3 ways managers can help their team avoid burnout: 'Your people will really give you a runway'

Burnout continues to be a problem among U.S. workers. Nearly half, 49% of workers report feeling burned out at work, according to a Q3 Joblist survey of 18,911 jobseekers. Among generations, millennials reported the highest rate of burnout at 59%.

While many factors can contribute to this phenomenon, such as overwork or tension between co-workers, managers can play a part in helping to make their reports' work lives a little bit less stressful.

"You'd be surprised how much people will tolerate if they feel like their boss is genuinely understanding and working on their behalf," says Phoebe Gavin, career coach and executive director of talent and development at Vox.com.

Here's how work experts recommend managers help their reports avoid burnout.

"It starts with psychological safety," says Gavin.

Psychological safety describes a work environment in which people feel like they're being heard, regardless of whether they are voicing concerns or ideas. It's an environment in which they know what they have to say matters.

Gavin suggests three tactics for creating it.

• Be selectively vulnerable by sharing challenges you've come across in your own career like having a tough boss, mistakes you've made in the workplace and how you fixed them, or even that you had a bad night of sleep. "The thing that they need to hear is that something went wrong, that you don't have all of the answers, that you make mistakes, that you're a human being with flaws, so that they can feel like it's okay for those things to be true about them," says Gavin.

• Have regular one-on-ones. "Your team members need to feel like you are willing to prioritize them," says Gavin. "And the best way to do that is to make time for them." Depending on the size of your team and your day-to-day schedule, these can happen for an hour a week, half an hour every other week, or whatever else works. And make sure during your one-on-ones that you are focused on them 100% and aren't checking emails or Slack.

• Ask explicitly for them to share feedback. During your one-on-ones, ask questions like, how are you experiencing your job? How are you are experiencing our team? How are you experiencing our workplace? How are you experiencing me as your leader? "Putting yourself in a position where your direct reports will share that information with you puts you in a position to increase how sustainable your team actually is," says Gavin. It gives you an opportunity to see what challenges your reports are facing so you can figure out how to make things easier. Remember to thank them for their feedback as well.  

"If your team does not feel psychologically safe," says Gavin, "then they are not going to share with their leaders what's going on with them." Without that level of openness, you won't be able to help them solve whatever problems could lead to their burnout.

Beyond creating the kind of relationship with your reports that enables them to share with you when things are stressful or are going wrong, it's equally important to build a relationship with your own higher ups in which you can report on how your team is doing.

Some of your employees' work problems will be out of your control and having that open rapport with your own boss will make it easier to find solutions. Do this by regularly giving updates about your team.

"We're managing down by making sure that there's psychological safety and dedicated space," says Gavin, "and we're managing up by making sure that we're communicating expectations and we're communicating what's playing out on the ground."

When one of your reports does present a problem that may be outside of your scope of influence, make sure to come to your boss about it with solutions.  

Say your report is feeling overworked because their tasks should actually be handled by more than just one person. Try saying something like, so-and-so "can't work any harder than they already are," say Vicki Salemi, career expert at Monster. "Here is the solution: We are short staffed. We need budgets. Until these budgets open up, can you loan people to me?"

The key is to "translate it into a problem whose solution benefits the strategic interests of the business," says Gavin.

Regardless of how you feel about your report's potential burnout, your boss may care less about that than about the bottom line of what they're doing. Let them know having more than one person taking on your employee's workload will mean more of it will get done and in a timely manner, which leaves even more time to take on new projects.

When it comes to burnout-related problems that are a bit out of your hands, you may not be able to solve them for your team right away. In your next one-on-one, let them know you are working to resolve the issue, and will hopefully be able to come to them with a solution soon.

"Your people will really give you a runway if they truly believe you are working on it with them," says Gavin. "They don't necessarily need you to solve that problem overnight."

As long as you've established this openness and a track record of hearing them and trying to make things better, they'll trust you're doing what you can to help alleviate their potential burnout.

Check out:

Stressed and burned out? Quitting your job may not help

2 simple, everyday ways to help people around you avoid workplace burnout

'Quiet quitting' isn't always the best option — try these 3 things first, experts say

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