Community & Culture
Change fatigue and burnout are dramatically impacting every industry, especially life sciences. This affects employee productivity, retention and even commitment to learning. Training can significantly influence our organizations, serving as a powerful catalyst for positive change.
Harvard Business Review found that employees’ ability to cope with change is now at 50% of pre-pandemic levels. The average employee now navigates 10 organization-wide changes yearly, a stark increase from just two in 2016. Their willingness to support change has dwindled from 74% in 2016 to a mere 38%. Interestingly, smaller-scale, personal changes such as a new manager or moving to a new team are 2.5 times more fatiguing than larger organizational changes like mergers or acquisitions.
This means a higher number than ever of employees are exhibiting the symptoms of change fatigue, which include:
Disengagement
Emotional exhaustion
Absenteeism
Conflict or cynicism
Low performance or productivity
Increased stress and anxiety
Organizational change takes many forms, including starting a new role, having a new boss or leader, rolling out a new technology or process, engaging with a new market or customer and also dealing with environmental changes like pandemics and natural disasters. Change fatigue directly influences the success of these initiatives.
How does this impact training? When people are fatigued, even new opportunities like training or career development can feel like too much and may impact participation and ratings. Even if they attend, you may find it harder to keep their attention or more resistance to doing assignments. The good news is that training people on change management skills can help alleviate these issues in the future.
Burnout was already on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic, but now it has hit extraordinary levels. In 2019, the World Health Organization estimated that 53% of employees were burned out — during the pandemic, it reached into the 90s but has since decreased to 77%. The highest rise is among women, Gen Z and young millennials.
Burnout is more than just being tired — it’s a diagnosable state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion brought on by long-term stress. In their book “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle,” Drs. Emily and Amelia Nagoski identified three main components of burnout: emotional exhaustion, lack of accomplishment and depletion of empathy (Figure 1).
How did we get here? While the pandemic broke through long-standing resistance to working from home, it also drove a surge of overworking and under-resting. The Society for Human Resource Managers (SHRM) found that 70% of workers who transitioned to remote work because of the pandemic say they worked more on the weekends, and 45% say they regularly work more hours per week than before the lockdowns. In fact, the workday increased from 9 to 12 hours with email providers often seeing spikes in logons from midnight to 3 a.m.
Burnout creeps up slowly on us until we are too tired to care or take positive action. Christine Hohlbaum, author of “The Power of Slow,” stated, “Sadly, most people don’t even notice its gradual grip over their lives until it’s too late. By then, external intervention is necessary to move burnout patients toward positive change.”
This is why burnout is also called “the erosion of the soul.”
The truth is that the only cure for burnout is to rest, not start another job. KornFerry claims that hiring managers are seeing an increase in ghosting behavior, both by applicants and up to 25% of new hires who fail to show up for their first day. Employees who do show up are still in danger of quitting within a short time, further increasing the cost of replacing employees.
What does this mean for training? Talent professionals experience burnout, too, so you may find that your enthusiasm for work or ability to be creative is impacted. And, of course, people who are burned out often focus on saving their energy for the most critical things, which means attending training can drop in priority.
However, providing training on emotional intelligence, self-regulation and/or psychological safety can give people the tools they need to help themselves and others.
Employee well-being has become a top priority for attracting and retaining talent. Given that workers spend nearly one-third of their lives at work, it’s no surprise that people view it as a significant component of their well-being.
Research by Great Places to Work and Maven Clinic found that employees are:
Three times as likely to stay when they experience a psychologically healthy work environment.
2.3 times as likely to stay when they believe their leaders genuinely care for them as people.
Twice as likely to stay when they can be themselves at work.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has named workplace well-being a critical issue across industries, stating, “Work is one of the most vital parts of life, powerfully shaping our health, wealth and well-being.” Key findings include:
76% of U.S. workers reported at least one symptom of a mental health condition, an increase of 17% in just two years.
84% said their workplace conditions had contributed to at least one mental health challenge.
81% reported that they will be looking for workplaces that support mental health.
Well-being also matters to organizations. Consider the costs of absenteeism, when a worker takes off a partial or full day of work. Annually, this costs about $1,685 per employee, amounting to $225.8 billion to organizations.
In the “Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being Report,” Murthy laid out a new evidence-based framework that identified five essential elements to workplace well-being: protection from harm, connection and community, work-life harmony, mattering at work and opportunity for growth.
This framework gives talent professionals a clear blueprint for immediate goals and priorities. The accompanying report and website offered robust tools and strategies that should become the center of your efforts in enhancing workplace well-being.
What are the opportunities for training? Training must always keep pace with the needs of the organization and its employees. We can be great partners to the business by educating leaders about these topics and offering solutions that are adaptable and address them in a timely and cost-effective manner.
The good news about well-being is that it allows us to address related and critical topics like psychological safety, emotional intelligence and other factors that bring about the best in people and teams.
Britt Andreatta, Ph.D., is CEO of Brain Aware Training and is the author of several books on the brain science of success, including Wired to Grow, Wired to Resist, Wired to Connect and Wired to Become. Email her at
Britt@BA-Train.com or connect through www.linkedin.com/in/brittandreatta/.
