But many leaders fail to adapt policies, processes, and other work conditions
How can employers better combat burnout? Managers play a big role, according to a new survey.
Manager adaptability in conjunction with empathy drives employee outcomes such as inclusion, well-being, and intent to stay — along with decreasing experiences of burnout, says the report from Catalyst.
“With a positive attitude toward learning about and acting on difficult situations — even when they are highly uncertain, unstable, and unusual — managers can lead teams to success,” say authors Kathrina Robotham and Tara Van Bommel.
When managers have high empathy and high adaptability skills, Catalyst found employees tend to have more positive experiences, such as being:
- two times more likely to feel included
- four times more likely to have high well-being
- two times more likely to “intend to stay” with their employer
- 43% less likely to experience high levels of general work burnout
- 42% less likely to experience high levels of personal burnout
Employee burnout is among the top concerns for Canadian employers going into 2023, according to a separate survey.
Managers failing
However, nearly seven out of 10 (69%) employees say their managers fail to adapt, finds the Catalyst survey of 5,494 employees in 11 countries including 698 Canadian employees.
The numbers are even worse for men (72%), employees with disabilities (77%), lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, or asexual employees (74%), and employees with caregiving responsibilities (72%). Further, employees from marginalized racial and ethnic groups (66%) are more likely than White employees (58%) to report that their managers were not adaptable.
A recent report from Gartner found that despite a culture of overwork, just 14% of companies have taken steps to ease their managers’ burdens.
“A failure to adapt by managers is concerning as employees stressed by the volatility of the last few years continue to call on their managers to find new ways of working and show that diversity, equity, and inclusion are valued,” say the Catalyst authors of Adapt or Fail: How managers can enable everyone to thrive at work.
“For companies worried about attracting and retaining women and others from marginalized demographic groups, fostering manager adaptability is a strategic business imperative.”
It’s not enough for a manager simply to listen to what employees are struggling with, they say.
“Managers must also adjust policies, processes, and other work conditions as a behavioural demonstration of their care and concern for employee well-being and engagement.
“In other words, cognitive and emotional empathy are important first steps, but employees may perceive the absence of managerial action as insincerity — or a lack of behavioural integrity — and therefore respond by withdrawing from their work and experiencing greater sleep disturbance.”
