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As a Project Manager / Leader, it’s extremely important that you look out for your team member burnouts. This could be caused due to various reasons and it’s our job to understand the root cause and provide a solution that not only keeps your team happy but also ensure you deliver your project smoothly. Below I will discuss a few pointers from my experience and lessons from Todd Dewett’s training on Management.
The Definition: Burnout is exhaustion – Emotional , mental and Physical mostly created by high stress and long work hours.
Identify:
If you see someone complaining about “ I have no control “, “My Work isn’t recognized”, “ I have so much to do “, “I’m Tired !! ” then, that’s a sign to look into their assigned task and understand what is causing them distress. If we don’t start acting on it now, it will start affecting the Overall project and maybe their personal life as well.
Tips to Solve:
Start Talking: Have a candid discussion with the team member. Don’t assume that they are “OK” with their assignment, there were times when an employee was overworked and he avoided telling me about his other assignment. I was able to figure out the problem after some probing. Some employees hesitate to share fearing negative consequences. You must absolutely ensure to provide a transparent conversation. Again this process should be regular and till the end of the project!
Slow Down: One of the ways to solve this is to slow the actual project by re-assessing the schedule find out alternate ways for resourcing and communicate with stakeholders immediately on the change in cost/ schedule. If you don’t slow down now and continue with such a schedule eventually the risk imposed by burnouts will make your project slow down or worse crash.
Things that can be put on Hold or Removed: As a project manager, one of the most important things I regularly do is to take all unnecessary tasks out of my team’s plate. With too many managers these days (offshore lead, onshore lead, vendor project manager, BRM, etc..) there are some deliverables imposed on the team member which do not help the project DIRECTLY in any way!! I am not completely against that, but with the risk of employee burnouts, re-prioritizing such tasks become extremely important. As a manager, identifying such tasks and taking them out will give the resource a lot of breathing space which in turn will result in a better outcome.
Provide support and resources: Quick huddles to communicate what’s the need of the hour, Assigning non-important tasks and taking out follow up, escalations task yourself to give as much support to the team as possible. There was an occasion, where my Dev team was blocked because of the delivery from a Middleware development team, I pitched in (as I had some bandwidth then !) and took out the task of explaining the requirement to the other team, their developments followup, testing and ensuring they deploy the API on time. This saved a lot of my developer’s time and he was able to focus on the task at hand and reduce his burnout.
Be Genuinely Thankful: Expressing your ” thanks” to your team whenever they put in extra hours or work on weekends do help in keeping the morale up. As PMs, there WILL be times when you have to ask them to support during holidays and put the project back on track. Appreciating their commitment to the project and telling them how their work mattered is the key. Such genuine and kind words help the team stay calm and focused during critical times.
Conclusion: As a PM you should find ways to make the resource smile, stay happy, and find efficient ways to deliver their task. Anything done by you on this front will help against burnout. It’s your job to push your team to new heights, but keep in mind that you do that NOT by creating unnecessary burnouts.
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