Be Proactive About Staff Burnout

The first quarter of the year is a prime opportunity to push staff to burnout. The holidays are over, the parties and good feelings of an accomplished year have ended and now it’s time to focus solely on the work without much to look forward to. As practice owners and leaders it’s important to recognize that staff are being pushed more than ever to see more patients, work overtime and put their own needs aside for the needs of increasingly complex patient populations. Please take the time to continue to recognize staff for exceptional work, give staff time off if you’re able to and allow your staff to pursue passions outside of the workplace that fulfill them personally. By being proactive in this we can avoid staff burnout and retain top talent with motived and happy staff. When a staff member has become burnt out in their role by the time they tell you it is too late and they are already out the door. Leadership needs to take the time to check in on staff, recognize signs of stress and burnout and be creative in their responses to this. The second layer of this is making sure you are consistent, if you are managing one staff members burnout then you need to be prepare to manage others in the same way to create consistency in your support. Keeping great staff takes time and energy from leadership and when we take for granted great staff and don’t continuously check in on them then we risk losing them to burnout.