The National Fight Burnout Day

On September 14, we celebrate the National Fight Burnout Day. But what is this? You probably heard it many times… do what you love, let your work be your passion, and thanks to this you will not spend on work even a single day. Is it really possible? Nowadays, almost all of us are struggling with the monotony of our work, overload of duties, enormous stress, overtime...Today, the issue of burnout risk is no longer swept under the carpet, and it is a topic that more and more of us are beginning to discuss. As you may have noticed, this aspect was brought to great attention during the ongoing pandemic, when most of us switched to remote work. It turns out that remote work is like a spark for the risk of occupational burnout, because then we have limited contact with people, monotony, social isolation, difficulty with separating professional and personal life.

What are the typical symptoms of burnout?

• emotional exhaustion,
• feeling of excessive workload,
• lack of energy, constant fatigue, inability to regenerate,
• decrease in involvement in professional activities,
• reduced sense of self-competence and effectiveness,
• depressed mood, irritability, outbursts of anger,
• apathy,
• sleep disturbance, even insomnia,
• problems with concentration.

In practice, we lose our distance to the situation, what is happening, what is being done, we get angry, we cry for trivial reasons. An additional symptom is the need for loneliness and alienation from others.

If we already know the symptoms, do we know what influences it?

The most popular factors that influence burnout include:

• overtime,
• low salary,
• monotonous tasks,
• inability or difficulty to separate work from private life,
• not getting enough rest.

National Fight Burnout Day has been introduced into the calendar of weird holidays for a reason. It is a space for, inter alia, not sweep this problem under the carpet, sensitize employers to the increase in this phenomenon, promote the principles of work-life balance or take care of our mental health.

How can an employer help?

A very important aspect to reduce the risk of burnout is taking care of relations between employers and colleagues, fair treatment, and a clear path of development / promotion.What the employer can implement are primarily educational activities that are to help employees take care of their emotional state. If the employer notices or clearly sees the symptoms of burnout in his employee, the first step should be a conversation between the supervisor and the employee, in order to jointly find a solution to the situation or find the reasons that contributed to the burnout. These solutions can be different, tailored to the needs, individual. They can be related to a change of position, increasing employee competences through courses, reorganization of the scope of duties.A good and increasingly used practice is the possibility of using the support of a psychologist who cooperates with a given organization and can be a very valuable support for the employee.

Elite Crew - our organization

We are a relatively new company, but thanks to the experience we have, we try to build the right atmosphere in our organization from the very beginning. Each team member knows that they can count on support and conversation from their immediate supervisor or from our HR department. We work together on the way and level of our communication so that everyone in the team feels fully taken care of, but also has complete trust in us.

• We meet our team for 1: 1 talks, but even without such scheduled meetings, everyone in the team knows that they can talk to us at any time.
• We take care of the rest of our team and we respect each other's time when we are on vacation, in order to be able to recharge the batteries. After the holiday, we are happy to share our memories and photos with each other :)
• We control overtime work. To be precise, we do everything to ensure that our work is effectively planned, so that we do not even have to think about overtime work.
• We spend time together on integration outings / trips to get to know each other better, but also to be able to rest from everyday duties for a while.
• We offer flexible working hours, the possibility of remote or hybrid work, because our office is open to all of us every day. So we can decide for ourselves where we will be active. Working from another country? Spain? Portugal? Italy? It is not an obstacle for us!

The team is constantly growing, so we are working on the implementation of new programs that are aimed at even better care of the health and well-being of our employees. A coaching program for our team is under implementation, which will aim to increase the openness and understanding of the team's problems. But also a periodic employee satisfaction survey, so that we can permanently improve our mutual cooperation and many, many more.

Natalia Kotyla