Whose Fault is Employee Burnout? The Overlooked Skill Both Managers and Teams Must Master

Has burnout gotten worse because of remote work? The tough economy? Changing employee expectations?

Honestly, I’m not sure. One thing is clear: preventing burnout is a skill that both managers and teams must develop together, with shared accountability. While Engineering and Creative teams often excel at managing workload, many centralized functions are still struggling to catch up. Having led centralized teams across various organizations, I’ve gained some insights which have helped my team. 

Recognizing Burnout Triggers

Understanding what leads to burnout, especially for junior employees, is key. And, yes, many causes point back to management:

• Unclear Priorities: Too many tasks from different stakeholders without clarity on what’s most important.

• Cross-Functional Confusion: Poor handoffs between departments create delays and frustration.

• Limited Authority: Junior staff often feel powerless to push back on unrealistic timelines.

Teaching Burnout Prevention

The aim is to empower employees through capacity planning and business-value tradeoff discussions, while ensuring the manager steps in to make the tough decisions when necessary.

1. Teach Capacity Planning

   • Help your team estimate workload capacity and set clear expectations with partners. Even vague capacity measurements—like "one big project and three medium ones per month"—makes it easier to set boundaries and prioritize. This is a tough skill to teach. Consider tapping into peers from Engineering Project Management to explain their approach.

2. Teach Employees to Prioritize by Impact

   • In order to have real trade off conversations, employees need to be able to communicate the value of their projects, in metrics that matter to leadership. As the manager, you need to have a clear understanding of how all the work on your team ladders up to company's KPIs, and ensure this is clearly communicated to your employees via targets. 

3. Build Flexibility for Last-Minute Requests

   • If last-minute requests are part of your business, build structure to handle them. Develop clear channels for escalation, scoping requirements, and the opportunity for quick trade-off conversations when needed

4. Review and Adjust Regularly

   • Make workload reviews and escalation part of the routine. Now that your employees can represent the impact of their work, empower them to suggest alternative approaches that create more value. 

5. Final Decisions Lie with the Manager I typically break it down into five options:

   1. Find another resource to do the work (another team, outsource, etc).

   2. Extend the deadline, usually involving the manager to coordinate across teams and ease any friction that may arise.

   3. Follow the 80/20 rule—sometimes, “good enough” really is good enough, especially in fast-paced environments.

   4. Say no to a project - again, often the manager's job to smooth friction.

   5. Stay up all night? Not an option.

Teach your employees to structure their capacity, frame their projects impact and tradeoffs, and it’s your job as the manager to make the final call.