Recently, HR leaders have been taking more seriously how mental health and employee satisfaction influence retention and productivity. Detailed analytics have quantified the high cost of turnover (one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary or more), demonstrating burnout’s damaging effects on businesses as well as employees.
While managers are more on the lookout for signs of burnout in their employees than ever, managers themselves are a little more likely to experience burnout than employees as a whole. With the high costs of burnout becoming more clear, organizations should take manager burnout seriously and put mechanisms in place that alleviate the stress that leads to it.
Sound familiar?
In 2023 HBR reported that over half of managers feel burned out. Each of us likely knows at least one or two managers experiencing the combination of overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment researchers have identified as burnout’s hallmarks.
The authors of the HBR article identify several mitigation areas for manager burnout including finding meaning, flexible work, and self care. In this article, we’ll discuss how elearning platforms can integrate career development with internal networking and support to target and address manager burnout before it progresses to “regrettable attrition.”
Reaching the Most At Risk
While all workers (and therefore all managers) are at risk of burnout, frontline managers (those who manage individual contributors) are particularly susceptible. Frontline managers can find themselves stuck between the stresses of day-to-day operations and a lack of context for the larger organization and their value and future in it.
Mitigating burnout in and retaining these most at-risk managers requires reconnecting them with their purpose, value, and efficacy, areas which are highly specific to each organization and each manager. As a result, they can only be fully addressed through a tailored learning solution built around the specific needs of the organization.
A Two-Pronged Approach
With the flexibility to build a custom environment, organizations should consider building experiences in two main areas:
- Peer and mentor connectedness
- Career development and skills training
Connecting frontline managers better with their peers and with mentors gives managers a better sense of their place in the organization, provides a safe space to share resources and solutions with peers, and offers a growth path through the management hierarchy through mentorship.
By integrating these networking tools with career development and skills training, organizations both equip managers with the tools for advancement and higher efficacy and communicate that their managers are worth investing in.
The networking tools in this solution can be custom built or adapted from existing solutions. The most effective skills training will depend on the specific needs of the organization, but can include areas like:
- Global Workforce Competency Development: Developing and maintaining a globally competent workforce that can navigate and thrive in diverse markets. This includes language and cultural training, as well as developing global leadership skills.
- Digital Transformation and Technology Adoption: Supporting the organization’s digital transformation efforts by upskilling and reskilling employees to work effectively with new technologies and digital processes.
- Compliance and Regulatory Training: Ensuring that employees across different regions are aware of and comply with local and international laws, regulations, and industry standards relevant to their roles and the business.
Aligned, Agile, and Learning-Oriented
Choosing the right learning environment to support frontline manager retention requires initiatives that are directly aligned with the organization’s overall business strategy and objectives. This involves understanding the business’s current and future needs and developing programs that support these goals. These goals also won’t remain static, so it’s important to create a platform that can quickly adapt to changes in the business environment, workforce needs, and learning technologies.
At the core of these initiatives there should be a focus on creating a culture that encourages continuous learning and development. This involves making learning resources accessible, encouraging knowledge sharing, and recognizing learning achievements.
No One is an Island
The precarious position of frontline managers as the mediators between daily operations and the organization at large offers unique sources of stress that can lead to burnout and attrition. Particularly for firms that have increased their remote workforces since 2020, disconnection from peers, mentors, and collective values and mission have increased managers’ uncertainty about their value and future within companies.
While these managers work to guard their own teams against burnout, organizations should take targeted action to ensure their unique sources of stress and needs for connection, career development, and training are fully and equally addressed, regardless of whether managers and their teams are remote or in-office.
Rob Porter is Head of Market & Business Development for CoSo’s eLearning solutions. He is responsible for developing and executing corporate communications, market programs, market visibility and positioning strategy to expand CoSo’s market share in eLearning. Rob has a successful 25-year track record in instructional design and eLearning programs as well as authoring and presenting on a variety of corporate topics and learning techniques. During his career, he has built hundreds of hours of eLearning content, workshop curriculum, webinars, presentations, and multiple custom learning platforms for his customers. Rob has supported hundreds of enterprises by designing and deploying custom learning solutions which deliver content to millions of learners. He has developed state of the art learning programs for organizations such as BMW, Nike, Nikon, Johns Hopkins, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Dassault and Domino’s. Before joining CoSo Cloud, Rob founded and was a principal at Training Objectives Corp.