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Workers are having a tough go. Toxic job expectations and poor work-life balance are throwing employees into energy, engagement and productivity crises. Some are so fed up that they’re thinking about walking away altogether.
While many executives have tapped HR leaders to lead the charge, experience-management software company Qualtrics is relying on a new kind of analyst to help beat employee burnout.
Ben Granger is a “chief workplace psychologist” with a background in behavioral science who works with Qualtrics full-time, and also consults with other Fortune 500 companies to strategize better employee and consumer experiences. He tells Fortune that his job is to provide guidance to companies about how their own employees make decisions, react to different communication styles, and perceive various workforce strategies.
“The need for a psychologist, somebody who really understands the foundations of the human mind, is very central to what businesses do,” Granger says. He adds that he helps organizations “measure and manage the experience they create for customers and their employees.”
When it comes to addressing employee burnout, he says, mental health is key. Before the COVID pandemic, mental health wasn’t prioritized as an element of work-life balance, which has exacerbated untreated burnout in the years following. Leaders need to change their minds on a long-held belief that mental well-being benefits are cushy non-essentials, says Granger.
“Burnout has been of heightened importance over the last five years,” he says. “Many of our clients are realizing that [mental health perks] are not this fluffy, nice to have, soft thing over here. If an employee is having a mental health challenge, they can’t give their all. And that’s what companies need their employees to do, is give their all.”
He adds that communication with employees is part of the burnout puzzle. During COVID lockdowns, bosses and staffers were working from home, constantly checking in with one another, and communicating more directly than ever before. “During that period, we saw trust in senior leadership and ratings of communication skyrocket. Employees were saying, ‘This is awesome. I’ve never had this much access to our C-suite,’” Granger says.
But when the pandemic ended, that line of communication weakened, and employees missed that closer working relationship. “Shortly after that, senior leaders started reporting sky-high rates of burnout…Employees were left with ‘Well, that was awesome. Where’d all that communication go? I want that back.’”
To beat workplace burnout, Granger suggests that business leaders improve their mental health programs. But it’s also important that they free up time within a worker’s day to engage with those offerings. “When you keep adding things onto people’s plates, new benefits, new tools, new apps, that actually can influence burnout.”
He also recommends that managers think hard about how they can rebuild that worker-employer trust that fell apart post-pandemic, and open up that line of communication once more.
“When employees feel like they can openly talk about challenges with their manager, that helps to reduce symptoms of burnout and helps improve customer and financial outcomes in their locations,” he says.
Emma Burleigh
emma.burleigh@fortune.com
Around the Table
A round-up of the most important HR headlines.
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Watercooler
Everything you need to know from Fortune.
Hybrid victory. Another study has found that allowing workers to work from home a few days a week improved job satisfaction and reduced turnover. —Orianna Rosa Royle
Hazards. A former Neuralink employee who sued the company for wrongful termination says she was forced to work alongside monkeys with herpes that scratched her while she was pregnant. —Sarah McBride, Bloomberg
Safety net. After a healthcare company owning 30 hospitals declared bankruptcy, a Democratic governor pleaded to the U.S. Labor Department to protect the pay and benefits of nearly 40,000 affected workers. —Steve Leblanc, AP
