Employee burnout is a real and scary threat to employers. It can have a huge impact on productivity, and cause turnover. Even worse, it can affect the health and safety of your team. From more accidents on your work site, to more customer complaints, burnout may be directly impacting your team’s ability to do their best work and your businesses’ ability to grow. Here are three reasons you need to get serious about burnout today.

Increased Sick Leave

Have you noticed certain team members taking more time off than normal? Do they seem to catch a cold or the flu more often than other employees? It could be they are not physically sick, just sick of work. Or they could be legitimately overworked. The stress of working long hours may lead to mental illness, anxiety or other serious health conditions like heart disease. A stressed-out employee is more likely to develop unhealthy behaviors such as binge drinking or overeating. Negative health impacts are a serious concern because it results in billions of lost revenue due to dips in productivity, and time and money spent on recovery.

Work-related stress is thought to contribute to 120,000 American deaths annually. If that’s not a scary statistic, nothing will spook you. It’s clear burnout comes with costly consequences, for both employees and employers. The best way to address this issue with an employee is to connect with them directly. Ask whether a different assignment or a change of pace would help them feel better on the job, and explore some ways you can both leave the conversation satisfied.

Avoidance of Management or Co-Workers

One sign of burnout is when employees avoid engaging with their team members. Whether they keep putting off crucial conversations or just don’t seem to be around to join in, it’s possible your more reclusive staff members are suffering from an overabundance of stress. While they might be avoiding you, you should seek them out to see how you can help resolve the situation. Are they overly burdened by workload? Suffering from boredom or disillusionment on the job? Are they struggling with some personal issues that would benefit from some time off to resolve? Any of these concerns are something you can help them address. But not if you don’t reach out to start that conversation. Being engaged is what keeps people going on the job, so look for signs they are disengaged in order to course correct.

High Turnover Rate

It is so difficult to hire and train new employees that employers actively work to maintain low turnover rates. It’s simply too expensive to let people leave early and often. A big contributor to employee attrition is burnout. In fact, burnout is cited as one of the biggest threats to workforce retention. Research indicates that companies can spend about 20 percent of an employee’s salary to cover the cost of finding a replacement. The price tag is even higher for top performers and industry leaders.

Does your ag team need a boost?

So, what do employers need to do to make sure their teams are engaged and excited enough to stick around? Contact the agricultural recruitment experts at Ag 1 Source to find out more today.