In the field of Human Resources, it’s easy to get burned out. HR professionals are constantly juggling different needs, having difficult conversations, and keeping track of a million little details. If you’re feeling stressed and overworked in HR, then you’re definitely not alone.
Here are 5 ways to avoid and recover from HR burnout.
Deep Breathing Techniques for Diminishing Stress
Stress is at the bottom of most cases of burnout. When HR professionals start to feel stressed, they are often less productive and miss little details. This causes even more stress and kicks off a cycle that can be difficult to interrupt.
It’s important to have some easy techniques for reducing stress that you can use anytime, anywhere to fight back against this vicious cycle. Deep breathing is a great way to calm your body down and reset when you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out.
Just taking a few large, deep breaths can be helpful, but there are also several breath pattern techniques like the 4-7-8 technique or modified lion’s breath that can help you manage your stress. Learning a few of these techniques can allow you to break stress spirals and take control of your emotions throughout the day.
Make Vacation a Priority
Do you avoid taking vacations because you feel like there’s never a good time to take one? That mindset could be contributing heavily to burnout. If you never take a vacation, then you never get a chance to recharge, reset, and re-energize.
Not only are vacations fun and relaxing, but they’ll help to prevent burnout. You’ll also have the added bonus of being more productive when you come back. Make sure you schedule at least a vacation or two a year (even if it’s just a staycation) and make time for a few long weekends. Just make sure to delegate your essential duties so your work doesn’t pile up too much while you’re away!
Doing Good Can Feel Good
Many HR professionals start to feel burned out because they’re having trouble connecting what they do with a larger purpose. If you’ve been feeling like your only role in your career is helping your organization make money, then you might want to see if you can get your organization to support a worthy cause.
Lots of businesses are now supporting causes on social media that reflect their organizational values. Find out if there’s a way you can get involved with that, or consider bringing your team together to volunteer or raise money. Doing good can feel good and help you stay engaged at work!
Business Leaders - Help HR By Building a Solid Business Structure
HR professionals play a huge role in preventing their own burnout, but they can’t necessarily do it alone. Organizational leadership needs to support HR and create a culture that helps to prevent burnout.
If you are a business leader, you can help your HR team by providing transparency, clear and reasonable expectations, and a solid business-level strategy that provides goals for employees to work toward. People thrive when they are given challenging, but realistic goals and have the opportunity to grow. This is extremely important for preventing burnout in HR and across all departments!
Aim to Identify (and Solve) The Root Cause of Stress
If you’re experiencing burnout in HR, then it’s important to determine where it’s coming from, if you can. In some cases, the stress might be caused by poor communication or something that can be changed very easily. You might just need to change your perspective, reframe a problem, or adjust your communication methods and expectations.
In other cases, the stress might be caused by a toxic workplace, ethical concerns with your employer, or expectations from leadership that are unrealistic. While you can sometimes make changes that eliminate these sources of stress, you might also need to find a new job for the sake of your mental and physical health.
Solving the burnout problem isn’t easy. It’s not always clear what’s causing our stress, and it can be hard to get to the bottom of it when you’re busy keeping up with daily tasks. But remember, you deserve to be happy at work! Take some time to reflect on why you’re feeling burned out—and what it might take to fix the problem.
