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Job burnout is recognized as neither an ailment nor a neurosis, but it doesn’t take a physician or psychologist to diagnose workplace burnout. It may, however, take an informed and experienced manager. Being able to recognize the signs of burnout and implement the right solutions for your employees can mean increased productivity, loyalty and a happier workplace.
Studies have shown that burnout is more likely to affect those working in positions with high stress and emotional demands, such as social workers, police officers, lawyers, teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers and customer service representatives. These can all be characterized by contact with other people whose demands can be emotionally draining.
Burnout is a level of stress that affects employees physically, emotionally and mentally leading to exhaustion on all levels. There are 3 types of burnout:
This is where experience can help a manager differentiate between a bad employee and an employee on the road to burnout. A manager who knows his or her employees well has an advantage, as the warning signs vary from person to person. Keep an eye out for:
Like depression and anxiety disorders, burnout can affect the sufferer on physical, interpersonal and emotional levels. Social relationships may either be dropped entirely – through overworking or withdrawal – or become strained from defensive behavior or an increased tendency towards conflict. Often a burned-out employee is unable to understand that stress is the root of their problems.
Burnout can also lead to health problems, such as headaches, colds and insomnia – all of which are caused by maintaining high levels of stress and emotional exhaustion. Further health risks include an increased dependence on self-medication including alcohol, smoking, sleeping pills, mood elevators, and stimulants.
Only an experience and involved manager will be able to pinpoint the causes in a particular employee, as they run the entire spectrum of workplace issues:
For a manager, taking steps to prevent burnout is a balancing act between maintaining productivity at the office and recognizing what type of burnout your employees are more prone to fall prey.
Train your team well, equip them with the right tools and the resources they need. Don’t spread them too thin – understand the difference between challenging them and overwhelming them. Also be sure to clearly define their roles and give every member something to own, a part of the company where their decisions are key, no matter how small. Provide support and feedback while rewarding and promoting for good work. Be fair and make sure their voices are heard.
Let your employees follow their passion – whether this means rearranging positions in the company or allowing time for work-related side project – find a way to make sure they are doing what they love.
Foster a work culture that makes it acceptable to socialize during breaks but where cattiness and pettiness is unacceptable. Train your employees on stress management, educate them on burnout and make every employee responsible for preventing burnout in themselves and their coworkers.
Some employees need to be forced to take breaks or given a cutoff time for when they have to stop answering email from home. Others find the best reward is being given a mental health day pass or one day a month when they get to leave early to pick up their kids from school. Giving them a chance to balance home and work goes a long way to getting the most out of your employees and creating a work culture that retains productive and innovative employees.
While extreme cases of burnout can be scary, the good news is that it is both reversible and preventable. Educate yourself and your employees and take some time to take your employees out for a meal to learn more about their passions, aspirations and what changes they would like to see. Following through with employee feedback is the best way to make them heard, respected and valued.
The bottom line is a burned out employee is not productive and a drag on an organization, large or small. Providing a productive workforce is the job of every manager and helping your team to manage workplace stress and providing them the environment and tools to be successful is essential for the success of the organization and the individual.
The Internet makes it easy to put a job posting in front of hundreds of thousands of jobs seekers, so it’s important that you take the time to craft yours so it stands out to the top talent. Don’t forget that your job posting is an advertisement for you, your company, and your open position!
This is the first impression – don’t be afraid get creative. If you want a candidate to click on your posting, make it worth their while! Whether you are a fun start-up with room for growth, or a serious company looking for years of experience with an emphasis on professionalism, you need to get them to click! Your posting title doesn’t have to match the position title, so make it click-worthy. It is also important that the title is search friendly, so micro-target your future employees.
If you are vague about the duties entailed, you will be bombarded with resumes of candidates that are clearly unqualified. By taking the time before posting the job to sit down and map out the responsibilities of your hire, you will be able to keep the excess resumes out of your inbox. This small step will give you more time to focus on finding the perfect hire.
It’s easy to forget that the terms and lingo used by your company are not a universal language. Have someone who does not work at your company read over your job posting to make sure it is clear. While you may think you are removing unqualified candidates, you may just be alienating those who have the skills with a language barrier.
By stating your required qualifications for the position, you will also weed out undesirable candidates. Your position may have space for training, but there are always points you won’t compromise on not matter his or her experience. Be clear and stand firm.
No matter the skill or experience level of a position, you can always find ways to challenge the applicants. Creative positions can ask for ad copy for a certain situation, sales reps can be asked how they deal with a difficult client, and social media marketers can be challenged to present their ideas for an imaginary campaign.
A well-written job posting can practically eliminate the need for a first round of interviews. This all hinges on you knowing exactly what you are looking for, being clear about your ideal candidate, and asking the right questions. While it may be easy for you to write a three-page job description, remember to take the time to cut it down to a readable length. The aim is to entice, not intimidate.
This post is about businesses with up to 50 employees. To read more about businesses with 100 or more employees, read this post.
ACA has created a complicated maze of regulations and requirements for businesses. Madison Approach Staffing is here to help you sort through your questions and support your company through the transition.
Businesses with 50 or less full time employees are NOT required to provide health insurance to their workers under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). However, there are advantages to providing affordable health insurance to your employees and steps that small business owners can take to help their employees find health insurance on their own..
Offering health insurance to employees is a great incentive to build loyalty and maintain high retention rates for long-term employees, but it’s not right for every business owner depending on the cost and internal employee structures. Year round enrollment is available through the SHOP (Small Business Health Options Program) exchanges, so small business owners are not beholden to the same enrollment periods as larger businesses. The SHOP exchanges provide lower rates than outside options for insurance coverage, have no minimum enrollment requirements, and are the only way a small business can take advantage of the tax credits afforded small businesses for helping to pay for healthcare for employees.
Although all employees without health insurance were required to have enrolled in the NYS health exchange by March of this year, there are still options to help them and your business. If you are a small business with 25 employees or less, contribute at least 50% toward your employees’ premium costs and your employees’ average wages are less than $50,000 you may be eligible for a small business health care tax credit of up to 50% to help offset the costs of insurance.
Use this handy tool to estimate your tax credit:
Small Business Tax Credit Calculator
Many owners who are unable to provide group insurance opt instead to contribute towards the cost of their employees’ health costs. The average amount provided per month for these employers is $200.
According to the NYS health exchange, business owners may define full-time employment however they see fit, but in order to offer health care options via the exchange, part or full-time employees must work a minimum of 20 hours per week.
If you opt to use the SHOP exchange and your number of employees rises above 50 employees during the year, don’t worry. In 2016, the exchange will be available to businesses with up to 100 employees.
Business owners can also help their employees by guiding them through the health exchange process. While it is not mandatory for owners to provide a notice of benefits to employees, it is another way to encourage and foster positive attitudes.
The ACA has created incentives to encourage employers to put in place opportunities to encourage healthier workplaces. Wellness programs would require participating individuals to meet a specific standard related to their health to obtain a reward, including decreasing tobacco use or lowering cholesterol. More information on these programs can be found at http://www.dol.gov/ebsa.
Small business owners can find information about coverage in their area at https://www.healthcare.gov/find-premium-estimates/ as well as information for individual and family coverage for their employees.
For more detailed information on the key provisions under the Affordable Care Act for Employers with up to 50 employees, follow this link
For more detailed information on the key provisions under the Affordable Care Act for Employers with fewer than 25 employees, follow this link
For information on how to enroll in the SHOP Marketplace, follow this link
Here’s a great infographic to explain the ins and outs:
This post is about businesses with 100 or more employees. To read more about businesses with up to 50 employees, read this post.
ACA has created a complicated maze of regulations and requirements for businesses. Madison Approach Staffing is here to help you sort through your questions and support your company through the transition.
Businesses with 100 or more full time employees will need to have their Affordable Care Act (ACA) ducks in a row by January 1, 2015 or face fines for non-compliance. After the business enrollment deadline was extended for a year, due to technical issues and delays of the SHOP (Small Business Health Options Program) exchanges, many business owners are scrambling to crunch numbers and understand their options going forward. These provisions apply to all large employers, including for-profit, non-profit, and government entity employers.
The Facts:
For Large Businesses, defined as more than 100 FTE (Full Time Equivalents) employees, the enrollment deadline is January 1, 2015. Under Employer Shared Responsibility provisions, large businesses can avoid penalties by offering minimum essential coverage (MEC) to full time employees and their dependents, including children under age 26. The offered coverage must include 3 specific guidelines: 70% of employees must be OFFERED an option for affordable insurance; the employee share of the healthcare premiums cannot exceed 9.5% of their salary; and this insurance must cover at least 60% of typical health care expenses for an average person. Remember, the employer must OFFER coverage, but there is no obligation under the legislation to PAY for coverage. Where it becomes tricky is complying with the affordability requirement.
Essential Health Benefits (EHB) vs. Minimum Essential Coverage (MEC) vs. Minimum Value Plan (MV):
Essential Health Benefits are defined as 10 core benefit categories including elements such as emergency services, hospitalization, mental health and other specific categories.
Despite the term, Minimum Essential Coverage does not have anything to do with the nature of the health benefits. MEC is defined as the source of the coverage and the eligible sources include:
Plans that do not count as MEC:
Minimum Value refers to how much monetary coverage the plan provides. ACA requires that a health plan pay at least 60% of the cost of services provided under the plan. Find a MV calculator here.
What This All Means:
Potential Penalties:
If no coverage is offered by the employer, the employer will be penalized $2,000 per year, multiplied by the number of full time employees, the first 30 full time employees are exempt.
If a MEC plan is offered, but doesn’t meet the affordability guidelines (9.5%) or the MV requirements and any full time employee receives a Premium Tax Credit through the Health Exchange, the business owner will be penalized $3,000 per full time employee certified to receive the tax credit. These penalties may increase if insurance premiums grow.
Two possible strategies to deal with the affordability issue are (1) the employer pay a flat dollar difference between the total plan cost and the employee contribution or (2) the employer contribution is a sliding scale based on employee wages and the ACA affordability criteria.
Infographic depicting the penalty maze
Additional Information
Information Reporting
Beginning in 2015, business owners with 51 to 99 FTE employees will be required to report information about their provided health coverage even though they are not required to provide coverage until 2016. The first of these reports must be filed in 2016. More information about this reporting can be found here.
Sources to Educate Yourself Further
For questions about specific details that circumstances that may apply to your business, the United States Department of Labor has provided a Frequently Asked Questions landing page about Affordable Care Act implementation, http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/healthreform/regulations/acaimplementationfaqs.html
For a complete overview of the key provisions under the Affordable Care Act for large businesses, head over to The US Small Business Administration website, http://www.sba.gov/content/employers-50-or-more-employees
For a schedule of webinars provided by The US Small Business Administration, go to http://www.sba.gov/healthcare. These webinars cover the important points for different sized businesses, and have a question and answer portion at the end. The webinars are also available in English and Spanish.
Madison Approach Staffing Inc. is pleased to announce our upcoming philanthropic outreach program. We will be working with Westhab, a local community outreach organization that works to create affordable housing in Westchester County. Madison Approach is committed to contributing to the people and programs that help our community grow and thrive, and we are excited to be involved with Westhab’s Employment Training Center.
Westhab Employment Services
Westhab has been offering employment and training programs in Westchester County for nearly 20 years. These services are designed to help place individuals with limited academic skills and work experience in jobs that they enjoy and make them proud. With a client-centered approach, Westhab focuses not just on finding jobs for those in their shelters and transitional units, but also on employment readiness training and job retention counseling. Since 1996, Westhab Employment Services has placed over 2,000 clients into full-time jobs in the New York metro area.
Encouragement and Training
Hearing success stories like the one below from a Westhab client who was successfully placed in a job, inspires us to continue our support of such an important initiative.
“I was attending Job Readiness classes and meeting with [my counselor] often so I could better my job search efforts and obtain job leads. Without giving up, I continued to seek assistance from the Employment Counselor and I filled out many applications throughout the area including jobs that I had never considered before. I was attending counseling sessions with my Employment Counselor so I could try to get some insight on what steps to do next. I finally had an interview for AVIS Rental Car for a driver’s position. Soon after I was called to do a drug test and then followed a background check. I happily began work the following [week]. I am currently working full time and I truly enjoy my job.
My sincere thanks goes out to the Employment Office for all of their efforts and for encouraging me and believing in my abilities. It is very much appreciated.”
Successful Placement
A company that has successfully hired Westhab trained employees raved, “many applicants lack basic life skills, enthusiasm and customer service skills. As an agency, we are pleased with Westhab, Inc. candidates; their dependability, motivation and great patient care attributes.”
Madison Approach Staffing’s Commitment
We will be donating 10¢ per hour, per employee for every new job order placed in September, October and November to Westhab’s employment training center.
How You Can Help
Call our office today at (914) 428-4800 for a consultation about your specific staffing needs for the months of September, October or November. All new jobs during these three months will count for a 10¢ donation to Westhab for every hour the employee works.
Go Above and Beyond
When placing your order for new temporary staff you will have the option to double the donation by matching our 10¢.
We look forward to doing our part to help provide a brighter future for those in need in our Westchester community.
Call Madison Approach today to speak with one of our Staffing Coordinators, (914) 428-4800 or go to www.MadisonApproach.com to learn more.
Like the infrastructure of our Nation, the Education System in the United States is crumbling. Not for a lack of dedication and effort on the part of teachers and administrators, but from a lack of interest and vision from all of us. Public education has long been something we took for granted; just expecting it to be there, solid and formidable like the Hoover Dam or the Washington Monument. But the process of educating and molding a child into a productive citizen is a long, painstaking process-far longer than the attention span of most Americans-and not suited to quick fixes like filling a pot hole on the highway. We need change. And we need everyone to roll up their sleeves and lend a hand.
Whether you are a pragmatic business person, an idealistic humanitarian, or concerned patriot, there is good reason for you to be concerned and to get involved. Over the next decade, the demand for educated employees will increases and the supply of educated employees will decrease leading to fierce competition for talent. Adding to the talent scarcity is a demographic shift as the Hispanic labor force grows to 23% by 2030. If the tragic education gap between white and Hispanic children persists, the difficulty in finding qualified employees will increase even more. Not to mention the boomer quotient; the most educated generation before or since will be retiring, leaving a void of educated and experienced labor. As a nation, we are loosing ground in our ability to compete in the global economy as we loose the education battle. Given that the success of every business hinges on the skills, knowledge and talent of its employees, we are in for a tough fight and we need to prepare now.
Facts:
This is not a task to be left to government alone. Big government, by its nature, is incapable of the speed with which we need to act. I believe that we, the people, need to take charge of this nation’s future through educational reform today. Individuals, community groups and business must get involved through hands-on initiatives in local schools. We all must view ourselves as educators; we all have something we can contribute. Contact your local school and ask what you can do, what organizations you can support. Business owners, we must seek out opportunities to support, mentor and nurture our future employees and business leaders. Let’s get busy teaching.
Allison Madison is the President of Madison Approach Staffing Inc. and CEO of Candid Capture LLC. Mrs. Madison is on the Board of Lakeland Education Foundation, and is the Grant Committee Chair. She is also on the Westchester-Putnam Workforce Investment Board, and member of the Youth Committee. Additionally, she is the Past President of the New York Staffing Association. Mrs. Madison is a mother of three, a lifetime resident of Westchester County and is reachable at conversations@madisonapproach.com
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