COVID-19: Guide to Staff Burnout Management (3)

This is part 3 of the guide to managing staff burnout in COVID. To read up the previous parts, click here for part 1 and here for part 2.

In view of the persisting different waves COVID – which started in 2019 (about 2 years ago) – now, we’d be focusing on the longer term effect of COVID as it pertains to us. This part is the “organisationally hard” part, as healthcare staff and management would both be battling the internal inertia and finances associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first two parts were about Managing burnout “today” (part 1) and “tomorrow” (part 2), both scaled up to organisational challenge, moving from operations to crisis planning, and future planning to help build organisational resilience. This also follows the same format, as we’d have a skeleton for local plans with some suggestions on ways to achieve them. The aim is to create an organisation capable of minimising burnout, and to provide structure to those who need help.

In part 1, 5 ways were listed to help “today” – immediately, which are the same for long-term planning: Rest, Recovery, Reserves, Rotation and Rehabilitation. They follow the same principles, however,  there is now a lot more time to get them right, since it’s to be effected over a long term basis. These are suitable for all sizes of organisation.

BEFORE YOU START, you must ensure that this has a senior ownership, it’s not enough or acceptable to delegate this to a HR team or lower level staff and managers. If you’re too important to manage your staff wellbeing then you’re in the wrong job.

First step is information gathering:

REST: Commission both subjective and objective reviews of staff working environments, for how they can rest in a working day. Where can they get a break (a separate space or lobby or lounge)? Is there good quality food available nearby? Are your staff actually taking their breaks?

RECOVERY: Start with a review of pre-COVID annual leave. Are there trends in who does/doesn’t take leave? This is your baseline. Then do it from 1/3/20 until now. Do the same for sick leave. Unless you’ve a perfect organisation, doing this by team will raise some flags. Also, review your rota system. Is it hard and inflexible? Have you ever had any complaints about it? Do staff have to plan major personal events around you, or is there flexibility? Your “union shop steward” will be your key ally in this if you’re acting in good faith.

RESERVES: For the NHS, this is the hardest of all the tasks for a Board. Reserves cost money. The tool that’s most in your control here is workforce planning: have you the right and safe skill mix? What do your team leaders say? What does your union say? Do you have succession plans that go from Board of directors to your lowest bands? Ask open questions to test attitudes, as this will identify points of resistance for later. Do you have crisis plans? Have people been keeping records of how they’ve done it in this pandemic?

ROTATION: This will test culture and organisational inertia. Every healthcare organisation is different, but you have tools in your locker here. One is training, give people a break to do training. Look at training time per staff grade and also staff leading peer-peer training.

REHABILITATION: In our developing healthcare system, we are frankly decades behind in this, especially in the public sector. Ask yourself and your team, Can you show stats on how you identify burned out staff members, and once identified how you help them? Or, do you just implement a dry HR processes to protect your organisation and keep making money?

Also, Review your sickness policies. Are they dry and protective? Or do they give genuine staff support rather than leaving it to individual leaders? Ask for proof of how you’ve reached out to people who fell sick and helped them, with no ulterior mechanism. Find out your stats on people who return to work from being sick (mental or physical illness) and leave conversion. How many return just before policy deadlines, whether better or not? What in-work support to do you offer returners?

Do you offer professional support for mental health issues? How can your clinicians get mental health support without fear of stigmatization or getting their fitness report to work tampered with? How do you openly stop unwarranted professional career detriment?

Next steps after robustly gathering data:

If you’ve done your data gathering robustly, you’ll already have key themes for improvement. Treat it as a continuous improvement plan rather than a grand plan. I won’t tell you how to write a plan, you already know this. Then, your key challenges are finding the money to fund this and getting over old-fashioned resistances to helping with mental health issues. Leverage everyone and everything you can, and encourage personal level leadership at all levels.

In summary, it would be inexcusable in 2022 to not treat burnout and mental health issues in the workplace seriously, yet many are reluctant to address it for historical reasons. Be brave, step up, lead and always remember your duty of care as a leader.