Whether we realise it or not, everyone is exhausted. People are still coping with the collective grief and trauma that was experienced on a global scale over the last two to three years.

How exhaustion affects your employees

Perhaps you feel that things have gotten back to normal, so this isn’t as relevant. However, an impending people management crisis is evidenced by many examples we’re seeing in the workplace. Things like:

• The overall drop in people’s communication effectiveness, with poor use of tools or digital literacy issues.
• An increase in customer complaints and aggression, which creates a huge fallout within teams.
• Productivity and engagement issues.
• Retention risk issues. Overwhelmed employees often cite mental health as the number one reason they want to change or leave their job. In many cases, leaving without another job lined up to replace the one they’re quitting.
• Anxiety levels increase as people look to a more uncertain future. This is exampled by the increase of workplace conflict, the general inability to cope with workload and workplace pressures, and people’s ability to have empathy and patience for their colleagues.

What we’re seeing, therefore, is a silent emotional compounding interest. Emotions like grief and loss stack up and spill over, turning into a looming crisis for leaders.

A Harvard Business Review article posited, “Leaders aren’t therapists, and shouldn’t try to be, but people are coping with collective grief and trauma on a global scale, which means leaders have to learn and exercise new skills. There are steps you can take to foster healthy coping mechanisms and discourage unhealthy ones, help ward off some of the typical mistakes that people make under pressure, and ensure you don’t cause additional anxiety on top of what people are already dealing with.”

How to lead an exhausted workforce

Leaders can’t rely on their traditional skill set, but have to dig a little deeper to learn new skill sets to maintain relevance and connection to their teams. So here are a few things that you can do to lead an exhausted workforce.

• Stay alert and aware. Acknowledge and identify the telltale signs of exhaustion in your team that we noted earlier.
• Develop a proactive plan to support these issues through consultation and collaboration with your team.
• Ensure that your plan has an intentional two-way trust strategy built into it, right at its centre.
• Finally, become a role model of self-care. Rather than withdrawing and presenting a stoic front, remain open and honest about how you cope with things. In this season of overwhelm, it’s all about the humanity being front and centre.