May is mental health month, and it's that time of year when employers start to talk about the importance of looking after their staff's mental health. But how many of them actually do something about it?

In a 2023 survey conducted by Deloitte, it was reported that across the US, UK, Canada and Australia, that 64% of managers have considered quitting for a job that would better support their well-being. Alongside this, 55% of all respondents felt that their workload was becoming more intense and demanding. [1]

We’ve now adapted to a post covid way of working, and most organisations have now introduced remote and hybrid working to many roles across the UK. Although it’s been proven to have a positive effect on motivation and productivity within the workplace, it’s also blurred boundaries between home and work, and has made it significantly harder for us to realise when we're headed for burnout.

In this new age of social media and accessible content, mental health and ‘burnout’ is constantly being discussed, and this surge of content can sometimes feel overwhelming. Actions can get lost in the noise of advice, and organisations often lose their focus on mental wellbeing once a week of scheduled social posts have been published.

So, what can organisations do to manage how employees feel in an age of expectation and increasing workload? And what can you do to manage burnout if you’re experiencing it.

Throughout this blog, we aim to investigate:

• What is burnout and how does it affect people?
• How can we help burnout?
• The link between burnout and recruitment.
• Ways employers can provide better support.
• How we’ve personally tackled the issue internally.

So, what exactly is burnout? Why is everyone talking about it? Is it just another buzzword? 

Workplace burnout is popping up everywhere, you’ll see it on ‘all the different social media sites, mainstream media and of course, companies. As it should, it is a serious syndrome. It’s not something to be taken lightly. However, it has brought up a lot of bad content and a lot of misconceptions.’ [2]

It is important to note that burnout is not a medication condition, instead it has been recognised by the World Health Organisation as a ‘syndrome, meaning a collection of symptoms or signs associated with a specific health-related cause. Burnout is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion. It can occur when you experience long-term stress, for example working a stressful job.’ [3]

So, what does it look like? How do you know if you’re experiencing burnout?

Before we get into the actual details of what burnout looks like, it’s important to recognise that burnout can be often confused with other symptoms and emotions. According to a survey from Mental Health UK, ‘93% of UK adults correctly identified some symptoms of burnout, whilst 68% mistakenly identified at least one symptom of anxiety instead’.

So, let’s get our facts straight. We’re not doctors and we’re not here to diagnose you, but we have put in a fair amount of research to collect as much information for you as possible. We’ve used guides from Mental Health in Recruitment, and websites such as Mental Health UK to ensure we’re giving you the best insight.

The symptoms mentioned by Mental Health UK are as follows:

• Feeling helpless, trapped and/or defeated
• Feeling detached/alone in the world
• Having a cynical/negative outlook
• Self-doubt, and feeling emotional exhaustion
• Procrastinating and taking longer to get things done
• Feeling overwhelmed

• Feeling tired or drained most of the time

You might also feel the following physical symptoms:

• Fatigued
• Body aches
• Headaches
• Loss of appetite 
• Insomnia

Burnout symptoms are varied for each person, but it’s important to recognise that burnout isn’t just having a bad day, feeling tired and drained or hating your job. It’s a series build-up for a prolonged period where you feel both physically and mentally drained and overwhelmed.

Dealing with burnout. What do you do?

First, it’s important to note that ‘Burnout isn’t an excuse to have some time off work. If you need some time off, then do it. However, don’t take advantage of it. Use that time productively. Look for ways to prevent falling into the burnout trap. There are no quick fixes when it comes to burning out. It takes time, self-reflection, and a desire to change.’[4]

When considering how to combat burnout, you should look at improving certain areas of your life and trying to reflect on how you can make small changes to improve your well-being. According to Mental Health UK, you can start by looking at where this feeling might stem from. It could be money worries, working arrangements, worries about job security, isolation, physical health, sleep, relationships or even the fact you’re caring for others.

Once you’ve identified where you think the main contributor to your burnout is coming from, you can go ahead and look at how to turn things around. The below resources will give you ways to deal with each contributor effectively.

Burnout - Mental Health UK (mentalhealth-uk.org)

Dealing with burnout when working from home | Mind - Mind

Burnout and recruitment.

The above research prompted us to look within our own industry, to identify if we have a burnout epidemic in recruitment, as it’s a sales centric sector. We looked at a recent report from Metal Health in Recruitment, and spoke to some of our recruiters to dig a little deeper.

It’s no secret that working in recruitment can be both a stressful and rewarding job. According to the MHIR survey, the main stresses in the recruitment business were said to be leadership and management, pressure, targets, and expectations. With 50% of the overall stress being linked to leadership and management.

Although leaders and managers that took part in the survey displayed support regarding mental health, they outlined that they felt there is very little education, training and development happening within the industry. Although 51% of senior leaders think recruitment agencies understand the benefits of implementing wellness in the workplace, a shocking ‘84% of senior leaders say they are not providing or providing limited mental health training'.[4]

1 in 4 employees believe that promoting mental health is done as a PR or tick box exercise'[5], and it could be argued that part of the reason employees within recruitment areas are struggling with burnout, is because the business owners and leaders are also struggling, and are prone to ignore their mental health due to lack of training.

What can recruitment agencies do?

We can’t give you an exact science of how to support staff and reduce the risk of burnout, but we can tell you what’s worked for us.

Here are some of the key things we have found that have helped us:

• Creating a sense of community. Not everyone can talk to senior management or owners about their mental health, they might not feel comfortable. Having friends or just one friend at work can make a world of difference. Think about having social days or team-building exercises regularly. We try to create fun days for staff members to bond, such as adventure day outs, payday socials, and themed workdays to bring a little bit of light into the daily grind.
• Ensuring that workloads are reasonable, alongside implementing weekly 1-1 check-ins with employees to see how they are getting on both inside and outside of the job.
• Acknowledging and appreciating hard work and achievements. We encourage weekly shouts out in sales meetings for good work and showcase recruiters’ efforts with the dreaded well done email to all users if they’ve absolutely smashed it. We have yearly and quarterly incentives to reward staff members too.
• Having robust and communicated policy and procedure in place to address workplace bullying and harassment. Promote a zero-tolerance policy for such behaviours and create a safe space for people to be able to discuss them. You could allocate an approachable employee to head this up, rather than making it a formal HR exercise at first.
• Introducing mental health first aiders to provide support and signpost someone experiencing poor mental health to the support available to them. Our mental health first aider is Cheryl, she’s not just a shoulder to cry on, she represents the company’s mission to promote positive mental health in the workplace and to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health
• Finally, investing in an outsourced mental health coach to support staff at all levels of the organisation. We’ve been working with the wonderful Rhonda D'Ambrosio for 5 years now. She’s an amazing mindset and wellbeing coach, alongside being the Founder of Mental Health in Recruitment. She works with us to offer confidential consultations and workshops to everyone who works here, helping them navigate the stresses of working in recruitment, alongside any other personal issues they’re facing.

“Being able to work with Rhonda has been an absolute god send, especially in an environment like recruitment. She’ll always ask going into consultation if you just want to rant, talk about a topic, or if you want to work through it. There are times I just sit there are cry, not even about work, but about anything going on in my life, and she’ll just listen. There are other times I have things within work that are worrying me, or stressing me out, and she’ll take the time to go through everything I’m dealing with and offer me tools I can use to work through them.

The thing I love about Rhonda and her support is that she gives me the tools and frameworks to work through the things that are causing me to worry. She equips me to deal with how I’m feeling, rather than just listening, and offering advice. I always walk away from the consultations feeling like I have a much clearer view of whatever situation I’m in, with the tools to avoiding spiralling into a worst mindset.” – Recruitment Consultant, Niyaa People.

We spoke to one of our Principal Consultants about how he deals with workplace burnout:

‘’I tend to experience burnout at least once every 12 months, especially once I’ve got through a particularly busy period. The anti-climax of not having a million things to do usually puts me in a state of burnout, and I don’t have it in me to make myself busy again. It’s like I have no motivation to do anything, I’ll just sit there staring blankly at my screen, unable to get myself to do anything at all.

Then I’ll panic because I’m not getting anything done, which in turn, created an inability to start a task. It’s a horrible, horrible cycle. When I need to sort out burnout, I normally start by taking some time off work. I focus on an activity outside of work, spend time with my wife and kids, spend time with friends, and play computer games. Switching off and resetting from work usually brings me back with a vengeance, with more motivation than ever.

Sometimes it's easy to forget just how long it’s been since my last break from work, as the desk I do is quite intense and extremely fast-paced. I got this idea of switching off Rhonda, working alongside her to manage my workplace stress and work out where my stressors has done me a world of good. I’m lucky that our workplace encourages booking time off and get away, it allows me to just switch my mind off and relax’’ – Principal Consultant, Niyaa People.

Burnout might be here to stay.

It’s all good for us sat her reeling off how companies can be helping employees. And we aren’t saying they won’t help things, but it’s important to acknowledge that it might be harder to help employees with burnout than you might think.

‘Some experts believe broader economic concerns mean burnout is likely to stick around longer term. Away from work, employees are having to deal with enormous cost-of-living- pressures, Inflation is worse, layoffs are happening, and workers are concerned they’ll lose their homes. So it wouldn’t be surprising if burnout levels are exacerbated even further.'[6]

With the average rent increase for the UK from 2020-23 at a staggering 30.7% [7] it’s no shock that more people are struggling to keep themselves from burning out in work. Employees are having to work harder for less wages, spending higher percentages on rent, travel costs and food. [8]

This doesn’t mean that there’s no point helping your employees because we’re all ’doomed’, it means that there is now more reason that ever to stop talking about how we can all ‘help’ and instead actually put mental health strategies and resources in place to help employees navigate uncertain and difficult times.

To conclude: 

To conclude, it’s pretty obvious conversations about burnout are everywhere, and we aren’t struggling for awareness around the issues (ironic because here’s another article about burnout). However, it’s vital that this month employers do more than just talk about it. They need to be looking for ways to implement mental health help within their company, whatever the industry. 

We haven’t got all the answers to this issue, because it’s much bigger than us. What we can do is give you is an honest reflection of what’s worked for us, and that’s what we’ve tried to do. For more information on what we’ve discussed within this article, please find the sources below:

• [1] Ten workplace mental health statistics for 2023 · MHFA England
• [2] The Many Misconceptions of Burnout (mentalhealthinrecruitment.org)
• [3] Burnout - Mental Health UK (mentalhealth-uk.org)
• [4] The Many Misconceptions of Burnout (mentalhealthinrecruitment.org)
• [5] MHIR Survey Report 2020.pdf
• [6] BBC - Economic burnout
• [7] Rents soar in towns as tenants priced out of cities - BBC News
• [8] ‘It’s all fallen flat’: households earning more than £60,000 on how they are struggling financially | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian