Preventing Burnout During COVID-19

We recorded these episodes as we approach month two of the COVID-19 quarantine in Canada. The data is showing that employees – especially those with children at home – are experiencing extreme burnout. This week we discuss how employers and employees can address this situation.

Transcript

Hi there and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill, for those of you who regularly listen to this on audio on the podcast or as an Alexa flash briefing, today’s the first day. We are also putting all of these on video on YouTube, so if you don’t want to listen every day or if you want to see the video as well, just check out our YouTube channel leading with nice and you can watch the flash briefing on video. The other thing I want to let you know about is we’re really excited to be coming up on episode 100 and to celebrate that we are giving away five Amazon Alexa echo dots. These are great devices. If you’re already listening on an Amazon device via the flash briefing and you know how great they are. If not, they’re great to have and to celebrate we are giving away one of five so make sure you check out Leadingwithnice.com to learn how you can enter to win one of five Amazon Alexa echo dots this week I want to talk to you about something that I think is really important and it’s that our employees and coworkers and colleagues are rapidly approaching if they have not already arrived at burnout.

This has been a very tough number of weeks for workers to be working at home and so this week I want to talk to the employees and the employers, the leaders about how we can address this issue from on this topic. Visit Leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results. Talk to you and tomorrow. Good day and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Matthew. You’ll just to reminder that you can also find this week’s episodes on YouTube, on the Leading With Nice channel, and also that you can enter into our contest to win one of five echo dots at Leadingwithnice.com check it out. There’s lots of ways to enter that is both engaging and fun. I think. If you’re at home working, you probably have felt different stress than you might’ve experienced in the past and now it’d be totally normal.

It’s natural. You’re being pushed to the limit. You’re being asked to do more than you ever really have before. So here’s what I would encourage you to do today. Take a break, take as long of a break as you need. If it’s going to impact your coworkers or colleagues, call them and just say, I need a break. I need to stop. You probably haven’t had a day off. If it has been, it’s probably been for a medical situation. You haven’t gone to the beach, that’s for sure. You haven’t gone out shopping or on vacation. You’ve been working nonstop. Probably thinking about it on the weekends. Give yourself a break. I know I’m not your boss. I don’t have the authority to give that to you, but you need to do it for yourself. So after you listened to this, take a break. Sometimes a break might just mean 15 or 20 minutes.

Sometimes it might mean all day. You know what’s best for you, but you need one guaranteed. That’s all for today. For more on this topic, visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results. Good day and welcome to the leading with nice daily and my name is Mathieu Yuill and this week we’re talking about how employers and employees can do their best during covert 19 and how they can help each other out. I also want to remind you that on leadingwithnice.com we’re having a contest to celebrate our 100 episode that we’re coming up to. We are giving away one of five or you can win one of five Amazon echo dots. So check out our website, leading with nice.com to find out how you can enter. Okay. Today I want to talk about a resource for people who are working at home right now and it’s called the working from home report.

You can find it on our website that LeadingWithNice.com and what’s great about this report is that it’s actually personalized for you. Once you go to our website, fill out your name and email address. It sends you a link rate to the report. You fill out a tiny assessment, two dozen questions and you will receive right away a report with tips personalized to you on how you will work at home best. We’re all different. So one of my tips for example that I got in the report was to ensure that I take a break after every meeting and before when I would do out just pound my meetings back to back to back and plow through them. And I would get to my desk at 8:30 – 9:00 AM and then look up at 3:00 PM not having taken one break and I was exhausted. But what I found is when I took those breaks and actually rejuvenated myself, so sometimes I would take a five minute break, go upstairs, get a glass of water.

Sometimes I would take a half an hour break once I took an hour nap, but you know what? It allowed me to do so much more work and be more effective at it and I’m positive that when I started this habit, the quality of my work improved. Go to the website, check out the report. It’s totally free. Normally I would include this type of report as part of a group or team assessment that would cost several thousand dollars but right now it’s free for you leadingwithnice.com the working from home report, it’s written on the homepage. Hope you’re having a great day. Talk to you again tomorrow. Visit leading with nice.com for more on this topic where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results. Talk to you tomorrow.

Good day and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill. This week we’re talking to employers and employees about how they can help each other get through this pandemic, but specifically how we can help employees return to work, refresh how they can maintain their work right now and not be burnt out. So today I’m going to speak directly to employers. Before I do that, I’m really excited we’re coming up on our 100th episode and to celebrate we’re giving away five Amazon echo dots, check out Leadingwithnice.com where you can enter in a variety of different ways. You can actually get multiple entries. One of the ways you probably already have by subscribing to this podcast or this Amazon Alexa flash briefing and go from there. Employers, I want to talk to you today, directly. You need to pull back the reigns and how much you’re asking your employees to do. They won’t tell you they are just working as hard as they can.

You probably are working as hard as you can and you’re feeling it as a leader. Imagine what your reports are feeling. So do them a favor and do your organization a big favor. Call them up, email them, text them and give them some time off, whether it be a day and evening, morning, half day, schedule a social time, but give them time to not be working or reduce their workload overall, but continue to pay them the same. They will thank you for this in ways that you can’t imagine. They’ll come back to work after the pandemic is over refreshed and wanting to work for you. So one of two things will happen at the end of this. Either they’ll come back to work, excited to work for you and thankful for how you treated them or they all come back to work looking to work somewhere else and you know that the bottom line says having them come back excited is better.

So treat them well now. Now I know some of these in workers and employees and people you lead might be essential to your business, but you know, I was talking to a leader who’s in charge of a $12 million with a revenue for the next quarter. He takes a Friday off once in a while he does and no one is more essential to that organization than he is. So if he can do it, you can too. And certainly can you reports for more on this topic, visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results. Talk to you again tomorrow. Good day and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill and today this week we’ve been talking about how we can help as employees and employers, not burnout, not succumb to stress. Before I talk about a very select and special group today, I want to remind you that we’re coming up on our 100th episode where you can win an Amazon Alexa dot.

And I’m so excited to be coming up on an episode 100 I wanted to celebrate. So that’s how we’re doing it. Check out leadingwithnice.com to find out how you can enter. It’s really simple, really easy, and there’s multiple ways to enter. Today I want to talk about parents. Now I know that there are non-parent people who are not parents working at home, and this will be helpful for you as well too, but parents in particular are feeling a kind of pressure they probably have not felt before even those who typically homeschool their children. Parents have had all their support network taken away from them. School teachers, afterschool clubs at organized athletics, things like Cub Scouts, girl guides, brownies, swimming lessons, their children’s friendship group, and other family members who would typically take care of your kids are coming to watch them or take them out for lunch. And people like babysitters and other caregivers. You as a parent, I’ve been asked to shoulder the burden of all of this and then your kids. I get it. I mean we have to do this, but it doesn’t mean that you can do it and not feel stress and pressure. So here’s what I want you to do.

The first thing is make a connection that’s intentional with somebody who can be supportive of you via Skype, zoom, telephone, cell phone, text message, email. Somebody that can just hear you and listen and can talk to you and be nonjudgmental. And the second thing is I want you to take a break from work, and if you’re not working, take a break from looking for work or figuring out what’s next and just spend time doing something different that you find relaxing. Give yourself permission. I know I don’t have permission to give you permission, but I’m telling you you need to do it because this will be over and you’ll want to come out of it as healthy mentally and physically as possible. For more of this topic, visit LeadingWithNice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results.

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