James [00:00:09] Hello and welcome to ‘HR in the driver’s seat’, a podcast for HR professionals and leaders looking for helpful insights and advice to shape their future workforce strategies. 

My name is James Judge, I’m a human resource and organisational development specialist, a commentator in these fields, and a content creator – and I’ll be guiding you through this limited series and introducing you to our stellar line up of guests who’ve got plenty of practical tips and insights to share with you.

This series is brought to you by LeasePlan, saving you time and money, and keeping you mobile.

James [00:00:48] Burnout isn’t anything new. We know many Aussie workers have felt stressed and overworked for years now, but the pandemic turned up the dial, causing many employees to feel stretched to their absolute limits. 

For those lucky to keep their jobs, in many cases their hours increased and the work piled up, and working from home made it that much harder to switch off at the end of the day.

When your workforce is overstretched, not only does it impact their ability to bring their best ideas to the table and perform to a high standard – it can also have devastating impacts on their physical and mental health.

Aaron McEwan is here with us today to offer his thoughts on how employers and HR professionals can tackle this issue. Aaron is the Vice President, Research and Advisory at Gartner and a coaching psychologist. He’s an innovation expert, tech enthusiast and top 100 HR influencer.

Aaron, thanks for joining us today.

Aaron [00:01:41] My pleasure. 

James  [00:01:42]  Today, we’re talking about workplace burnout and well-being, but before we get too deeply into the topic, we should probably spend a bit of time looking at what well-being actually is because it’s not the same as mental health, which is a related but different concept. What do you find is the most helpful way to explain to people what well-being encompasses? 

Aaron [00:02:02] So I think we need to look at it in a much more holistic way than we traditionally have. More and more organisations are starting to look at well-being from a number of different dimensions, so not just what we would call mental or emotional well-being but also from the sense of financial well-being, physical well-being, of course, but also increasingly things like community or social well-being. So it extends the definition well beyond just mental health. 

James [00:02:30] Right, and when you’re asked about the difference between mental health and well-being, how do you explain that relationship? 

Aaron [00:02:36] We’re talking about going beyond just the absence of mental illness and looking at human flourishing. So how are human beings kind of best set up to do their best work and to be well whilst they’re at work.

James [00:02:49] It would be remiss of us to discuss well-being and not reflect on the impact at COVID-19 has had and in fact is still having in Melbourne as we record this podcast. What have been the biggest well-being challenges you’ve witnessed over the last 12 months or so? 

Aaron [00:03:02] Well, I think, you know, apart from the obvious impacts of COVID-19, so you know, everything from homeschooling, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. So I really feel for, you know, my colleagues and friends in Melbourne right now having to do that again. But it’s really the impact of work. So what we saw organisations do was – as we move to working from home, we really just took this old office-centric model of work and we plonked it into this new virtual world. 

And unfortunately, what that meant was that we actually increased the amount of digital distractions that people were dealing with. They had to learn all of these new tools and processes to work from home and to work remotely. And then we didn’t really cater for the fact that when we took away the commute time, we just started working earlier and finishing later, and not taking breaks. 

And of course, we also know that our virtual interactions are much more cognitively taxing than face-to-face interactions. So we’re dealing with all of this information, all of these condensed meeting times where our interactions are back-to-back, they’re virtual, they’re more taxing. And on top of all of that, we’re dealing with a global pandemic and all of the impacts that come along with it. 

James [00:04:17] I did want to specifically talk about some of those issues like Zoom fatigue and people being asked to do more. I came across a recent study from the Centre for Future Work, which found that in 2020, Australian employees worked an average of more than seven weeks of unpaid overtime through the year – that’s got to impact well-being, right? 

Aaron [00:04:35] Yes, in a really serious way. So burnout has become recognised as an official illness that impacts millions and millions of workers. And in fact, what all of the data that we’ve collected has shown is that the impacts of remote and hybrid work on burnout are actually higher because of the pandemic, and this way that we’ve approached work without rethinking how we redesign it. 

So absolutely, work is killing people right now – that’s probably the most blunt way that I can put it. 

James [00:05:06] It’s interesting that you talk about redesigning work to fit this new environment. What role is technology going to play, do you think? 

Aaron [00:05:13] Well, I think the potential role of technology in this is really exciting. You know, there’s an argument that could  be made that technology might be better at monitoring well-being than managers. And the reason I say that is that one of the biggest problems is that managers, particularly middle and frontline managers, are actually the most stressed employees in our organisations. So, you know, asking them to become almost like quasi-psychologists on top of everything else that they have to do, you know, is a big ask, particularly in the current environment.  And particularly when their employees aren’t necessarily working out of offices anymore, they don’t have direct line of sight. 

So I actually think that this is where technology might play an increasingly large role. One of the interesting things about remote work is that most of that work is being monitored or recorded in some way. So people are sitting in front of webcams all day. 

Webcams are collecting an incredibly rich amount of data. The amount of times that you blink, where your eyes are focused, the modulation of your voice and of course, we’re all walking around with smart watches that are collecting data on heart rate. 

I believe Apple will be releasing technology soon that not only tracks heart rate but glucose levels, blood pressure, et cetera, so we are entering into this time where we could directly measure in real time a person’s stress response, and that means that if we can predict that and measure it, it means that we can adjust the work that they’re doing. 

So in the same way that my Apple watch says, you know, stand up, move around, or you’ve only got 1200 steps to complete your rings, I can see a huge place for that type of technology in workplaces to protect us from the worst aspects of work. 

James [00:07:08] Okay, so it sounds like some really positive measures come about due to this level of monitoring and technology, but are there also risks? I mean, I immediately think of issues around confidentiality and privacy, for instance. 

Aaron [00:07:21] Yes, it’s an interesting one. So we’re kind of in the white collar world, the world of knowledge work. We’re on the cusp of what the mining industry and construction industries went through 30 years ago. 

So if you drive a truck on a mine site, you’re probably wearing a cap that monitors you for micro sleeps already. So when lives are at risk, privacy tends to take a little bit of a backseat. So I don’t want to underplay the importance of privacy and just how critical it is to trust, which is really important in organisations, but when people are at risk of dying, you have to take some drastic measures. And I would argue that’s where we’re at with health and safety in workplaces today. We are facing levels of employee fatigue that are dangerously high. 

James [00:08:16] It’s interesting that you talk about the blue collar workplaces, because there’s no question in those environments, safety always comes first. But for knowledge workers, you’re right, it is kind of an afterthought, unless there’s, you know, someone lifting a heavy box or sitting in at a workstation that’s, you know, six inches below where it should be. 

Aaron [00:08:35] And what I can say with that, you know, with that unequivocally, is that, you know, if you work more than 15 hours per day on a weekly basis, you’re at a much higher risk of a fatal injury than you are lifting a heavy box. 

James [00:08:50] Yes, there’s some research I was looking at around the dangers of sitting all day causes. Have you seen those statistics in the research? 

Aaron [00:08:57] And we’re sitting longer than we ever have because of the shift to hybrid work models. 

James [00:09:03] So apart from longer periods of unpaid work, what do you think are some other impacts on well-being from the experience of lockdown, and are some specific sectors influenced more than others? I’m thinking of, say, retail and tourism, where work simply disappeared. 

Aaron [00:09:16] Yes, I mean, we’ve seen the impacts on almost every industry and every type of work. The most obvious and deep impacts are on, you know, those areas related to travel and tourism, to dining out and bars and restaurants, et cetera, that have been immediately impacted. 

It’s not just the increased working hours; it’s also the social isolation. So particularly if you’ve been in lockdown then you are isolated socially. But we’ve also seen people not being able to connect with colleagues in the same way, although I don’t want to focus too much on that because it’s become a little bit of an excuse to get people back into the office. And the reality is that people found other ways to connect. So those virtual connections actually became to a degree stronger during COVID. 

So we did find that, you know, whilst we were sitting at home on webcams, we were getting a glimpse into each other’s lives, our pets, our children, our hobbies, our art interests, all of these things came to the fore. So what we actually found was that those things created some deeper connections between employees that didn’t exist before COVID. 

We also found for the vast majority of the people that worked remotely during COVID that they actually found that they could be more themselves at work. So about two thirds of employees prior to COVID felt like they couldn’t bring their true self to work, and yet that number went up to about 57% for remote and hybrid workers. 

James [00:10:50] Right – that sounds like a remarkable figure and so that’s one of the positive changes to work practices that has flowed from COVID. Any other aspects of that, do you think, that have enhanced people’s well-being? 

Aaron [00:11:00] Well, the fact that you can balance your work and life without feeling guilty or pretending that you don’t have a messy life – I think one of the most remarkable things we saw was that people felt a lot more free to talk about the fact that their lives had richness and messiness and that they had commitments outside of work. So what we tended to do was try and push those to the periphery and keep them out of the workplace. 

Whilst at the same time, let me say that, you know, it wasn’t unusual for most employees to be taking calls after hours. You pointed to the, what was it, seven weeks of overtime per year that’s unpaid. I often refer to that as over the last 20 years, work has encroached into life increasingly. So most of us are used to doing calls at ten o’clock at night or starting early or having to work through a weekend occasionally. 

What hadn’t happened was life encroaching into work. We tried to keep that separate, and that meant that if you were a working parent or somebody with, you know, caring for an elderly relative, or you had hobbies and interests outside of work, you had to try very hard to balance that with this increasingly demanding workload. 

James [00:12:23] So if people are working longer hours from home, as we both acknowledged has happened to many people who work remotely, do you think employers have a duty to put preventative measures in place? And if so, what might those measures look like? 

Aaron [00:12:38] Yes and this is not just my opinion. What we saw happen in the last two weeks was that the state and federal ministers agreed to enshrine psychological health into the workplace health and safety legislation.

So technically speaking, company directors have a legal and civil obligation to provide a safe workplace, and that safety extends to psychological safety.

So when you look at it through that lens, you know, encouraging or expecting your employees to work excessive hours would be the equivalent of requesting your employees not to wear health and safety equipment on a construction site that’s the direction.

James [00:13:23] That is a massive change. Do you think organisations are equipped to deal with this new legislation? I think the first step that organisations took was to think about ergonomics, like the physical workspace, you know, working from home but this goes way beyond that. 

Aaron [00:13:40] Absolutely, yes and it goes way beyond, you know, providing yoga classes or meditation courses. So I often chuckle that, you know, that’s a little bit like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound. So what we’ll start to see increasingly is that organisations have to consider not just are we providing ergonomic chairs and the right desks, et cetera, but are we creating an environment that is free of psychological injury. 

So that could be in the form of harassment and obviously, there’s a lot of media attention on sexual harassment in the workplace at the moment. But it’s also, you know, protecting employees from toxic environments. It’s protecting them from excessive hours. It’s protecting them from deadlines that are impossible to meet. So those are the types of things that we’re going to see a lot more attention on. 

So remember, at the beginning, I said that we need to take a much more holistic view of well-being – that’s really what I’m talking about. This goes well beyond yoga classes or providing employee assistance programmes, and much more into how we design work so that it is psychologically safe.

James [00:14:53] I see, so it’s preventative measures and maybe even a broader concept of what well-being is. 

Aaron [00:14:58] Yes, I would actually be much more blunt than that. It’s preventing psychological injury. So, you know, if you think about psychological injury, if I work for 10 hours straight and then suffer a stroke as a result of that, that’s a potentially fatal health injury. 

So if you bring back to psychological injury, if stress is one of those, we’re going to have to be much better at managing workplace stress.

James [00:15:23] Traditionally we placed emphasis on this being the employee’s responsibility, but it sounds like this is a significant shift away from that traditional approach. What are some practical things that a manager or an HR department or a leader can do to address this? 

Aaron [00:15:40] Yes, it is a big shift and part of that shift is because, you know, what employers did in their own houses outside of work was really no one’s business, but of course, people are working in their own homes. So that line between work and life is almost completely blurred in the current environment. 

So what that really means is that the role of managers is about helping employees put boundaries around that, to build the discipline to protect their time so that they aren’t working excessive hours. But it’s also about checking in with them to make sure that they’re okay. Do they need anything in particular to help them deal with high workloads or increasing stress? But I think the role of leaders and managers in the, you know, whatever the post-COVID world is, it’s going to be much more about being empathic. So empathetic management is going to be the key to success in that future. 

So practical things that I would advise managers to do is tell your employees to take a break. So in my earlier days, I used to work in a lot of what you would call blue collar environments. So everything from abattoirs to farms to construction sites. And we had that concept of smoko. When smoko came, you stopped work and you did it for 15 minutes. We might have to do something like that in the world of white collar work, where we actually enforce breaks. We enforce the end of the day. We tell people and give them permission to switch off. 

Very recently, the Victorian Police Department put in place the ‘right to disconnect’ laws. So that’s recognising that if you have a stressful job, you have a right to stop at the end of the day and not take phone calls or not be dragged into an emergency. So I think we’ll see a lot more of that type of approach being taken. 

James [00:17:40] So it sounds like this may have an impact on things like clauses in enterprise agreements or awards – do you think employers are ready to take those sorts of steps? 

Aaron [00:17:50] Ah, no, I don’t think they are, but I don’t think they have a choice. If you ever want to get the attention of a senior executive, you know, just bring in the legal department or the insurance department and they tend to pay attention pretty quickly. 

James [00:18:04] Sit up a bit straighter. 

Aaron [00:18:06] Yes and that’s where this is headed. You know, literally what we’re looking at is that if an employee has a heart attack whilst they’re sitting in front of their computer on a Zoom call, there are going to be very serious questions asked about what was the lead up to that. 

And as I said, it’s company directors that ultimately hold the responsibility. So whether organisations are ready for this or not, it’s coming and it’s happening already. 

So just last week, the first successful worker’s compensation claim related to psychological injury was upheld and that was a psychological injury due to excessive workload for a remote worker. Now, the supervisor in that case tried to claim that they couldn’t see the impact of that excessive workload because the employee was remote. 

James [00:18:58] Court didn’t buy it? 

Aaron [00:18:59] Not at all. 

James [00:19:01] Okay, so this links into terms that have now entered common parlance, like Zoom fatigue and panic working, anything more to add on these issues? 

Aaron [00:19:11] You know, the somewhat funny anecdote is that the CEO of Zoom also admitted to having Zoom fatigue last week. So they’re already looking at how they restructure the way that they do meetings and how they restructure work within that organisation to recognise that impact. 

So we’ll see more and more of this. And in fact, I had a conversation this week, which I think really demonstrates where this all might be headed. This was a technology worker, and you probably know just how in demand technology workers are and how well paid they are. 

This particular individual decided to quit their job and take on a labouring job. So the intention is to take a break from this, you know, very challenging, cognitively taxing work and go and do something that is, you know, maybe physically enriching, doesn’t involve quite as much thinking. And you can do it outdoors and get healthy.

So the other risk, of course, is that we’re about to enter the most buoyant employment market in Australia’s history. We’ve got both border restrictions, which mean that we can’t bring in skilled talent. And we also have border restrictions, which mean we can’t bring in unskilled talent. So we’ve never seen those conditions where we have pressure at both ends of the labour market that means employees are going to have more choice than ever. 

They’re going to be offered a lot of money to change jobs. And so if you’re not providing a psychologically safe environment or a psychologically enriching environment, I would question your ability to hold onto your best talent in this market. 

James [00:20:55] Okay, so a really serious challenge facing the entire workforce?

Aaron: Yes.

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James: [00:21:28] One of the things we ask every guest in this series is whether they have an interesting case study to share. So we’re looking at a novel approach to combating burnout that you’ve come across, and you believe works well, or maybe even constitutes best practice. You are going to talk about Atlassian. 

Aaron [00:21:43] Yes, and I’m not sure that it’s novel. You know, there’s nothing outstanding in this idea. It’s just really good common sense. 

So what Atlassian has done is that they’ve made the decision that employee well-being is the driver of performance. So when you have healthy, well-rested employees that are in a good place, you produce better work. 

And we’ve known that about high performance forever. Anyone who’s ever coached a high performance sports team knows that, you know, the last thing you want is a team full of exhausted, annoyed and, you know, depressingly put out athletes to go out onto a field and perform. So Atlassian gets that. So what they’ve done is that they’ve empowered and given permission to all of their managers and leaders to prioritise well-being above performance. The idea being that well-being will flow into performance. 

James [00:22:40] Did you want to talk anymore about Zoom fatigue and what managers and organisations can do to alleviate that? I mean, I read an interesting article a few months ago, which was from Stanford University, which talked about scientifically the four reasons that Zoom fatigue is so cognitively demanding. Any thoughts on that? 

Aaron [00:23:01] Well, first thing is probably to say we shouldn’t call it Zoom fatigue, because there are a lot of other applications that cause exactly the same thing. And that’s probably the point – it’s that, you know, the average employee today goes from a Zoom call to a Teams call to a Webex call to whatever it might be.

James [00:23:18] Go to meet whatever it’s called now. [1.4s]

Aaron [00:23:21] So one of the practical things I’d say is – question whether it needs to be one of those types of calls. One of the things I do with my, you know, internal team meetings, is that if I don’t have to look at people’s faces for a business reason, I’m going to put my headphones in or I’m going to walk around the block whilst I’m on those internal meetings. 

So every manager can do that – does this have to be a Zoom call or can this just be a good old fashioned analogue call where you go for a walk at the same time? Or even better, can we have a team meeting at the beach? The restorative powers of green spaces are really well documented in the literature. And one of my favourite stories was talking to the head of HR for the world’s largest camping apparel company. 

So they make camping wear and tents, and this head of HR was lamenting the fact that their CEO kept saying, wow, I just can’t wait to get everyone back in the office around whiteboards doing great things. 

I literally had to stop and say, why would a camping company want to sit around a whiteboard when you could sit around a campfire and it would be safer and more practical in the middle of a pandemic, social distancing, etc. You get to wear the clothes that you sell your customers and you get to live the culture in a very visceral way. Every company has their own version of that. Why force your employees to sit in front of their computer to interact with each other? 

James [00:24:48] There are some great ideas there. So if I can just summarise – don’t make the meeting virtual if it doesn’t have to be, so questioning the purpose and the way you have the meeting, using analogue, going for a walk, potentially having meetings outdoors, any other tips? 

Aaron [00:25:05] So go further than that, do we have to have a meeting? Couldn’t this just be an email? So that’s the first thing, if you’re having a meeting for something that could be communicated via email, just don’t have the meeting. We have enough of them, that’s part of the problem, is that the volume of meetings has gone up exponentially during COVID. 

The second thing is keep it short. So generally we just set meetings up for an hour because we’ve always done that. Does it need to be an hour? So you know, what we’re seeing a number of organisations do is say meetings are 25 minutes, and you have five minutes at the end to get to your next one because that’s the other problem that, you know, not only are there more meetings, but they’re all condensed. 

James [00:25:47] Concentrated one one up against another. Okay, so, having a break, making the meeting shorter, question why you’re having the meeting. One leader I was talking to a couple of months ago said if the meeting is not solving a problem, I won’t have the meeting. I thought that was a really nice sort of mantra. 

So, Aaron, what do you see as some of the emerging challenges around well-being that HR professionals should keep on their radar, and how should we be thinking about overcoming them? 

Aaron [00:26:11] I think the biggest one is excessive work. You know, we’ve had about two decades of companies focusing on building as much efficiency into their operations as they possibly can. And what that efficiency means is that we’re running on the smell of an oily rag. 

So during COVID, we’ve seen almost all employees that kept their jobs, their workloads have gone up. So part of our challenge is to redesign work, to work better in that hybrid model, but we have some really – some bigger challenges over the horizon. 

So one of those is that we’re probably facing a mass exodus of talent. So talent is going to move around. We’re looking at more than a decade of suppressed wages. So we’ve got a lot of confidence in the job market, like I say, the highest confidence in about 20 years. So we’re going to see a lot of people changing jobs. 

And most organisations’ reaction to that will be not to replace that headcount, as has been the habit for the last decade or so. So, of course, what that means is that the work then gets redistributed. 

Now, at the same time, economic conditions are so good that you could bet that every CEO is now looking at growth. So we’re talking – let’s get back to that 25% year-on-year growth, that growth has historically come from a combination of automation and doing more with less.

I would argue that we have probably tapped our employees out. There’s not much discretionary effort left. So that’s going to be the biggest risk, is that we already have exhausted employees that are fatigued at record levels. They’re about to get more exhausted because the button is going to be pressed on organisational growth at a time when we’re going to see mass movement of talent. 

So it’s going to become a really big risk for organisations to manage, so those companies that get ahead of this by saying how do we create the conditions that allow our employees to do their best work, are going to be the ones that can meet that challenge and keep up with that growth opportunity. The ones that don’t will lose their best people and simply won’t be able to grow because they don’t have the legs on the ground to support that growth. 

James [00:28:37] And we’ll probably be facing some serious bills in terms of workplace injuries. 

Aaron [00:28:42] Exactly, and, of course you know, if they don’t do anything about it, they simply won’t get insured. And if they don’t get insured, they can’t operate. So you can see there’s a vicious cycle at play here – that if we don’t get ahead of it, it’s going to put serious dampeners on organisational growth at the first opportunity in more than 10 years to deliver that type of growth. 

James [00:29:02] Okay, some great insights there. 

James [00:29:04] And just to finish off today, Aaron, is there any advice you can give to our listeners on introducing a well-being programme or initiative for the first time, or maybe changing your existing approach, any simple steps they can take to ensure success or pitfalls to avoid? 

Aaron [00:29:19] Yes – think about well-being not just as an extension of benefits. So, you know, don’t just extend benefits like yoga or meditation classes or access to therapy or counseling, what you’ve got to really think about is, are we designing the work in such a way that it encourages well-being? And do we provide a psychologically safe environment where employees can do their best work? 

James [00:29:46] Okay, some great tips. Thanks so much for coming in today, Aaron. 

Aaron [00:29:49] No worries, my pleasure. 

[OUTRO] Thanks for listening to HR in the driver’s seat, a LeasePlan podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please rate and review on your chosen platform. We’d love to hear from you. For more helpful insights from LeasePlan on elevating your employee benefit program, visit drivinginsights.com.au. We look forward to you joining us for our next episode.