The Burnout Problem You Can’t Ignore (And How to Fix It)

Lori Cole (00:04):

Let’s go ahead and get started. Thank you again everyone for being here today. My name is Lori Cole and I’m a certified career coach and advisor here at iHire. I’d like to offer you a warm welcome to this session, The Burnout Problem You Can’t Ignore and How to Fit It. That’s the key thing. So before we get started, let me point out a couple more features of our webinar platform that will really put you in the driver’s seat. The widgets that you see on your screen allow you to move and resize windows and explore the content related to today’s presentation. Make sure you find that ask a question widget and submit your questions at any time during the presentation. Only our producers will see those questions and we will get to as many as we can at the end of the webinar. Also keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow for a recording of this webinar.

(01:02):

And lastly, just a quick reminder that you’re going to earn one credit today for SHRM and HRCI recertification and that will pop up when the webinar hits the 55 minute mark. So make sure that you stay through to the 55 minutes so that you can download those certifications on the certification widget.

(01:28):

With that, I would like to introduce you to our presenter today, Stephanie Bidle. Welcome, Stephanie. It’s so good to have you.

Stephanie Bidle (01:36):

Yeah, so happy to be here.

Lori Cole (01:39):

So Stephanie is the founder and the CEO of The Simplicity Secret, a leadership development and coaching company dedicated to helping individuals and organizations unlock their full potential. She is a TEDx speaker and award-winning coach. She specializes in burnout prevention mindset and creating stability success through simple, actionable strategies. So Stephanie has her master’s degree in human resource management and a background in HR and leadership consulting. She brings both practical expertise and real world insight to her work. She is known for her engaging, relatable approach that empowers professionals to align their work with their values, set meaningful boundaries and lead with purpose. And just our interaction with Stephanie this week has been so incredible and you all are in for such a treat because she is so knowledgeable about this. So welcome again, Stephanie. We are so happy to have you here.

Stephanie Bidle (02:54):

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Lori Cole (02:57):

All right. So let’s get started with a quick poll. Which burnout signal do you see the most often? And this is from your employees. What are you seeing from your employees? Decreased engagement, increased absenteeism, lower productivity, communication breakdowns, or other. So while you all are filling out that survey, we’re going to go over the quick what we’re going to cover today. So we’ll talk about what’s behind the rise in burnout and the real price your organization is paying for it. How to spot burnout early before it spirals into something bigger. Why setting boundaries isn’t just a nice to have. It is really key to keeping your people healthy and productive. Real doable things that leaders can start doing today to ease burnout on their teams and how to build a workplace where hitting business goals and taking care of people aren’t at odds with each other.

(04:15):

So let’s look at this poll here. Decreased engagement, yes. Stephanie and I talked about that earlier in the week about how I would always see it as a sign from people that I knew they were probably going to quit sooner and just given up. Stephanie, what do you think about these poll results?

Stephanie Bidle (04:34):

I think it’s very clear that decreased engagement is number one and I think that’s the first one that a lot of organizations see as the first indicator and one of the really big things we’re going to dive into today.

Lori Cole (04:49):

Awesome. So let me set this up for you a little bit here. Burnout has shifted from an individual problem to a widespread systematic workplace challenge driven by our culture that just makes you feel like you always have to be on. So the numbers show us that 65% of employees report high stress levels at work and that’s according to our iHire 2025 Toxic Workplace Trends Report. 66% of American employees experienced some form of burnout in 2025 and that’s from the Moodle/CensusWide research. Younger workers do seem to be hit the hardest. 81% of people between 18 and 24 year old years old, 83% of the 25 to 34 year olds versus 49% of those of us that are 55 and over. The top drivers of this are unmanageable workloads, lack of work life balance support, unrealistic deadlines. And how this will show up in your teams is disengagement and poor collaboration, which we’ve already seen, communication breakdowns, increased mistakes and missed details and employees hesitant to speak up because they, I don’t know, feel like maybe nobody’s going to do anything about it, which really creates this culture of silence.

(06:32):

And then this really impacts our businesses. Over 50% of employees have leave due to toxic workplace conditions. Now, employees might not be telling you that that’s the reason because we always see the disconnect in the reports. Employers will report that employees are leaving for many different reasons than a toxic workplace, but the majority of employees will report they’ve left because of a toxic workplace. It shows up in reduced productivity, engagement and innovation, and a major perception gap. So leaders think the workplace is positive, but employees not so much. So Stephanie, walk us through what burnout really actually looks like because it’s not just one thing, right? It can show up in a lot of different ways.

Stephanie Bidle (07:33):

It absolutely can. And I’m curious, before we dive in, I know we have our emojis. Give me a thumbs up if you’ve experienced burnout in the workplace or you believe your organization has experienced burnout and it’s affected your employees. I want to see where we’re at to see if it’s a current struggle or maybe it’s a struggle that we don’t know that currently exists because a lot of times there is those hidden traps and burnout becomes this really taboo topic. Oh, here they go. The thumbs up

Lori Cole (08:03):

Or. Yeah. It’ll always take just a few seconds for them to start, but now they’re going to start popping up here.

Stephanie Bidle (08:10):

I mean, I assume everybody is here for a reason because they either want to help themselves or they would like to help their employer with burnout. And I think sometimes to answer your question, Lori, is burnout, people just think you’re doing too much like, “Oh, I’ll just change this or I’ll change that,” or people can just hustle through it. But unfortunately, burnout isn’t just about being tired. There’s kind of a three different phases I like to look at it is you have stress, right? Stress is normal for the workplace. A lot of times you might be doing too much, you’re engaged, maybe you’re pushing through and then you have fatigue, which is you’re tired, but maybe you just need a little bit of rest. And then burnout is like the third phase where you’re completely drained, you’re completely detached and you’re completely ineffective either in your role or this is how your employees are feeling and that can sometimes be even after rest because it’s rarely about working hard.

(09:07):

It’s about how the work feels and how it functions. And so what we want to share with you today is really just all these different strategies that you can do to prevent burnout because preventing it is so much easier than actually getting out of it, which requires a much top tier approach for that. So just the top three things that I tend to see are unmanageable workload, so consistently too much with no recovery time. So a lot of employees can work really hard in like sprints, right? For those of you that ran track, I ran track in college so I always like to think in terms of running is you do the sprint and then you recover whereas the unmanageable workload is like you’re running a marathon and then they expect you to run another marathon without the rest period. Poor boundaries, this is huge.

(09:59):

And this one’s one we have a ton of control over as an employee and an employer is we are always saying yes to things. We’re always on. There’s no separation from work in the rest of our life. And then the third one that a lot of people don’t see is unclear expectations. We’ll talk a little bit later about how everyone thinks they communicate really well, but really just learning how to communicate and clarify roles can really make such a difference for employees as well.

(10:32):

So a couple early warning signs, so I’m sure you’re curious because we were trying to prevent burnout here. We might be trying to get out of it and you can still do these preventative measures while you’re in it as well. So things that people normally miss are decreased motivation, right? If your employees aren’t engaged, that’s a problem. That’s not just a sign of how work is. That is a significant problem in the workplace. They might be frustrated, they might be checked out. Their focus in productivity is really low. So a lot of times they’re like, “Oh, they’re making mistakes.” Well, maybe they’re making mistakes because they’re burnt out, not because they want to make mistakes. Most people do not want to make mistakes. Increased procrastination is a really, really big one as well. So we’re really just trying to put off tasks because it’s just so overwhelming they will put off the little tasks, feelings of emotional exhaustion, more than just tiredness and just that small task feel really overwhelming.

(11:35):

So if you or your employees feel like, “Oh my gosh, I just asked them to do something really small,” there’s probably something so much bigger at play rather than, “Oh, I just need to send this email or complete this small task.” And then one of my favorites is, it’s not actually a favorite, but pushing through when you’re exhausted. So if you feel like your employees are really forcing through the work and they just seem really disengaged, really disempowered, it’s a really, really, really good sign as well.

Lori Cole (12:06):

So I almost feel like there is a work depression. Is something where you’re not depressed overall with your life, but you’re depressed about work because I see a lot of the same signs and symptoms of depression that you just talked about that would be related to your work and not necessarily spill over into your own life.

Stephanie Bidle (12:36):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There’s so many things that can come up at work that really ... I mean, and they start to influence your life as well. If you’re so burnt out at work, without preventing it, you’ll start to see the influence as well.

Lori Cole (12:53):

So one of the things that sounds super simple, but honestly this changes everything, just being able to set up those boundaries and boundaries aren’t really about doing less or caring less. It’s more about what you allow people to do. Stephanie, let’s dig into why boundaries matter so much and what really happens when those boundaries are missing.

Stephanie Bidle (13:21):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, boundaries are everything and I think sometimes boundaries are this taboo topic and so people are like, “Oh, you just need to set boundaries.” Okay, what on earth does that actually mean? They really are about protecting your energy so you can show up consistently and effectively. So this can be life and work. Today we’re talking about work, but everything we talk about can also be applied to your personal life as well. So without these boundaries, your energy gets really depleted. If you’re feeling like, “Ugh, that’s probably lack of a boundary,” your focus gets really scattered and generally your performance declines over time. A couple examples is really saying yes to everything because you want to be seen as helpful, accepting every meeting invite, which we’ll talk about some tools for that later, constant availability. There’s no clear or stop to the workday, lack of priorities so everything feels urgent.

(14:21):

So from an employer perspective, this is where you can really help with the communication piece, creating a plan and prioritizing and then not communicating, not communicating capacity or bandwidth. So most of the issues come down to clarity and communication and so really just figuring those out is huge. I know a lot of these things sound so simple like, “Oh, I’ll just take this little time after work. Oh, I’ll just reply to this email after hours. Oh, I’ll just bring my laptop on vacation.” They seem like these really small ... I see you laughing there, Lori.

Lori Cole (15:00):

Yeah, I’m guilty.

Stephanie Bidle (15:03):

And a lot of times they seem like really small things. I’m not saying, Oh, on occasion you can’t do things. However, what tends to happen is they build up over time and when burnout becomes unsustainable is because your brain and your body haven’t had a rest period. We’ll get into some of those in a little bit, but for now I really want to just talk about ... I talk a lot about mindset in the work that I do with training and leadership development and honestly with my personal clients as well. Mindset is, well, everything if you ask me, but really shifting it from being available to being sustainable, right? Because we all want to be these top employees and if you’re an employer here, your employees probably want to be pretty good. I’m just going to give them all the benefit of the doubt here and we’re afraid a lot of the times to be like, “Oh, I can’t say no.”

(15:54):

And so a couple examples for you are “I need to be available all the time” to “I need to be effective over time.” So still having that high performing perceptive, “saying yes proves my value” and “being intentional protects my value.”

(16:16):

“I’ll just push through” to “what pace can I maintain consistently.” So these might be a little weird to you. At first you’re like, “I’m not so sure.” If you’re feeling some resistance come up, totally normal, definitely worth talking about from a training. There’s so many things you can do to really just work on the mindset shifts for people in organizations, but just a couple examples of what you can do for boundaries, I think these are relatively simple. I know sometimes it’s really scary depending on where you are. So if these feel like too much, just make them even smaller because everything matters. So if someone comes to you with a new task, yeah, I can get that done. Normally your first response, it probably hasn’t even registered in your brain yet. And you’re like, “Yes, I can do it.” Because you want to be seen as someone who’s helpful.

(17:08):

However, just as helpful is, “Yeah, absolutely I can take that on. Right now I’m working on project X and Y, which one’s a priority?” So you’re still being helpful and you’re also training people how to talk to you. So if you ever struggled with boundaries in the past, just know that over time, like that beginning phase of setting boundaries can be a little bit hard, but no, it is always worth it in the end and people will learn how you like to communicate and they will start to treat you that way. Number two, after hours messages, responding immediately, you could respond and say, “I’ll take a look at this first thing in the morning.” Most of the time people ... Well, one, if you’re an employer, please do not send after hours messages. There are time delays. There are so many tools, even if you are, which I also recommend you not, but if you are, there are delayed responses, but what’s even better is to turn off your work notifications after hours.

(18:04):

And if you’re feeling a little cringe here and you’re feeling burnt out, just know. I got you. I turn off all my work notifications after hours, something crazy. I actually have no work email on my cell phone, which we’ll get to that later. But just so you know, there’s definitely things that you can do. I think we’re just not accustomed because we feel like we have the pressure to always be available. Delegation, oh my gosh. When I was working in HR, delegation was my worst skill, 100% my worst skill. And so I would just be like, “Yeah, yeah, I got this. No problem.” Until I started managing a team of five, I finally was like, “You know what? I’ve hit my breaking point. I have to delegate. I can’t not delegate. There’s no capacity. I can’t push through this.” So if someone says they’ll reach out, “I’d love to help, but my bandwidth is a little tight today, but maybe I could support you tomorrow, walk you through it quickly at another time.” And so you’re still, if you’re worried about being seen as somebody who is not helpful or I still want to be a good employee, there’s things that you can do to be like, “Yes, I’m happy to help you with that.

(19:18):

My current capacity is this. Can we schedule a time next week?” Whatever it looks like, if you communicate, most of the time people are relatively perceptive.

Lori Cole (19:29):

There are so many great things that you talked about on this slide. The reframing one for me is big because I will take my laptop on vacation and I’ve always justified that by saying, “You know what? It’s going to be so much easier for me to keep up on my email while I’m on vacation instead of coming back to a train wreck after two weeks and spending a week digging out.” But I also think that that needs to be reframed because your brain doesn’t shut off then. Your brain doesn’t shut off from work. It is always thinking about that in the back of your mind and you’re not really enjoying your vacation or resting or taking that time off. So good advice to reframe that. Delegation is hard for me too. I wonder a lot of people.

(20:28):

Sometimes I feel like it’s just easier to do it myself than to delegate it to anybody because I’m going to spend as much time trying to teach them how to do it as if I just did it myself. So yeah, I can relate. So here’s the thing about preventing burnout. Leaders are the ones that set the tone and it starts with you. Your team is watching how much you work, how you handle your own boundaries, how the senior leadership handles their boundaries and whether you actually disconnect at the end of the day. So let’s talk about what that looks like in practice, Stephanie.

Stephanie Bidle (21:15):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I was checking out the chat too. I know,

Lori Cole (21:19):

I am too. I’m trying to

Stephanie Bidle (21:22):

Look at it too. No, it was interesting. If somebody had said if you’re working while on vacation, that only is it not a vacation, but you should also be getting paid. Yes, from a legal perspective, we could totally go into all the reasons that you should get paid. Absolutely true. Sorry, I digress. I opened the attendee chat and got distracted back to where we were. No, but it’s so true. So with the model boundary setting, so when you’re working on vacation, so if you’re an employee and my boss is working on vacation and you tell me not to work on vacation, right? I’m still looking at what you’re doing and everything that you’re doing is what I’m going to follow suit for. And so how you actually, you have to walk the walk more than talk the talk. If you’re like, yes, my employees should set boundaries, my employees shouldn’t have all of these late night emails or unnecessary urgency, you have to show them that.

(22:19):

Even if your bosses aren’t giving you the same respect, I realize that’s a very challenging position to be in and if you don’t set those boundaries, you’ll never know. You’ll never know how it would look for your employees because they’re going to constantly feel that stress even though you tell them not to.

Lori Cole (22:39):

All right. If you’re sitting here thinking my leadership doesn’t model this yet, we hear you and there are some concrete tools that you can use right now to protect yourself. So walk us through some of these tools, Stephanie.

Stephanie Bidle (22:57):

Absolutely. And I love a simple tool and a lot of times people are like, “Stephanie, these tools are so simple.” I’m like, “Yes, that is the entire point”. My business is called the Simplicity Secret for a reason is because the most sustainable tools in your personal life, in your business are the ones that you can replicate over and over and over again.” And so I actually sent Alexia the full breakdown of all of these tools. So if you really want to dig into these a little bit deeper, I forget where she said she put it, but it is available in the resource tab and we’ll send it after. But what’s really awesome about these, these are things you can do and they’re also things you can share with your employees. So first one is your pause before yes tool. So we kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but when you’re asked to take on a new task, pause, actually pause instead of that reaction and just say, “Let me check my current priorities and get back to you.”

(23:53):

Now, if you want to reframe that to a way that sounds like your personal language, you can absolutely do that, but really the key is just taking a second to let it register and then respond versus reacting. So if anyone’s ever heard about responding versus reacting from an emotional perspective, you can use that as well. Number two is your priority trade off tool and this one is awesome if you have a boss. So pairing every yes with a trade off and maybe not a trade off, you can still do all of the tools, but “Yeah, absolutely I can take that on. Which of these is the priority?” So you have projects A, B, and C and so in my mind, project C is the priority. Boss comes with project A, I’m thinking, “Ooh, I need to do C, then B, then A.” And she’s like, “Oh wait, no A is the top priority.” I’m like, “Okay, great.

(24:43):

Can I change the deadline for the other one?” “Oh, for sure.” I don’t think she’s ever said no. Now, you might get some pushback, but you can still allocate maybe some other things maybe on a project. The next one is the weekly alignment check. So this is really just knowing what your priorities are. So you have, I say three priorities. If you try to do more than three priorities in a day, that’s probably too much and that’s a giant task list is really knowing what your priorities are. Okay You have like one, two and three, do those first. It’s called the Eat the Frog method if anyone’s familiar and if anyone ever wants to talk time management strategies could go on forever, but I know that’s not why…

(25:30):

Talk about some books, but there actually is a book called Eat the Frog and it has a frog. Yeah. It’s so good. It’s so good. But anyway, doing your top priorities first rather than like checking email, taking care of all of these small tasks and the end of the day comes and you’re like, “Oh, I forgot to work on my project.” But I always think that that’s really helpful. If you have employees doing like a weekly check-in, so if you don’t currently have weekly check-ins with your employees, I highly, highly, highly recommend it. Recommend is a nice way of saying it. I know some people have really, really large teams so maybe you could do monthly. I have a friend who has like 80 employees on her team. Obviously she is not ... I know. I’m like, first of all, restructure. But anyway, obviously I would not expect you to do it at that level, but I used to have a team of five and I used to do weekly check-ins with them once a week for 30 minutes.

(26:25):

I would block them back to back, boom, done for the week. Really helpful in one, informing your boss, but also having your boss inform you and creating that safe space to not only constantly message you when there are issues or you constantly messaging them when they need it. Won’t go into full distraction mode, but the more you can minimize distractions, the better your employees are probably going to do as well. And then one of my favorites is also the define done tool. I would get like a lot of projects is somebody like, “Hey, can you do project X?” “Sure. What does success look like for this project? What is the due date?” And if you notice most people do not say, at least where I used to work, maybe this is different in other organizations, but most organizations that I work with as well, they’re like, “Oh yeah, soon I’d like to have it soon.”

(27:19):

“I’m like, ‘Soon’ is at the end of the day? Is that the end of the week? Is that the end of the month?” We’re not clearly communicating and what does done actually look like? Does that mean you want the draft by the end of the week? Of course I can do that. If you want the whole project by the end of the week, that’s a different scenario. So those are four of my favorite tools, but yeah, if anyone wants to connect and learn more about those, I have some free resources if you really want to dig into tools because tools are your best friend, especially if you want to take training or things back to your workplace instead of just being like, “We should set boundaries.” You’re like, “Okay, here’s some actual tools that we can start implementing.”

Lori Cole (27:57):

So I love what you said about the one-on-ones because when I had a group of people working under me, we did our one-on-ones back to back, like you said. We also each had our own individual documents. So I had a shared document just with each of those people. So during the week we could write down, “Oh, here’s a topic I want to talk to you about on the next one-on-one.” And that just kind of got the agenda flowing. Now everybody knew that if there was a problem, of course you reached out and we handled it, but there’s just things like, “Oh, I’ve got this idea for productivity that would make us all more effective and I want to talk to my manager about that.” And I do the same thing today with my manager. We have this shared one-on-one document and it goes through and you kind of let the employee own that.

(28:58):

It’s not you managing the document, you’re both mutually contributing to it, but really that employee owns it and that works out just great.

Stephanie Bidle (29:11):

I love that. I’ve seen that be very successful in organizations.

Lori Cole (29:15):

Yeah. And if you get all of your one-on-ones done in a group, then you can address everything that came out of them at once.

Stephanie Bidle (29:25):

Absolutely. And if there’s something then you need to address as the team, you can talk about it in the team meeting as well.

Lori Cole (29:30):

Yeah. Yeah. All right, this is where it all comes together, a culture where people actually feel like they can do their best work and have a life outside of work. Let’s talk about what small changes can drive the biggest company culture impact.

Stephanie Bidle (29:51):

Absolutely. So communication, and I’ll probably say it 10 more times, communication is key. Most people think that they communicate way They way, way better than they probably do. The sooner you can do it early and often, best friend. The second one is really learning how to create safety in the workplace, which is now this is a very in- depth topic. It’s actually I’ve learned about creating safety from an organizational perspective and also I’ve been learning how to create safety from the individual perspective. So if that interests you at all, please message me because it’s a fascinating topic, but I’m learning more and more that creating psychological safety in the workplace is huge. I’ve seen a lot of organizations say they want to talk about safety, but if your employees do not feel safe in speaking up in voicing their opinions, that is huge. So being able to build the relationships with your employees is incredible and just creating that space before you say yes.

(30:56):

Next one is really mini breaks. Is anyone here? I’m curious. I guess put a thumbs up. I can’t see you. Has anybody done 25 or 50 minute meetings instead of 30 versus 60? I’m really curious. If you haven’t, highly recommend because those mini breaks between your day, especially for organizations that you can’t get out of the meetings or their meetings the whole day, at least you’re getting a brain break, that’s five minutes, the 10 minutes, maybe even a real lunch break, don’t get me crazy. One of my friends works for a really, really large organization and they do mandated lunch breaks. So at first she was like, “I don’t know. I could be working. I could be working.” However, they don’t schedule meetings before, I think she said nine, 10 o’clock. They don’t hardly ever do them after three unless there’s an emergency because you have to build in the emergency.

(31:53):

You can’t be like, “Oh, we have meetings the entire day.” And then if there’s an emergency, when are you supposed to get it done?

(32:00):

I saw a couple thumbs up, so that’s awesome. But I’ve found that that is one of the easiest things to implement because instead of being like, “Take away the meetings. Stephanie says we’re in too many meetings.” He’s like, “Okay, is there one or two meetings that you can change to 25 or 50?” Most of the time the answer is yes. And a lot of people want it back because I mean, people have to get a snack, go to the bathroom, do all of the things that they’re going to have to do anyway and it just gives you a time to shift over your brain as well.

Lori Cole (32:28):

And you have to stick to it. We do that here at iHire. We’ll have 25 minute and 55 minute meetings since we have those little breaks built in, but you have to stick to it. And I will say that our leadership is very good about cutting that off and saying, “Hey, we’ve only got a few more minutes left here instead of taking it out to the very end. I know I said it was going to be 25 minutes, but we’re actually going to go 30.” So yeah, our group is pretty good about that.

Stephanie Bidle (33:05):

And that’s an important piece, like getting the buy-in from all the levels definitely makes it more impactful for sure.

Lori Cole (33:16):

All right. So before you share some of your stories with us, Stephanie, could you give us a quick recap of what you’ve covered today?

Stephanie Bidle (33:26):

Oh gosh, yes. So first of all, communication is king. So if you’re not communicating early from the employer and the employee perspective, we’ll get to, I think that’s actually later in today’s program is communicating your needs earlier as well. Don’t wait until you’re totally burnt out. So that is a huge one. Taking the actual practical tools. I talk way more about burnout prevention than I do about getting out of burnout because there are so many more things that you have to do to get out of burnout. Now these will help, but if you’re like, “Stephanie, these tools are not going to get me out of burnout. I hear you.” Definitely need probably a deeper approach, right? But to prevent it is huge. And really just shifting what burnout is to you from a mindset perspective and just understanding that you have a little bit more control both as the employee and as the employer into how you’re setting those boundaries.

(34:29):

I’ve found a lot of the presentations that I do and a lot of work that I do with organizations is, yes, you might work in a corporate role. However, there’s usually more control and autonomy in your job than you might realize and I challenge you to figure out maybe where that is. I think sometimes we get stuck in the, “I can’t do anything. My organization sucks. I hate it. It’s the worst. Boom.” Okay. Is there one or two of these tools that you can do that would have a huge impact?

Lori Cole (34:59):

All right. Now it’s time for our questions. If you haven’t submitted a question yet, you can do that. I know we have a ton of them here to go through. And remember to stick with us up till the 55 minute mark because that’s when your certification widget will come on. And I don’t know about everybody else, but my screen is just spinning on the slides. So give me a thumbs up if people can see their slides. It might just be something on my end. You can see them?

Stephanie Bidle (35:32):

Yeah, I can see them. Yeah.

Lori Cole (35:33):

Okay. That’s just a me thing then. So how can I support employees in recovering from burnout without disrupting our productivity or their productivity?

Stephanie Bidle (35:47):

Absolutely. And that’s such a good question. And like I said, it is more challenging once they’re already burnt out. However, how can you keep the productivity? One, I would say if you don’t give them the proper rest, they are absolutely not going to be productive. If your employees are burnt out, they are not being productive. And sometimes rest is very counterintuitive. And when I say rest, that could be a couple of days off or it could be taking a couple meetings off or it could be creating those 25, 50 minute meetings to give them the space. Now, rest is huge because if you want to keep having your employees be productive and not quit, which they eventually will most likely, or they’ll stay and not be productive, which is probably worse, is really figuring out what can they do and then sometimes just asking them.

(36:37):

So what is it that you need? What would be the most supportive tool that I can help you with? Because a lot of times what I might need when I’m burnt out is very different than what somebody else would need when they’re burnt out as well.

Lori Cole (36:51):

And you talked about meetings a little bit. You don’t have to be in every meeting, right? I mean, you can ask your boss, is it really necessary for me to be in an entire day of back-to-back meetings where I might not have a whole lot to contribute with this? And with all of the new tools and things we have now, like the AI meeting notes and I know that teams will record the meetings so that you can watch it at double speed later and get caught up. That’s one of the first things that you could do to try to save yourself and your employees a little bit of that bandwidth and just give them that space

Stephanie Bidle (37:38):

Absolutely. And I’ve seen that be really huge as well with the organizations is like, I remember one time I asked my boss, I was like, “They sent this to me. Do I need to be on this? “ And I would have never asked this before, mind you. I had a lot less confidence at the beginning. And she was like, “Oh no, you don’t need to be on that. I’m going to be on it. I’ll let you know if there’s any actions.” And I was like, “Wait, this whole time I have been attending meetings that I didn’t have to go to. “ Now don’t say it for every meeting because that’s not going to work. And if you have like a big team, we used to kind of collab. So when I was leading the HR department, I didn’t go on the recruitment meetings. My recruitment people went on the recruitment meetings because they’re the experts and they’d be like, “Okay, here’s what we need to change.” And I think one, if you’re sending the meeting invites, you can be a lot more intentional about who needs to be on the call or maybe asking the manager who on your team needs to be included instead of just mindlessly adding everybody because we want to be inclusive, right?

(38:34):

We don’t leave anybody out. So sometimes just asking is huge. I think it’s a big deal.

Lori Cole (38:44):

All right. Are there tools or metrics I can use to measure burnout levels in my organization?

Stephanie Bidle (38:51):

Yes. So anyone here heard of Gallup, you can give me a thumbs up if you’ve heard of Gallup. And Gallup is actually one of the top engagement tools I think in the entire world, but they have an engagement survey that you can use to track the metrics. If you’re feeling like, “Hey, we’re not ready to invest in a tool yet,” then you can absolutely create your own. My biggest advice and/or caveat is do not take data if you’re not going to do anything about it. So if your employees are vulnerable and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, they’re finally asking me how I feel at work.” And then you’re like, “Oh, this is great data, but I’m kind of busy.” That’s actually going to be worse than if you didn’t take the data at all. So what’s fascinating also Gallup had said, anybody read ... I’m so obsessed with these kind of reports, Gallup’s 2025 or 2026 state of the workforce report?

(39:44):

I’m going to say no.

Lori Cole (39:46):

No, we do one at iHire too and they are fascinating.

Stephanie Bidle (39:50):

So fascinating. Oh yeah, now I want to read yours too. What’s really interesting is their engagement is down across the global workforce and they literally said the top three things to help that, which we know burnout is a huge indicator of engagement. The three things, I almost laughed in my seat. They were literally like train employees and managers, coach employees and managers and have ongoing personal and professional development. I was like, “Oh wow, you’re saying all of those things.” So just as like a fun fact, and I don’t know what came up in your report is training managers is your best friend. We assume because people are promoted that they’re going to be a good manager or they already know what we have because we have the experience. I have unfortunately found that it’s not true, which might not feel great, but over communicating, I won’t say overtraining, I’ve never seen anyone be overtrained.

(40:43):

I could be standing corrected, but training your managers to understand burnout, how to implement these small strategies, because sometimes even if your upper level organization is like, “Hey, this is what we believe in,” and your managers are not implementing it to their employees, you’re not going to be able to se the results that you want to see too.

Lori Cole (41:02):

So what you said about making sure that you use the data that you accumulate in these surveys, that’s huge because most of the people I know in our toxic workplace report will say, “I don’t report things to HR because nothing’s going to get done.” There’s been a pattern of nothing getting done, so you don’t want people to feel like that. The other thing I think that is helpful if you’re going to use these survey tools, make sure that people know that they’re anonymous and it’s a safe space because I have seen that backfire on companies where the employees were like, “No, they can track down and know exactly who I am by the way I say things or by the way I’m categorized in their system. So I don’t trust that it is a safe space,” and you want to make sure that it is a safe space and there’s no retaliation that goes on, that people don’t feel like they’re pinpointed because, oh, somebody said this in the employee survey, did that happen to be you?

(42:21):

So I’ve seen managers do that before. Yeah, definitely.

Stephanie Bidle (42:26):

If you want to know how to get rid of trust and building relationships in the workplace immediately, do that.

Lori Cole (42:32):

Yeah. Scare people into not saying anything. So how often should I assess employee wellbeing to stay ahead of this burnout risk?

Stephanie Bidle (42:43):

Well, I always say all of the time I think it’s something, and you don’t have to be all formal about this, but weekly checking in with your people, like you said, the standing agenda. So what’s going on, what’s happening in your life and really just understanding where they are. If you don’t build a relationship with your team, they are not going to tell you how they’re doing, especially because it takes a lot of vulnerability and a lot of safety to be like, “You know what? I’m actually not doing well.” And if you build those relationships, it’s just going to be so much easier. So I say weekly, I would say if you have a huge team monthly and people are like, “Oh, do I really have to be like, how is your wellbeing today?” You don’t have to say it like that every single time, but really building the relationship, like what’s going on there in their life, what’s happening and just creating that makes it much more easier to know how people are doing before they’re like burnt out and then they come to you crying and they’re just like been holding onto something for so long

Lori Cole (43:45):

That again, safe space in your one-on-ones, if you’re a manager and you can talk to your people and they trust you and they can tell you about their personal lives sometimes I’ve had one-on-ones with people that are about nothing but personal things, what was going on with them or with their family or with a parent they were trying to take care of. There’s so many things that can affect their work life and it’s not just people can’t keep that siloed all of the time.

Stephanie Bidle (44:21):

Yeah. It’s an interesting balance. And where I used to work is sometimes people were so afraid to ask them about things because they were afraid they were going to touch like medical and FMLA and ADA because we had, well, quite frankly, trained them a little too good on FMLA and ADA and all the things that they shouldn’t talk about. And so if that’s anybody on this call, I just want you to know that there is a balance between, because I think people go one of both ways, right? I’ll ask nothing and it’s like I’ll ask them everything. It gets so personal and confidential. There is a balance to understand people’s lives without necessarily specifically asking their medical condition. There is absolutely a balance that you can strike and leaning too much one way or the other, you’ll probably get some backlash on your employees.

Lori Cole (45:09):

And that comes from time and trust with your manager, that just the more people are willing to open up about their personal lives and yeah, that just comes with time. It’s not something you can jump right into with a new hire. Yes. Okay. So burnout is the third phase after or is burnout the third phase after stress and fatigue, or is it a combination of these emotional states with disengagement?

Stephanie Bidle (45:44):

Yeah. I mean, not everything is so simple, right? Like you don’t just go from like on to the other. Everything is an ebb and flow. I put it in that context just to give you some ideas between just because you’re stressed doesn’t mean you’re burnt out, but also knowing how to manage that stress so it doesn’t shift fully into burnout because I think burnout is really just one component of the workplace. So there’s actually been a lot of interesting new research about when people are really passionate about what they do, if they believe in the mission of the organization, if they believe in the mission of their role, then they’re actually less likely to be burnt out because it’s not about the workload all the time. A lot of times it’s about how they feel about the workload. And so knowing how people feel and really being able to communicate like, “This is how your role impacts this project, this is how your role impacts this organization.” I think that can sometimes get lost, especially in a large organization.

(46:47):

When I was in HR, sometimes I’d be like, “Okay, I’m just doing HR things. This is great.” I never thought to like ... I worked for an organization with disabilities. I don’t think barely ever thought, “Oh my gosh, the work that I’m doing is actually helping our employees to provide better services to individuals with disabilities.” Wow. I think I would probably show up a little bit differently. And so just knowing where that connection is and having people feel purposeful and driven in their work is also another way to prevent both burnout, but also increased engagement as well.

Lori Cole (47:21):

We went through an exercise like that many years ago where it wasn’t, what does your company do? It is, how does your company show up in people’s lives? What’s the end result of that? And it really does help you to think about that differently about, gosh, I really am making a huge difference in a lot of lives by doing my job. So that’s kind of cool to think about. So next, how do you cope with the guilt for creating boundaries?

Stephanie Bidle (48:04):

I don’t know if it was a girl that asked that, but that was what the first thing that came out of my mind was, yes, that’s huge. So actually a lot of the work that I’ve been doing with my coaching clients and in my own coaching is that type of guilt because it stems from normally childhood, society. There’s so many other factors at play and I don’t want to just like say, “Oh my gosh, I just woke up one day and didn’t feel guilty about setting boundaries.” No, you really learned, one, what you really stand for and so I struggled with people pleasing all the time. I would tell people what they wanted to hear. I wouldn’t set boundaries because I think people would like me it’s fine. I don’t care. So when I sat down with myself, with my coach, a lot of things that I’ve done to not receive the guilt is like, “What is it that you really want?

(48:58):

What is really important for you?” And so you’re coming back to your why. So this can be for an organization for, this sounds more like an individual question, but when you know why it’s important to you, then that’s when you can start to implement something. And so for me, I remember a little personal story is time management was something that I struggled with for a very long time and my family was always like, “You’re on time, you’re on time, you’re on time, you’re on time.” And I showed up to dinner one minute late. Now I do pride myself on being on time. I had to tell my mom, I said, look, I said, “I know it’s important to be on time. I’m going to do my best.” However, my boundary was it’s really, really hard for me when you’re making me feel, or people can’t really make you feel, when they’re telling you how this feels about time management.

(49:55):

So it’s a process and sometimes boundaries are kind of messy at first. I don’t know if she loved it when I said that at first and then she was like, “Oh, I realize I’m not helping,” because they normally come from a good place, right? She wants me to be on time. She wants me to be doing all of these things. And so sometimes you just have to know your why and to really connect to why it’s important and then working through the guilt and shame is such a really, really, really deep ingrained concept. I’m happy to talk with whoever asks that if you have more specific questions, but allow it to be messy for a little bit and then start to realize the impact on your life.

Lori Cole (50:41):

All right. I want to do two more questions because they’re so good. As a leader, how do you support burnout prevention for neurodivergent employees who experience burnout quicker and experience it throughout the day?

Stephanie Bidle (50:56):

Yes. First of all, if you have to know your employees and like we said with the relationships, if you don’t know your employees and this is kind of where you might want to also talk to HR because sometimes this can go into the medical component, but knowing specifically what the neurodivergent is. So like for instance, like I had a client and I have a friend with ADHD so a lot of the tools that I talk about for habits are not effective for them. They don’t work exactly the same as them and so they feel much more overwhelmed, much more stuff like a big thing if you know someone with ADHD is actually body doubling so they can’t focus in the same way that we can. And so if you don’t know, you cannot help them. And so I mean, neurodivergent is really, there’s so many different tools depending on what it is.

(51:51):

Maybe they have OCD, maybe they have ADHD, maybe they have something completely different and that’s why I actually have a, I have a tool and I think it would actually be really helpful here. I didn’t provide it yet, but knowing what kind of support your employees are looking for, right? So now they don’t always know, but it is important to think about like, “Hey, what would be really supportive to you? Do you need more breaks?” And a lot of times people can help you, but HR can be a really supportive resource if you need like a specific accommodation for ... They’re not allowed to have meetings during a certain time, but yeah, definitely knowing what it is is really important so you can tailor because employees are not all the same whether they have neurodivergent or not, they don’t like to be handled the same way.

(52:38):

They receive burnout in different ways and for different reasons. And so it’s just important that it is an individualized experience.

Lori Cole (52:45):

All right I really want to do this one. How can I avoid burnout if a fellow coworker doesn’t do their work and I have to take it over?

Stephanie Bidle (52:56):

Oof. Okay. I feel like I have some follow up questions. One, why do you have to take it over? Does your boss tell you you have to take it over? This is really hard because this is probably a boundary. This is probably something you’ll have to set. So let’s say you’re on a team, I don’t know if this is your example and if you want to talk specifics we can because it might defer on my answer, but you’re on a team, you have a coworker and they don’t get their work done and let’s just say you just absorb it and you just do it. You’re also training them that you are just going to complete the work. And I know that sounds horrible, I’ll say it out loud. However, they are never going to change it without knowing the impact of their content now. First, I would probably just try to talk to them and talk to them how you ... Now, if you’re not comfortable doing that, that’s a whole different story, but it’s also something you can talk to your boss about if that feels like a safe space.

(53:55):

Without knowing the intricacies of your situation, I just don’t want to be like, “Oh, do A, B, or C.” It really depends, but I would say I’ve been there and it sucks and taking over an entire team project is horrible,

(54:11):

But at the same time, you want to do a really good job at work and maybe your work depends on it and there’s a lot of nuances here, but I would say without knowing the situation is one, talking to the person who’s doing it to you and letting them know how you feel, because sometimes we assume people know how we feel. Maybe they do know, which is just a different problem entirely, but also some things that I’ve done is if say it’s like they have to do A and you have to do B, I give people different deadlines. So if my hard deadline is like Friday, I’ll tell them that I have to have it done by Tuesday so that way if they’re late, there’s a little bit of a gap there, depending if that impacts your situation. Don’t give other people your deadlines, make at least a week or whatever you can make work.

Lori Cole (55:00):

All right. Well, that is all the time left today. Didn’t I tell you all that Stephanie was just going to be fabulous for you? Send up those clapping hands and those hard emojis and everything that you can for Stephanie because this was so wonderful and I know that we could go on talking. We appreciate everybody that submitted your questions. If you have any other questions, you can reach out to our customer success team at [email protected]. We will get you connected with the right person or with Stephanie. I’m sure Stephanie’s information is in the resource widget so you can download that and contact her directly. Remember to view that click certificate button in the certification widget and download that certificate of completion for SHRM and HRCI. Look at all those emojis going, Stephanie, everybody loves you. Keep an eye on your inbox for an on-demand recording of today’s webinar and you will also be receiving an invite for the next webinar.

(56:03):

It should be headed your way in a few weeks. I hope you all have a great rest of the day. Stephanie, once again, many thanks to you, clapping hands. Thank you so much.

Stephanie Bidle (56:13):

Yes, thank you. Happy to be here.