Why you can’t yoga your way out of burnout:
Values disconnect These are organizational issues that can’t be fixed with yoga, meditation, or wellness apps. In fact, three of these– workload, having low autonomy, and lack of leader/colleague support – are among the top 10 most prominent workplace issues that impact your health and longevity.
Shifting the burnout conversation may feel like a big challenge for busy leaders, but in reality, building a positive culture at work starts one team at a time, deploying “TNTs” – tiny noticeable things – consistently. Importantly, these behaviors need to be modeled and supported by leaders.
The pandemic has increased your demands, both at work and outside of work, and has stripped you of many of the important resources you traditionally used to recover from day-to-day stress. It might be tempting to think that the burnout problem will ease, or even go away, when the pandemic ends, but it’s important to remember that burnout rates had been on the rise in many industries in the years leading up to the pandemic.
What’s more important is to begin to reframe the conversation about burnout, not as an individual issue that can be fixed with quick self-help strategies, but as a systemic issue that everyone is responsible for reducing. Burnout is a big problem, and in order to solve it, we have to start talking about it in the right way, with meaningful strategies that address the core causes. There is something we can all do about it – let’s start now.