員工倦怠是一種常見現象，但它往往被視為一種人才管理或個人問題，而不是一種更廣泛的組織挑戰。那是個錯誤。
高管們需要承認自己在創造工作壓力方面的作用，導致工作倦怠、工作量大、工作不安全，以及令人沮喪的工作程序，包括會議太多，創造性工作時間太少。一旦高管在組織層面面對問題，他們就可以使用組織措施來解决問題。
當我們觀察那些工作倦怠率高的公司時，我們看到了三個共同的缺點：過度協作、缺乏時間管理紀律，以及傾向于讓具有高工作能力的人過度工作。這些壓力不僅剝奪了員工的時間來專注於完成複雜的任務或想法的產生，他們還增加了要恢復能量所需的休息時間。下面是領導人如何解决這些問題。
過多的協作
過度協作是組織中的一個常見問題，決策者太多，決策點太多。它體現在沒完沒了的會議和電話會議中，以確保每個利益相關者得到傾聽和協調。許多企業文化要求協作遠遠超出完成工作所需的範圍。這些結構和文化因素一起導致了支離破碎的行事曆，甚至是白天支離破碎的時間。許多公司里，高級管理人員現在每天收到200封或更多的電子郵件。平均一線首長大約用八個小時每星期（全工作日）發送，閱讀和回答電子郵件，其中有不應該被送到或回答那些經理。
工作倦怠也是由於目前的辦公室里總是使用電腦與網絡，充斥太多要求優先完成的工作要求，期望員工可以用電腦和工作軟體工具來承擔工作負載，以多工的方式來完成所有交辦的工作。當我們在任務之間來回切換時，多工處理會使人精疲力竭，適得其反。在多項工作中切換的成本是有據可查的：切換到一個新的任務，而在另一個中間的時間新增了你完成25%任務的時間。微軟的一項研究發現，電子郵件中斷後，人們平均要花15分鐘才能返回到一個重要項目。
企業可以通過調整組織結構來解决協作超載的問題。一個簡單的步驟是進行組織扁平化，降低部門單位數，也就減少了決策者所構成的組織減速現象，可以因此提高組織的運行效率。
公司還可以系統地研究人們如何進行工作。例如，確定哪些會議是真正必要的，哪些會議應該被排定，會議持續多長時間，哪些人需要出席。你也可以看看你的員工團隊。通過在團隊中分配明星員工，而不是孤立明星員工，公司往往能把高能量、高成就的員工放在同一陣容中，讓他們處理最優先的工作，從而獲得更好的結果。
除了正式的組織變革之外，領導者還可以通過溫和的干預來减少工作倦怠，提高企業生產率。例如，通過採用敏捷原則，領導者可以激勵和激勵團隊，並給團隊成員一種獲得結果的方法。通過敏捷方法，團隊專注於更少、更關鍵的活動。主動調整性優先順序。持續關注最重要的優先事項和不重要因素的不斷修剪。集中精力與作時間限制在優先項目上，以便可以完成更多的工作和減少消耗能量。
高管還可以在文化和教練方面發揮作用。領導者可以幫助建立新的文化規範，明確每個人的時間是一個寶貴的資源。
弱時間管理
如今，在大多數大型組織中，合作的需求大大超過了發展管理工具和組織規範來管理它的速度。大多數情况下，員工都是靠自己來解决如何减少壓力和工作倦怠的。他們反對企業文化的能力有限，其中過度工作是正常的。很少有員工有權力或冒然取消不必要的會議。
但是公司領導可以做點什麼。第一步是處理這個問題。雖然高管們喜歡衡量合作的好處，但很少有人衡量成本。但是，有一些有用的工具來衡量員工的時間是如何度過的，以及如何影響工作倦怠和組織生產力。高管往往根本不知道有多少時間花在有助於企業員工的生產活動，也不知道有多少時間是花在不遺失或生產活動。Microsoft有一套工作場所分析軟體，可以提供一種估算員工工作時間的方法。
使用這些工具的數據，你可以了解員工在會議、電子郵件或線上合作中花費多少時間，並且知道他們在的組織中的位置。有了這些資訊，你可以針對特定的部門和工作之間的數據做出調整，减少組織阻力，從而降低生產率並導致工作倦怠。大多數管理人員都有機會通過為時間管理帶來更大的紀律來解放員工至少20%的時間。同樣重要的是，這樣做可以讓員工重新控制自己的日程表。我們發現組織能量最大的來源之一是給員工一種自主意識。讓人們重新控制自己的生活是值得的。它也有助於避免事無巨細，這是另一個貢獻力。
最有能力者工作超載
在許多組織中，員工的工作量新增了，因為招聘與增長沒有匹配；公司高估了用數位生產力工具可以完成多少工作，很少檢查他們的假設是否正確。對於公司來說，超載問題更為複雜，因為最好的人才是知識最需要的人，往往是協作超載的最大受害者。最有能力者經常每週要用一天的時間回復電子郵件，每週兩天開會。那些才華橫溢的經理會失去更多的時間來做有創新價值的工作，因為他們的工作過度使他們承擔更多的責任，工作量更大。
同樣的工作場所分析工具可以.，也可以衡量最佳經理的過度需求，使他們的老闆能够重新設計工作流程或採取其他措施來避免過度負荷和工作倦怠。
每個人都知道人的職業倦怠。檢查組織規範如何不知不覺創造倦怠，但領導人.可以改變它們讓倦怠的可能性較小。讓人們有時間從事推動公司成功的工作，將通過提高生產力、新增產出和减少工作倦怠來獲得巨大的收益。每個人都贏。
Employee burnout is a company problem, not a human problem
Employee burnout is a common phenomenon, but it is often seen as a talent management or personal problem, rather than a broader organizational challenge. That's a mistake.
Executives need to acknowledge their role in creating job stress, leading to job burnout, heavy workload, unsafe work, and frustrating work processes, including too many meetings and too little creative work time. Once executives face problems at the organizational level, they can use organizational measures to solve them.
When we look at companies with high job burnout rates, we see three common shortcomings: over-collaboration, lack of time management discipline, and a tendency to overwork people with high job skills. These pressures not only deprive employees of time to concentrate on completing complex tasks or ideas, but also increase the rest time needed to regain energy. Here's how leaders can solve these problems.
Too much collaboration
Over-collaboration is a common problem in organizations. There are too many decision makers and too many decision points. It is reflected in endless meetings and teleconferences to ensure that each stakeholder is listened to and coordinated. Many corporate cultures require collaboration far beyond what is needed to accomplish a job. Together, these structural and cultural factors lead to fragmented calendars and even fragmented days. In many companies, senior managers now receive 200 or more e-mails a day. On average, front-line leaders spend about eight hours a week (full-time working days) sending, reading and answering e-mails, some of which should not be sent or answered by managers.
Job burnout is also due to the current use of computers and networks in the office, which is full of too many priority requirements. Employees are expected to use computers and work software tools to bear the workload and perform all assigned tasks in a multi-tasking manner. When we switch back and forth between tasks, multiprocessing can be exhausting and counterproductive. The cost of switching among multiple tasks is well documented: switching to a new task adds 25% of your time to complete another task in the middle. A Microsoft study found that it takes an average of 15 minutes for people to return to an important project after an e-mail interruption.
Enterprises can solve the problem of collaborative overload by adjusting organizational structure. A simple step is to flatten the organization and reduce the number of department units, which also reduces the organizational deceleration caused by decision makers, thus improving the operational efficiency of the organization.
Companies can also systematically study how people work. For example, determine which meetings are really necessary, which meetings should be scheduled, how long the meeting lasts, and who needs to attend. You can also look at your staff team. By distributing star employees in the team, rather than isolating them, companies can often put high-energy, high-achievement employees in the same team, so that they can handle the highest priority work, and thus achieve better results.
In addition to formal organizational change, leaders can also reduce job burnout and improve enterprise productivity through moderate intervention. For example, by adopting agile principles, leaders can motivate and motivate teams and give team members a way to achieve results. Through agile methods, teams focus on fewer, more critical activities. Actively adjust priorities. Continue to focus on the most important priorities and trimming of unimportant factors. Focus and time on priority projects so that more work can be done and less energy consumption can be achieved.
Executives can also play a role in culture and coaching. Leaders can help establish new cultural norms and make it clear that everyone's time is a valuable resource.
Weak Time Management
Today, in most large organizations, the need for collaboration is much faster than developing management tools and organizational norms to manage it. In most cases, employees rely on themselves to solve how to reduce stress and job burnout. Their ability to oppose corporate culture is limited, and overwork is normal. Few employees have the right or the risk to cancel unnecessary meetings.
But what can a company leader do? The first step is to deal with this problem. While executives like to measure the benefits of cooperation, few measure costs. However, there are some useful tools to measure how employees spend their time and how they affect job burnout and organizational productivity. Executives often have no idea how much time they spend on productive activities that help their employees, or how much time they spend on activities that are not lost or productive. Microsoft has a set of workplace analysis software that provides a way to estimate employees'working hours.
Using data from these tools, you can see how much time employees spend in meetings, e-mails, or online collaboration, and where they are in the organization. With this information, you can adjust the data between specific departments and jobs to reduce organizational resistance, thereby reducing productivity and leading to job burnout. Most managers have the opportunity to liberate at least 20% of their employees'time by bringing greater discipline to time management. Equally important, it allows employees to regain control of their schedules. We find that one of the greatest sources of organizational energy is to give employees a sense of autonomy. It's worth letting people regain control of their lives. It also helps to avoid being too small, which is another contribution.
Work overload for the most capable
In many organizations, the workload of employees has increased because recruitment does not match growth; companies overestimate how much work can be done with digital productivity tools and seldom check whether their assumptions are correct. For companies, overloading is more complex, because the best people are those who need knowledge most and are often the biggest victims of collaborative overloading. The most competent people often spend one day a week answering emails and two days a week meeting. Talented managers lose more time to do innovative work because their overwork makes them more responsible and workload.
The same workplace analysis tools can... or measure the excessive needs of the best managers so that their bosses can redesign their workflow or take other measures to avoid overwork and burnout.
Everyone knows about job burnout. Check how organizational norms unconsciously create burnout, but leaders are less likely to change them. Making people have time to do the work that drives a company to succeed will yield huge gains by increasing productivity, increasing output and reducing job burnout. Everyone wins.
