Research suggests a quarter of the workforce faces burnout symptoms, which affect productivity in the office and people’s mental and physical health. Burnout often stems from a lack of work-life balance, support in the workplace, and control.
Companies are contending with various interventions to manage pervasive burnout rates, from mental health benefits to flexible workplaces.
This year, KPMG is announcing an “energy check-in” initiative to target at-risk employees. After piloting the program last year in a smaller division, KPMG—a Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2023—plans to have a company-wide rollout to their 36,000 employees and partners by the end of 2024.
Using primarily self-reported data and KPMG’s internal system, managers can sense which employees may be running out of steam based on how many hours they work compared to their chargeable hours, PTO hours, and hours spent in meetings. If an employee receives three flags across these buckets, their manager gets a prompt to conduct a check-in. Flags are given to those in the 75th percentile for hours worked or hours on audio calls, and in the 25th percentile for used PTO compared to their peers.
“We’re looking for people that are working more hours than we would expect them to,” Sandy Torchia, KPMG’s vice chair of talent and culture, tells Fortune. “We’re looking for people that aren’t taking PTO as much as we would expect them to, and then we’re also looking for people that are spending more hours than expected on audio calls.”
When a manager gets a prompt to check in with an employee, they are encouraged to ask about their work-life balance, offer them resources to prioritize their well-being and encourage them to take PTO, Torchia says.
“People feel like someone’s paying attention to the work that they’re doing, how they’re working, and wants to help them with it,” Torchia says. “Prior to these energy check-ins, we didn’t really have a way to bring all this information together and to be very pointed.”
According to internal data from the initiative’s pilot, shared exclusively with Fortune, 77% of those who had a flagged check-in with their manager said it was beneficial for their well-being, and 88% of managers said it would be helpful to have future prompts to check in with their teammates. While it’s inevitable that burned-out and disengaged employees yield lower performance, it can be challenging to encourage managers to put one more meeting on the calendar in addition to daily duties, Torchia says. Rolling out the program will come with challenges—including how to best support managers.
“We’re corporate athletes, and we need to not only be physically ready to do our job, but we need to be mentally ready to do our job,” she says. “If we make these investments in our people, we are going to have higher-performing teams.”
Rachel Montañez, a career and burnout advisor for Fortune 500 companies, previously told Fortune that when employees feel appreciated and heard, they can better advocate for how they work most effectively.
“When there’s safety, we respect an employee’s time, energy, and emotions,” she said. “In turn, people feel they can suggest and see improvements in things like reducing meeting inefficiencies, visibility and recognition, or even approaching an internal stakeholder to set better boundaries.”
And more, employees are yearning for “human-centered leaders,” who see their teams as composed of people with various motivations in and outside of work.
“Of course, we can never know all the personal challenges an employee is facing. And not everyone is comfortable sharing,” Tracy Layney, the chief human resources officer at Levi Strauss & Co., previously told Fortune. “But leaders should aim to open the door to allow for honest discussions, something that helps us create and maintain a culture where employees feel respected by their leaders and confident enough to take risks.”
While the rollout is still in process at KPMG, Torchia hopes more heads of HR, culture, and talent see well-being initiatives as integral to daily operations.
“We want this to become part of our culture,” she says.
For more on workplace wellness:
- Workplace health benefits don’t move the needle on improving employee happiness and well-being. With one exception
- Gen Z wants psychological safety at work—and here’s why it’s good for companies and employees
- American workers are overwhelmed with uncertainty, which can lead to burnout. Here’s a way to manage the nerves
