Posted 12th February 2024
Do you often find yourself feeling tired or drained? Are you feeling tired or drained most of the time? Do you find yourself feeling cynical more than you’d like to? Maybe you’ve started procrastinating more than usual?
If so, then you could be experiencing symptoms of burnout.
Officially recognized as an ‘occupational phenomenon’ by the World Health Organization in 2019, many employers are now trying to prevent and tackle increasing burnout in their workforce. But what is burnout and how does it happen? More importantly, what can businesses do to stop their employees from becoming burnt out?
In this blog, we’ll be answering these questions and more, as well as discussing how technology such as workflow automation including electronic signatures can help the fight against burnout.
Burnout, a form of longer-term stress, encompasses symptoms such as exhaustion, diminished motivation, increased irritability, and feeling overwhelmed. If left unaddressed, burnout can escalate, negatively impacting both physical and mental health. Unmanaged stress can lead to conditions like anxiety and depression, affecting performance not just at work but in all aspects of life.
Unfortunately, burnout appears to be on the rise. According to recent surveys, approximately 46% of workers feel ‘more susceptible to extreme stress levels compared to March 2020′. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted people’s energy levels, motivation, and stress.
A recent study carried out by Deloitte US, found that:
The modern workplace can be full of stress triggers. Tight deadlines, big to-do lists, information overload and frustrations with technology can add up to create a high-stress environment. These were definitely amplified by the pandemic and the pressures of balancing home/work life.
Burnout arises from prolonged or under-managed stress at work. The body responds to stress in 3 stages, known as general adaptation syndrome (GAS).
The body’s initial reaction to stress activates the ‘flight, fight or freeze’ response and releases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.
After this initial response, the body remains on high alert but starts to recover itself, releasing lower amounts of hormones.
If the stressful situation continues, the body eventually loses the ability to fight these stressors and energy levels become drained. This is the stage where burnout can occur.
Stress is an inevitable part of life, especially in the workplace. Learning to manage stress is crucial to maintaining your health and happiness at work. Practices such as lifestyle management, self-care, and mindfulness can help individuals manage stress levels both at work and in everyday life.
However, with burnout affecting a significant portion of the global workforce, businesses must promote employee well-being and foster positive work environments. While this often involves workplace initiatives and policies, technology can also be utilized to create better, less stressful work processes.
Throughout history, innovations and technologies have continually transformed the way we navigate work and life. Yet sometimes the things that are meant to help us, can become more of a hindrance. The modern office is packed with business technology and admin processes that are meant to make the working day easier.
But the lack of collaboration between these disjointed workflows and manual processes can be a source of stress, frustration, and burnout for your employees. By adding simple automation to your daily processes, you can create efficient ways of working that empower employees, instead of stressing them out.
Every office will have daily administrative tasks that need to be ticked off the to-do list. But could these low-value tasks be causing your employees to feel overworked and stressed out?
While these may seem like simple responsibilities, they can actually be time-consuming and demoralizing. Before you know it, your employees are stuck carrying out repetitive and dull tasks for a large chunk of their working hours.
Automation tools and software can handle monotonous and repetitive tasks, such as data entry, report generation, and routine administrative duties. By automating these tasks, employees can be freed up to engage in more creative and intellectually stimulating work, which can help prevent burnout caused by boredom and frustration.
No matter what industry you’re in, it takes a lot of administration to keep a business going. Yet cluttered and siloed processes can be stressful for employees to manage. They could also have things on their to-do list that they simply struggle to get done thanks to time-consuming administration. Why waste time and money on these inefficient processes?
Adding automation improves collaboration between your software and applications, allowing you to create efficient and streamlined workflows. With cleaner processes and automated elements, you allow employees to use their time more efficiently, so they have greater control of their workload and professional life.
Effective automation can only be implemented if your processes are entirely digital. Moving towards this ‘digital ecosystem’ can also help to reduce the day-to-day pressures on your employees. And it helps to reduce the one thing most employees hate: managing physical paperwork and having to deal with outdated technologies such as printers, scanners and even fax machines.
We all know how annoying it is when the printer or fax machine stops working during the day. Moving to a digital and automated way of working makes frustrations like these a thing of the past and means your employees can work exclusively in an efficient digital sphere.
Everyone makes mistakes, even the most focused and accurate employees. Yet mistakes can cost businesses time, money, and effort to fix that mistake. As a result, some businesses can monitor error rates. Whilst this is just a normal part of the business world, it can also put employees under stress to perform perfectly 24/7. People aren’t computers, however, and mistakes can still happen.
By automating your workflow, you immediately reduce the amount of manual intervention in your processes. As a result, the chance for human error goes down. In this respect, automation can help to reduce your business error rate, whilst also eliminating unrealistic expectations and pressure on employees.
For any business, communicating with colleagues and clients is a part of everyday office life. Yet sometimes, keeping everyone in the loop can seem like a full-time job. Sending emails, using CRMs and posting on collaborative software can all take time out of your day. Managing all these communications can also be stressful- and if not done correctly can result in miscommunication, confusion and frustration in your team.
Harnessing automation across your business applications and software ultimately makes collaboration and communicating much simpler. With automatic updates on your CRM, instant notifications sent to colleagues and much more, you can streamline and declutter your business communications, reducing the workload and stress for employees.
Businesses want their staff to find their work meaningful. Automating repetitive and low-value tasks will enable employees to have the opportunity to focus on more challenging, strategic, and rewarding work. Engaging in meaningful work contributes to job satisfaction and helps employees stay motivated and invested, lowering the risk of burnout.
We appreciate that there are quite a few document management systems out there. Here’s why we think you should choose us to help you increase automation and reduce employee burnout:
We know how important it is that your business applications work together. Connect and integrate eSign to any other software. Our platform will help you create a better customer experience, optimizing both time and cost efficiencies.
Use pre-set ‘triggers’ and ‘actions’ to add elements of automation in your document and e-sign signature processes. View our connector partners here.
To make life easier for you and your employees, you need technology that’s easy to implement and simple to use. The eSign platform is cloud-based and can be accessed from an Internet browser. Simply drag and drop editable elements onto your documents and create contracts for signing with just a few clicks.
E-Sign is so much more than just an electronic signature. Offering a payment gateway, ID checker, personalized emails and signing PDFs, the eSign platform has everything you need to encourage productive and efficient working- without causing extra stress for your employees.
eSign is a leading provider of digital transaction management solutions, supplying secure document management professional services, including Electronic Signatures, Web Forms, ID Checker, Verification Tools, Personalized Emails, API and Payment Processing to businesses of all sizes across the world. Our powerful, trademarked, proprietary software is flexible, allowing easy integration and our committed team will work to find a bespoke solution for your needs.
To find out more about our E-Sign solutions and how they could transform your business, get in touch with us today.
