5 Ways to Prevent Job Burnout in Your Hospitality Team
Job Burnout isn’t just a buzzword in the hospitality sector; it’s a genuine problem facing many businesses. Burned-out employees don’t just feel overwhelmed or exhausted; they constantly experience the impact of stress, making it difficult to maintain high motivation, productivity, and efficiency.
While job burnout has become a more significant concern for hospitality businesses in recent years, following the challenges of the pandemic, it’s not an entirely new concept. In fact a recent study showcased 80.3% of employees in hospitality feel burnt out by their workload.
Left unchecked, burnout can disrupt team culture, employee engagement, and increase staff turnover.. Fortunately, there are several steps businesses can take to reduce the risk of burnout influencing their staff.
1. Create a Supportive Work Environment
First, eliminating job burnout starts with ensuring every team member feels adequately empowered and supported. A “supportive” work environment recognises each employee’s desire for a workplace built on mutual trust, respect, and consistent work/life balance.
To develop a supportive work environment, you need to consider employees’ emotional and physical needs rather than concentrating exclusively on productivity and performance. For instance, you can:
- Make Life Easy: Hospitality is a hard job and very fast paced. Looking after your staff to make their job as easy as possible is key. Offering free drinks and meals and ensuring they go on their break will guarantee they are getting the fuel and mental capacity they need to get through the day.
- Acknowledge Stress: Working in the hospitality industry can be stressful at times. Whilst it would be unrealistic to expect an elimination of stress, putting processes in place to ensure stress in acknowledged and managed is important. It could be you delegate work more fairly or if you can see a staff member is suffering, you ensure they take a break.
- Encourage work-life balance: Support team members in managing their personal and professional lives. Consider offering flexible work arrangements. This could be working shifts around their personal needs, having two days off together a week or splitting shifts if they have personal dependents.
2. Encourage Open Communication
Open communication is one of the most important factors hospitality business can invest in. Communication reduces the risk of burnout. Often, when employees experience burnout symptoms, such as disengagement, exhaustion, or stress, they feel uncomfortable approaching their managers about these issues.
Ensure every staff member knows who to turn to for assistance when dealing with high-stress levels. Encourage employees to share feedback on how they are feeling. Talking to them about their working environment, schedule, or overall work experience might improve their wellbeing. It’s also worth motivating team leaders and supervisors to regularly check in with staff members.
Encourage managers to speak to their employees regularly and ensure they know how to show empathy and emotional intelligence during conversations.
Remember, regularly recognising and rewarding staff for good work can significantly reduce burnout too. According to Deloitte, performance and productivity levels are 14% higher in companies with an employee recognition program.
3. Provide Adequate Training & Resources
An important part of minimising burnout in hospitality is looking for ways to eliminate employees’ daily issues and challenges. When staff members don’t have access to the right resources, from, equipment that works to tech that allows them to do their job easier they’re less likely to thrive in their roles.
Speak to employees to determine which resources they need to feel empowered. Experiment with new technology, equipment, and tools that may help staff members to complete tasks faster and more efficiently, and make sure each employee knows how to use the resources available.
Most importantly, ensure you’re consistently upskilling and reskilling your hospitality workforce to give them the skills they need to excel in their roles.
4. Foster a Positive Work Culture
Around 88% of candidates say culture plays a role in where they choose to work. Effective work culture can help champion important workplace concepts, from teamwork and collaboration to creativity.
A positive hospitality workplace culture keeps team members engaged, motivated, and supported. Focus on embedding collaboration and camaraderie by encouraging staff from different workplace sectors to work together regularly. Inspire teams to share their creative ideas and thoughts by rewarding those who take the initiative, think outside the box, and share their insights.
Overall, consider creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture by ensuring every team member feels respected and appreciated. Train employees on how to act with empathy and avoid bias or discrimination. Ask your managers and supervisors to lead by example, showing consistent care and respect for others.
5. Encourage Self-Care
Finally, while there are many things you can do as a business to reduce the risk of workplace burnout, it’s also important for team members to invest in their wellbeing. Encouraging staff to practice self-care will help them to protect their physical and mental health.
Creating an employee wellbeing initiative is a good way to champion self-care. This could involve sharing tips and advice with team members on improving their physical and mental health with regular exercise, good nutrition, and mindfulness. You could also provide teams access to gyms, therapists, and other professionals to help them manage any issues they might face.
Encourage team members to take time off when needed, whether they’re dealing with significant stress or an illness, and ensure staff can approach leaders with requests for schedule changes or alterations to their job structure if they’re encountering problems.
Don’t Let Job Burnout Destroy Your Team
Job burnout is a significant problem in the hospitality industry. Left unchecked, it can cause your most valuable staff members to become disengaged, increase staff turnover, and even damage the productivity and performance of your entire team.
Fortunately, you can work with their employees to minimise the risk of burnout and improve company culture.
Can we help you? Here at KSB Catering and Hospitality Recruitment Agency, we have been helping hospitality and catering businesses for over 30 years. If you would like to find out how we help our clients recruit call us on 0121 314 9365 or click the link below.
