Nurturing our rising stars or extinguishing their flames?

The recent Working Lives Survey conducted by the CIPD provides an in depth look at workers attitudes towards their jobs, work conditions and identifies what’s important to employees in today’s workplace. Broadly the report identifies the correlation between ‘good-quality work and productive organisations’ yet it identifies that there is opportunity for employers to increase job quality through organisations placing greater emphasis on promoting a better work-life balance and flexible working conditions. At LearnLive.Online we understand the time constraints on employees as we explored in our recent article ‘Why making time for you and making time for training is so important.’

Are we snuffing out the enthusiasm of our rising stars as we try to provide opportunity for development and growth?

So, continuing our look at the time constraints on our lives and in work, we were particularly drawn to this report’s review of workload. In this survey a staggering third of individuals polled identified that they have too much work to complete in their role, with one in five employees having too much work to fit into their contracted hours. Furthermore, one in twenty are completely overwhelmed by their workload.

Overwork can be severely damaging to your business and instead of getting more out of your employees the over-onerous workload could be damaging your businesses productivity, your employee's well-being and your employee engagement! All of which are counter-productive for a successful business operation.

When digging a little deeper it is clear, that it is the ‘middle management’ workers who are feeling the pressure the most intensely with 37% of respondents complaining over too much work, yet this tranche of employees are often critical to the functioning backbone of most enterprises, and in many instances are the rising stars of the future, whom we are ‘developing’ for progression into senior management roles.

This got us thinking…. Are we (businesses) in danger of demotivating and disengaging some of our best employees through over-working them? On the grounds of development, we are asking them to take on more and more projects as a way of developing their skill-set and experience and to provide them opportunities for future progression. Whilst we continue to demand the high levels of output from these valued members of our team in their day job. But are we in fact driving a wedge between their enthusiasm and dedication to the job and the company? As well as placing their health and wellbeing at risk?

How can you tell if your employees are being over-worked?

We are all individuals whose lives have varying demands and constraints, so there is not a firm checklist of what to look for, but we have complied a list of potential warning signs.

1. Emotions are running high

Crossed words, grumpiness and tension between employees could be a sign that an employee is experiencing work related stress. Stress can cause irritability, anxiety, memory issues, disrupted sleep, and mood swings in an employee, all of which can be disruptive forces within your high performing team. Take time to ‘check-in’ on how your team are getting on and sensitively investigate any behaviours that could be the sign of stress impacting your employees.

Make sure that you are acknowledging those who are taking on more of the workload, as being ‘taken for granted’ by the boss can be an exceptionally negative and debilitating spiral as employees may become resentful or passive aggressive if their endeavours are not being recognised, valued and rewarded. This is particularly important for employees who are very eager to please as they are likely to over-commit due to a fear of failure or rejection.

2. Working outside of hours

Getting emails from people working nights, early mornings and weekends could be an indicator that the workload is too much. Take time out to discuss with employees their preferred working times. I for one, prefer early mornings for completing the in-depth analysis or writing tasks before the rest of the team get started for the day, and then take back a few hours here and there to spend time with my kids on their school activities etc.

3. Employee churn

No, its not some way of making butter, but its about recognising if your level of staff turnover is high compared to the rest of the business or comparable organisations. If you have identified your ‘rising stars’ yet they seem to exit the business before they really get to shine, is it that you are over-loading / under-valuing these employees which is causing them to prematurely leave and look for opportunities outside of your organisation? Its worth noting that talented individuals will be highly motivated and keen to take on new and challenging projects but the taking on of the extended workload needs to be matched by the business leadership acknowledging and appreciating the ‘above and beyond’ that many employees go, before those rising stars start to go and look elsewhere for their next opportunity.

4. Error rates increase

If you have very measurable metrics in your organisation – pay close attention to these, as they could be indicative of how your workforce are performing with the workload. If you are extending hours but productivity remains static then you are just decreasing your profits. As Fredrick W. Taylor discovered as far back as in the early 1900’s, that ‘reduced work-times attained remarkable increases in per-worker outputs’. Less is seemingly more!

Looking out for your employees’ wellbeing and helping to manage their workload is an important role for a manager. At LearnLive.Online we believe in promoting wellbeing in the workplace through a number of different approaches. Be it through developing your leadership and management skills or through implementing wellbeing in the workplace courses for your employees. Our management development programmes delve deeper into the roles and responsibilities of leaders, and how your leadership style can cultivate and nurture your own ‘rising stars’ of the future. We also run practical hands-on sessions on Effective Delegation and Performance Management to make sure that you set your teams up for success. Our Wellbeing in the Workplace courses are designed to engage your employees and help them manage their workplace stresses and strains.

At LearnLive.Online we have training solutions that will not overload your workload and schedule as we bring the learning directly into your screen, at your desk. Our learning is delivered by our experts, in real time in our online classroom. We keep the classroom sizes small, with normally up to a maximum of 12 delegates on a course so that you get a very individualised approach. We usually run sessions for 90 minutes at a time in 4 sessions that can be spread out over two weeks to reduce strain on your schedule and to allow time for on-the-job practice in between.

You can find out more about our learning solutions here.