress - Burnout (physical and mental) - poor posture - repeat

As you can see that your guys are already in one of the final few stages (burnout) which is a bad sign.

I can suggest some tips for you to share with them and even for yourself. These tips are from a credible and experienced physiotherapist in Singapore:

• Adopt good posture

• Adopt good ergonomic practices (can buy laptop stand/ or ergonomic chairs/tables for them)

• Apply heat back over sore or achy areas

• Calibrate their muscles with specific exercises (Have a weekly/daily session for your guys to stretch together in front of zoom. Promotes mental, physical wellness and team bonding!

• Finally if they wish to seek treatment, they can always go onto Calibrate to find a suitable practitioner for their needs

These notes are summarized from this instagram post

More wellness tips at Calibrate

I hope i helped somehow, do let me know if you need more clarifications. Very happy to share wellness tips ;)​​​

Hello.

I'd like to also think about it structurally and add that company culture only goes as far as the employee. Overworkers breed overworkers, even if it's unwilling overworkers.

So hiring process is as important as the idea of firing people who mess up the culture. The willingness to let someone go if they display behaviour that isn't healthy for the team, even if they are rockstars, is hard to arrive at.

Beyond that, the WFH situation creates blurred lines when it comes to the workplace. So beating it requires formally instituted rules about when they don't need to work, and then be sure to stick to that.