Lead Your Staff: Chronic Work-Related Stress and Burnout: The High Cost of Ignoring Stress in the Workplace

2019 AABB Annual Meeting Session

With the struggle to maintain work life balance, approximately a third of workers suffer from chronic work-related stress and only 36 percent of employees indicate their employers deal with this adequately. Burnout, a special type of work-related stress, leads to physical and emotional exhaustion that adversely affects mental health and work performance. Suicide among physicians, which is the highest of any profession, is thought to be related to burnout. In terms of the economic impact of chronic work-related stress, it is estimated that approximately $27 billion of work days are lost to mental health absence from the workforce each year. Additionally, there are tangible costs associated with employees reporting to work who are stressed and unable to perform their jobs adequately and the productivity drain that this has on the economy. Human resources teams play a critical role in helping staff cope with work-place stress and burnout by developing wellbeing programs and promoting open communication about mental health issues. 

In this session, the following information will be presented: 

• The root causes of and examples of work-related stress and burnout
  
• How work-related stress and burnout occur and their impact on individuals and organizations
  
• The economic cost of work-related stress and burnout
  
• Strategies designed to promote resiliency and the role of a resilience coach
  
• The role of Human Resources in addressing work-related stress and burnout
  

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the impact of work-related stress and burnout on employee mental health and productivity.
• Discuss the financial impact of work-related stress and burnout.
• List strategies that promote individual resiliency to work-related stress and burnout.
• Identify Human Resources based strategies aimed at reducing work-related stress and burnout.