Let's face it – American workers are burned out.

Research from Aflac on the stress levels of US-based workers found that over 50% of respondents experienced burnout in 2023 and nearly 75% reported experiencing moderate levels of work stress.

But organizational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant, a go-to expert on organizational mindsets and habits, says workplace leaders are to blame, not burned-out employees.

^{Adam Grant on stage during a panel at the 2022 Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Summit (Brian Stukes/Getty Images)}

“I think of burnout as a feeling of emotional exhaustion that's both persistent and damaging, meaning it's not just bad—it's persistent. It also interferes with your ability to function.” Grant said The entrepreneur IN BetterUp's Uplift conference last week. “It's a structural and cultural problem if you have more than one person burned out. That's a challenge to address in your organization and one that leaders need to be accountable for.”

Connected: 5 Ways Leaders Can Combat Burnout Culture

As the issue of burnout continues to plague employees and their employers, Grant, a Wharton professor, said the solution is to focus on what he calls a “demand, control, support” leadership approach that can help employees find meaning and motivation in their work. work – and deal with burnout in the process.

Grant broke down his strategy for us below using data from Return to Office Insights researched by BetterUp Labs.

Request

Grant says leaders need to examine what demands are causing burnout in the first place.

“It's about overload, which is having too much work, it's having work that doesn't have clear expectations, it's expected to be 24/7,” Grant says. “These kinds of demands are taxing. We need to understand if there are pockets of people who are burning out with similar types of work – that's a sign to me that the demands are excessive.”

Reducing demands can mean anything from hiring more staff to delegating responsibilities, but the ultimate goal should always be to make employee demands “more manageable.”

control

But sometimes requests cannot be eliminated. For example, if you work at a startup and customers are ordering from all over the world, eliminating hours may not work. Instead, Grant says companies can give employees more control over their day.

“What we can do is try to give more choice and more freedom around how you manage those requests,” Grant explains. “We want to give people control over what they're working on, when they're doing it, who's doing it and how they're doing it. And these sources of autonomy tend to make the demands more manageable. general finding.”

Grant also said that today's employees prefer to control their work hours and want to have a more flexible work environment. Providing this control back to employees can be effective in mitigating burnout.

“There's been a lot of discussion about where we work as a form of flexibility. My reading of the evidence is that people want discretion when they work more than where they work,” Grant explained. “So if you give people the flexibility to set their own hours, they're very happy to come into the office if it's a tug of war.”

SUPPORTING

Grant says “support” is about “giving people the tools they need to cope with the demands” of the workplace and making mental health a priority.

“It's also about building a culture where (employees) feel they can be honest about their emotional well-being and ask for help if they need it,” he said.

But telling employees you prioritize mental health and actually making them feel comfortable talking about it are two different things, he says.

The most effective way to combat this, he says, is when a leader sets an example and is open about the need to take time off for mental health reasons and encourages open dialogue among employees when they are struggling.

“I think modeling that makes it clear to people at all levels that this is not just lip service, we're not just pretending that you can take care of yourself, we're actually demonstrating through our behavior that it's acceptable and encouraged around. here,” says Grant. “It's been frustrating to see a lot of companies say, well, we have a burnout problem, we're going to give you awareness training or teach you stress management skills as if it's not a psychological problem.”