Workers are increasingly overwhelmed at the workplace. Here’s what can be done about it!

From the desk of Miles Everson:

I hope you’re doing great!

Every Friday, I dive into topics tackling health, wealth, well-being, happiness, the future of work, book reviews, marketing, tips, etc. in the hopes of helping you take your personal life and career to the next level.

Today, I want to talk about a workplace trend that has significantly affected both professionals and leaders alike.

Curious?

Continue reading below to know more!

Workers are increasingly overwhelmed at the workplace. Here’s what can be done about it!

High levels of stress and burnout have become prevalent in today’s workplace, with around 66% of workers across all demographics having reported that they’re experiencing some level of burnout.

According to researchers, two of the top reasons for burnout across age groups include being stressed due to having more work to do than the time to complete it and having to take on additional responsibilities due to industry-related labor shortages.

Said another way, companies  and  workers have to do more with less and this is taking a toll on both, especially the latter.

What can be done about this?

The answer lies in  workload management.

When a worker has to juggle many tasks at once, stress heightens, quality dips, productivity declines, and time management becomes much more difficult.

Not only does this hamper an organization’s ability to get things done but this also leads to higher burnout and stress.

For David Ko, CEO of subscription-based meditation and wellness platform,  Calm, the key to solving this problem is through workload management and understanding employee workload.

According to him, leaders don’t do a good job of understanding employee workload when assigning tasks.

He also emphasized that leaders seldom take the time to understand what other priorities employees are working on when assigning tasks.

That’s why Ko said that leaders, when giving task directives, should take the time to understand which tasks are being prioritized by their employees and clearly communicate what deliverables take precedence over others.

This way, teams and the individuals within are given the opportunity to communicate what they think they can accomplish in a given time and have a better understanding of what it is they should prioritize.

So, with these principles in mind, what steps can you take to manage your workload as an individual and a leader more effectively?

• Identify, itemize, and classify your priorities.

  When taking on or assigning new work, it’s important to first understand  what  needs to be done and  which  takes the utmost priority.

  By doing this, you can calculate your or your team’s workload and identify what  can  and  can’t  be done based on a given time frame.

• Communicate, collaborate, and delegate.

  Once you’ve identified what it is you need to do and which ones take utmost priority, the next step you need to take is to communicate these things to your team or the people you’re working with.

  Why?

  It’s because you’re much more likely to succeed in achieving everything you set out to do if you communicate clearly what everyone around you has to do to achieve those objectives.

  Also, collaboration often leads to the creation of solutions to various challenges along the way.

• Leverage automation tools and AI when possible.

  In today’s world, human labor is no longer the sole determiner of whether the job gets done or not.

  These days, human productivity can be augmented through the use of software solutions, AI tools, and platforms that enable the automation of routine and lower priority tasks.

  By leveraging these tools, you can better manage your workload and make it easier on yourself to manage everything that you need to accomplish.

Even though everything has to do more with less these days, this doesn’t mean everyone has to be overwhelmed.

By utilizing the steps we provided, you can better manage your workload and avoid being overwhelmed.

In doing so, you’ll realize that you can do more without succumbing and getting burned out with the work you do!

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