The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially classified burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” resulting from “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”.

Its decision not only to define the condition, but also to develop evidence-based guidelines on mental wellbeing in the workplace reflects just how serious the problem appears to have become. But because the classification is so new means research on the extent of the problem is limited. 

However, according to Karen Meager, co-founder of Monkey Puzzle Training & Consultancy, who studied the burnout recovery process in partnership with Coventry University, the condition is currently believed to affect between 10 and 18 per cent of the total working population. This figure rises to between 25 and 30 per cent in the caring professions and peaks at between 50 and 60 per cent among mental health practitioners.

While the situation seems to have worsened over the last few years, the arrival of coronavirus has undoubtedly taken it to a new level. As Meager says: “With the pandemic situation, people are fatigued in a way I’ve not seen before and it’s very worrying.”

So what is going on and just why have things become so bad? The answer is complex in that it comes down to a mixture of individual emotional responses and external factors. 

Work has moved beyond being a means to an end to feed the family towards providing their life with meaning, which makes it harder to switch off

On the one hand, explains Meager, many staff are more invested in their work than they were 25 years ago. For such employees, work has moved beyond being a means to an end to feed the family towards providing their life with meaning, which makes it harder to switch off, particularly in a digital world. 

Character traits, such as perfectionism and competitiveness, can compound the situation, as does the fact that most jobs are less physical than they were in the past. Because workers tend to be more sedentary means they have fewer opportunities to burn off cortisol and other stress hormones, particularly when working from home, which results in the strain starting to tell more quickly.

Impact of external influences

But there are external influences too. According to Dr Shainaz Firfiray, associate professor of human resources management at Warwick Business School, these can range from a lack of autonomy and clarity in job roles to expectations that people will take on heavier workloads with fewer resources and less support following budget, and even salary, cuts. This situation is particularly damaging in difficult economic times due to an atmosphere of general uncertainty and job security fears.

Just as damaging though are inept management practices and high-pressure, toxic and bullying workplace cultures. In fact, O.C. Tanner’s 2020 Global Culture Report indicates that a “poor company culture” increases the incidence rate of moderate-to-severe burnout by a huge 157 per cent. 

Robert Ordever, managing director of the employee recognition and reward specialist’s European operations, defines this kind of poor culture as being, among other things, one in which there is a lack of trust in the leadership team, insufficient progression opportunities and an uninspiring company purpose. 

“There’s a common misconception that burnout is all about overload and too much work, but really it’s more to do with the emotional engagement and social connection side of things,” explains Meager. “Psychopaths don’t burn out, for example, as they’re not as emotionally invested as other people.”

In terms of what burnout actually is though, the WHO defines it as feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion combined with either increased mental distance or negative and cynical emotions relating to your job. These symptoms, in turn, lead to “reduced professional efficacy”, which can manifest as everything from lower productivity and absence through ill health to behavioural issues, such as presenteeism. 

For instance, the O.C. Tanner report indicates that burnt-out employees are 63 per cent more likely to take a sick day, 13 per cent less confident about their performance and 2.6 times more likely to leave their current employer. To make matters worse, this difficult situation can also have a knock-on, contaminating effect on the rest of the team.

What employers can do about it

There are a number of things employers can do, says Martina Ruiss, head of human resources at HR software supplier Personio. Firstly, if someone is starting to show burnout symptoms, it is important their line manager takes action. 

Training is imperative not only to ensure managers can recognise tell-tale signs, but also so they know how to react in a supportive, helpful way. While it may be possible to sort out some situations by rejigging workloads, transferring the individual concerned to a new team or recommending specialist advice, sometimes a week or two of guilt-free leave may be the only solution. 

“Very often it’s not just people’s job situation, but also things in their personal lives that are getting on top of them, so you have to treat everyone as an individual,” Ruiss advises. “It’s important to take the situation seriously and put yourself in their shoes as it takes courage to open up to someone else.”

Preventing burnout in the first place, she believes, crucially involves having positive role models in leadership positions. For example, while Personio’s co-founder and chief executive Hanno Renner may be “a bit of a workaholic as he loves what he does”, following a sailing trip in August, when he was cut off from everything, he realised the benefits of taking time out. 

As a result, on his return, Renner sent a message to his workforce of 500 employees setting boundaries around his work life and indicating he expected others to do the same. The leadership team has also taken the decision to actively say “no” to working on nice-to-have rather than core activities and encourages staff to follow a similar approach to prevent becoming overwhelmed. 

Other supportive practices include HR holding weekly meetings with line managers to discuss any challenges being faced by either themselves or their team members and to offer guidance. Perks, such as gym membership and yoga classes, are also made available to help workers release stress by means of physical exercise.

As Meager concludes: “It’s important to feel part of a community and that you’re valued, as it’s about social connection and the fact people’s relationship to work is an emotional thing.”

The expectation of an always-on experience, and increasingly-saturated markets, mean a poor experience could well mean customers will go elsewhere. And yet many business are struggling to deliver a great customer experience that is demanded. What can organisations learn from those getting it right, and those at risk of being left behind?

THUMBS UP

Supercharging customer service with AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming customer service for businesses like Telefonica, BBVA and Sterling Bank.

Call centre service is a painpoint for customers, with 45 per cent hanging up in frustration, data from cloud services provider Maintel shows. But by adopting advanced AI, Telefonica has decreased call abandonment by 44 per cent. 

Meanwhile for Sterling Bank, using AI has halved the number of calls coming in, using a “cognitive customer service agent” to handle many inquiries.

It’s a cut above a basic chatbot, argues Faisal Abbasi, managing director of Amelia, an AI platform selling itself on its conversationality and humanity.

“The decision-tree format of chatbots means their capabilities are severely limited. With straightforward, unsophisticated functionality, they typically provide basic responses. They’re incapable of true problem-solving,” says Abbasi.

“This isn’t true of digital customer service agents leveraging artificial intelligence. Advanced learning capabilities enable them to understand context and natural language, so they can independently execute tasks.”

Going to the next level with loyalty

Loyalty card apathy occurs thanks to a lack of relevance and value, with around £2 billion of loyalty currency going unspent. That’s according to Club Rakuten, a loyalty programme recently launched by the Japanese tech giant in the UK. It takes a multi-brand approach, with 250 partnerships with the likes of Booking.com, LEGO and ASOS, and raises the stakes in generosity, offering up to 25 points for every £1 spent.

But it’s not just about quantity, says Tim Birchinall, Club Rakuten’s head of membership for Europe. “The ambition to acquire customers at low cost and retain them through personalised and engaging communications is more challenging than ever. Brands without links to ecosystems, partnership media channels and depth of data will be at greater risk of failure,” he says.

THUMBS DOWN

Lagging behind in tech savviness

Being slow to adopt core technologies, paralleled with a growing skills crisis, is compromising business growth, warns digital experience specialist Acquia.

While 43 per cent of UK consumers are buying more online than they did before the coronavirus pandemic, according to its recent survey, marketers in Britain are falling behind the global curve in adopting content management systems, marketing automation and development tools. Some 37 per cent are hindered by a shortage of AI and machine-learning skills.

One brand bucking this trend is TSB, which has adopted cloud-based technologies, such as Adobe Experience Platform and Microsoft Dynamics, to improve action of real-time insights, a need intensified by the pandemic.

“COVID-19 accelerated our need to digitalise our operations as we could foresee an even greater behavioural shift in our customers needing to access services remotely. Already over 90 per cent of transactions we process are through digital or automated channels and there are more plans to be executed,” says TSB chief marketing officer Pete Markey.

Poor management of customer reviews

Some 62 per cent of consumers trust online reviews more than expert opinions, according to Gartner-owned software marketplace Capterra, yet many businesses are still on the backfoot.

As many as 44 per cent of UK businesses keep track of online reviews with a manual method like a spreadsheet, Capterra data highlights, causing frustrations such as not being able to react to and promote them properly.

Brands without links to ecosystems, partnership media channels and depth of data will be at greater risk of failure

The impact of not properly managing customer reviews can impact brand image, as Capterra insights also show only 7 per cent of customers trust a company with less than five reviews, yet 39 per cent expect a response.

“Companies can use reviews to learn more about their customers, identify product gaps, build promotional and social media campaigns, and run competitor analysis,” says Ryan Kent, director of reviews operations for Gartner Digital Markets.

Forgetting to be human

Businesses are at risk of falling behind on “humanity” and creating experiences people want to engage with, claims consultancy Kin + Carta Connect. Its Brand Resilience Index 2020 analysed 33 top British brands, rating them one to five against individual factors of agility, maturity, responsibility and humanity, to produce an overall rating.

The index found humanity – forming emotional connections with audiences – has been neglected as businesses rapidly adapt in the face of COVID-19, with factors including accessibility, inclusivity and tone of voice across digital channels hindering user experiences for a third of businesses analysed. 

Danone, Severn Trent, Unilever and Innocent performed the highest against the humanity metric, with a score of four each.

However, businesses analysed performed well in agility, which is understandable given the current climate, says Claire Robinson, customer experience director at Kin + Carta Connect. 

But as purpose prevails over profit, Robinson wonders whether both humanity and responsibility will become strategic drivers for brand resilience in the coming year.

It happens to the best of us: a meticulously crafted plan thrown by the wayside as impromptu issues and requests crop up. With 77 per cent of tech employees losing 100 hours or more of productivity due to unplanned work this year, according to PagerDuty research, exactly how is this hitting businesses and how can they combat it?

1. Operations: get off the hamster wheel

Changing priorities within a business happens, but tackling it without losing stability and clarity can be achieved by defining departmental focus, says Sarah Gilchriest, global chief operating officer at business training company Circus Street.

“We make sure every single department, from content to tech and production, to talent and wellness, has a focus and that we constantly communicate about it,” she explains.

“It's also about the strength within your senior leadership team to bring those challenges to the fore and work out whether or not we should be tackling them, and how we reprioritise.”

Getting off the hamster wheel to define strategic goals takes confidence, Gilchriest adds, especially when it involves pushing back on excessive client requests, which are a common source of unplanned work. 

2. IT: resist the loudest person shouting

From software defects to system breakages, unplanned work occurs daily in IT. The first lockdown is one example, where a third of IT leaders spent half their team’s time resolving remote-working issues, according to low-code app development platform Mendix.

There’s no avoiding it, says Pete Hanlon, chief technology officer at call outsourcing specialist Moneypenny, so it’s important to resist defaulting to the loudest person shouting. 

An incident management programme is key, understanding which requests can be automated to reduce the number of disruptions

“The challenges with unplanned work can be hidden initially; although people are busy, they’re not working on the planned highest-value work. This then can have a knock-on impact to forecasts for resource, revenue and the next planned item on your roadmap,” says Hanlon.

Moneypenny uses a delivery process, plus techniques such as automated testing, proactive systems monitoring with thresholds and alerts to identify and address potential issues. 

“If something is truly important and urgent, and we have a definition of this, then it can be expedited,” Hanlon adds.

3. Risk: expect the unexpected

Risks by their nature are uncertain, making it common for incidents to arise that put a dent in an agreed plan and require reallocation of resources. This makes planning for the unknown something all sensible chief risk officers do, says Chris Burt, principal of Halex Consulting and co-founder of the Risk Coalition professional network.

“A good indication of successful planning is that all key planned deliverables are delivered on time while unplanned events are dealt with effectively,” says Burt.

“Being able to drop plans and manage the unexpected is a sign of risk management maturity. But if this happens overly often, it may be a sign that the risk function is not doing enough horizon-scanning or identifying new risks sufficiently early.”

4. DevOps: par for the course

Quickly responding to changing needs has become second nature for Lloyd Watkin, principal engineer at food-sharing app OLIO, who believes the trick is to organise your roadmap with a high degree of agility built in. 

“The nature of the unplanned work could be small and contained. For example, we’ve recently had to revive our #Cook4Kids campaign to help feed children during half term, so we had to deploy some supporting messaging,” says Watkin.

“On the other hand, unplanned work can be more wide reaching. It could be that we’d slightly sacrifice the timeline or feature set of an upcoming release or we may think about changing the plan for our next sprint entirely.”

5. Customer service: avoid churn

Technology issues and problems with products or services can all impact customer service and lead to customers, as well as employees, jumping ship, says Aileen Allkins, Microsoft’s former vice president of customer service and support.

“Customer service is already a highly stressful job; US contact centres have some of the highest staff turnover rates,” says Allkins, now a consultant. “Conversely, the link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction is well documented, so reducing unplanned work is vital.”

An incident management programme is key, she says, understanding which requests can be automated to reduce the number of disruptions.

“Success can be measured by regularly reviewing the number of unplanned support calls: the fewer calls, the happier your customers,” Allkins concludes. 

A global study by PagerDuty reveals that more than four out of five organisations have seen the pressure on their digital services provision grow significantly, which includes a 47 per cent jump in the number of daily incidents they face. 

The upshot is just under two thirds of all IT and DevOps professionals are now spending an extra ten or more hours a week, compared with six months ago, trying to tackle these incidents, and two out of five businesses only expect things to get worse over the year ahead.

Unsurprisingly then, a massive four out of five tech experts believe digital acceleration must be top of their company’s priority list during 2021, if they are to optimise their operations. A key consideration is that if mobile applications and websites start to slow or falter at a time when digital is often the only means possible to interact with the brand, the impact on customer experience will inevitably be severe.

But another important priority in the middle of a global downturn is finding ways to cut costs without damaging, and ideally even boosting, quality of service. So what can organisations do to optimise their digital operations?

It is vital to ensure team members have the right skills, processes and information in place to take full ownership of the services for which they are responsible. In other words, if an incident takes place, it is imperative they are on it immediately, not only to resolve the situation, but also to keep stakeholders in the loop until they are able to do so.

The biggest challenge in this context is handling unplanned downtime in real time. While a traditional centralised approach can take hours or even days to deal with such a situation, being able to react in seconds, understand the impact and take appropriate action in the right context can make a vast difference in terms of brand reputation and overall cost efficiency.

But as companies increasingly migrate their digital services to the cloud to remove operational bottlenecks and provide much-needed agility, they can find that the large numbers of automated signals and alerts generated in a highly-digitalised environment put their employees and processes under growing strain. 

This means systems are required to help tech teams manage it all and make sense of the noise. In fact, our survey shows that a huge 69 per cent of respondents believe smart integration will be critical in helping them do their job more effectively.

Just under two-thirds point to automation and the removal of manual processes as being critical to enable them to do more with less. A further 51 per cent believe intelligent data and insights will prove vital in helping them prioritise where to spend their time.

Ensuring pieces of the puzzle are in place

But getting all the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle in place takes time and effort. As a result, based on our work with customers over the last 11 years, we have devised a four-stage model that businesses typically go through before they hit full operational maturity. 

Automated remediation is increasingly becoming a necessity rather than a nice to have for savvy organisations

The first of these stages is reactive. This means the knowledge and capabilities of digital teams are generally siloed, many processes are manual and issues tend to be resolved by inefficient processes, like asking a large group of people to join a conference call.

The second step is responsive. Here monitoring tools have been introduced to alert staff to any problems, but an ad hoc approach to information-sharing means they take longer to solve them than they should.

The third phase is proactive. Many processes and activities are automated at this point and monitoring teams have access to timely information. Therefore, they know when to intervene to take appropriate decisions.

The final level is preventative. Here machine-learning tools enable predictive remediation to take place to avert or resolve incidents before they cause trouble. Processes are highly automated and a cycle of continuous learning occurs, in turn enabling a cycle of continuous improvement. 

To work their way effectively through these four stages, a good starting point for most organisations is to understand where they are today, which includes recognising the maturity of their people and processes. In reality, most are at the beginning of their journey and starting to move from reactive to responsive mode. 

Interest in how to optimise their operations more swiftly has leapt since the realities of the coronavirus pandemic struck, which means change is starting to evolve at pace. Put another way, automated remediation is increasingly becoming a necessity rather than a nice to have for savvy organisations who may be juggling cost efficiencies, but are also keen to offer their employees an appropriate work-life balance, without boosting headcount.