Leave from work comes in many forms – career’s, annual, personal leave, just to name a few. This paid time off work is just one way of showing you care for your employees’ welfare.

However, when your employees are using their leave entitlements, such as sick leave, for purposes that are not in line with what they are intended for, this can have a negative impact on your organisation and even indicate that they’re not content in their roles.

When not properly managed, employee absenteeism can become a serious threat to your business. Frequent, unscheduled and unauthorised days off affect productivity levels, the delivery of service and the overall morale of your company.

It can also have a negative impact on your bottom line. In fact, absenteeism is costing the Australian economy more than $44 billion every year - equating to $578 per worker per day of absence.

To mitigate sickness and absence risk from hurting your business, you must understand what motivates these kinds of unplanned absences and know how to deal with them.

The signs of burnout can creep up very quickly in employees when their physical, mental and emotional strengths are reaching close to exhaustion.

However, the effects of employee burnout are not just limited to their personal welfare alone. It can lead to significant complications like lower productivity levels, higher absenteeism rate, reduced employee engagement and increased employee turnover.

As part of the Human Resources or leadership team, you’ll know that staff burnout often results in additional costs – financial, reputational and cultural – for your business, too.

Recognising the early signs and risk factors of employee burnout can help you prevent these serious issues from occurring. After all – prevention is better than cure.

Fortunately, there are innovative tools like VibeCatch’s employee engagement QWL (Quality Work Life) Polls that can provide your organisation with relevant insights in addressing employee burnout before they happen.

Work-related stress is at sky-high levels as employees struggle with constant technological change, unsupportive managers and heavy workloads. An “always on” culture that’s blurred the line between work and leisure time also drives stress levels up – and in some cases leads to burnout. That’s a tragedy for the individuals concerned and a problem for their employers who must cover the heavy costs of sickness absence or of hiring replacements.      

Burn out. Ready to quit. Waiting to be fired. We’ve all been there, experiencing a feeling of utter exhaustion and lack of motivation. If we’ve been there, we know our employees have been there. Employee burnout is an undeniable thing in today’s hyper paced working environments. But how do we know what it really looks like – and how do we deal with it effectively?