Real world working means dealing with the everyday. But for small businesses, the everyday can sometimes become a lot to handle.
Fatigue, lack of motivation, and an unhealthy work-life balance are all symptoms of burnout, which can have a serious impact on employees and their ability to work. While it can happen to anyone, in any sector, smaller businesses typically have less people power, and a larger number of tasks.
Whether it’s managing multiple requests on the shop floor, overseeing various ongoing projects or trying to cater to the changing expectations of customers, workloads can get quite busy, quite fast.
But how does burnout materialise, and what can be done to help lessen the load?
The burnout cycle
There isn’t always a single root cause for burnout. However, the ongoing cost-of-doing-business (CODB) crisis, amounting to increased employee pressure and tighter budgets, is a big factor for many. Alarmingly, burnout is said to affect 50% of the working European Union population. And with a widening digital skills gap across European regions, as well as a growing need to implement new technologies, it’s no wonder that teams are facing the pressure. This is especially true for sectors like healthcare, where employees are facing an increase in certain health risks – such as heart disease – due to the implications of burnout.
For some, when a challenge arises concerning one platform, it might prevent work from being done across another. Essentially, many might feel they’re ‘constantly putting out fires’ to keep things moving: for example, systems going down, employees encountering access limitations, and dealing with vendor and contractor issues. And as a result, smaller teams can feel overworked, unappreciated and ultimately burnt out. But despite all this, there are ways to help break the cycle.
Breaking the burnout cycle
No matter the type of business or sector, technology plays an essential role in real-world working today. And while they’re a critical tool for driving business growth, digital solutions can also significantly help to reduce the strain on employees.
Workflow solutions
Automation has already made its way into businesses all around the world – and is being used to reduce the need for repetitive manual tasks. Implementing automation within business processes takes the stress away from constantly updating timesheets, scheduling deliveries and is even used to make customer service easier.
At the same time, while not necessarily new, document management systems are even more important today as teams work from different locations. An effective document management solution will help teams collaborate from one single document, digitally capture information to help keep things organised, and store it all securely. This means less employees running into access limitations and obstacles in their working day. They can also help ensure regulatory compliance, streamline repetitive tasks, improve productivity, and control costs.
Remote IT support
It’s anything but ideal to run into IT issues while working. Encountering a glitchy system, or lack of access to key documents can seriously hamper productivity, but can also make work tasks that bit more challenging . Today, remote IT support services can handle all of those instances on behalf of the business, offering round-the-clock support and securely backing up data in case of an emergency.
For employees, constantly running into issues just adds to a rising list of blockers and stress to their work. Remote IT support keeps things ticking along, not only enabling them to resolve issues quickly and adding a layer of security, but empowering teams to focus on their daily work to the best of their ability.
Advanced workplace solutions
Offering employees flexibility is bound to alleviate some work pressures. But whether they’re working at home, on-site or in the office, it’s important to create a consistent, hassle-free experience. Smart collaboration solutions work seamlessly to make sure meetings and presentations aren’t impacted by technical errors, making the process simpler and easier for employees.
Integrating these solutions with existing technology in the business can help maintain familiarity for users, while making sure it’s easy for people to navigate and mobile-friendly for those on-the-move.
Lightening the load
No business is without some form of technology today. And while technology can be a contributor to burnout, particularly with complex systems and lack of training, it’s also a solution.
Like those suffering from burnout will be told: it’s important to ask for help when you need it. And the same goes for IT. Sharp has a comprehensive family of tailored IT services to help keep businesses moving, and prevent an overload of tasks piling up day by day. From IT consultancy that offers guidance on best practices to effective cyber security solutions to keep sensitive information secure, small businesses can benefit from partnering with Sharp.
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