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Admin teams often feel overlooked and underappreciated. Studies show that burnout amongst these functions are the highest among white collars.
Some researches show that more than half of in-house legal teams report symptoms linked to burn out. The percentage increases even further in HR (98%) or accounting (99%) !
The recent Covid crisis, the Great Resignation and the current economic crisis have amplified the phenomena and it appears really urgent to tackle the mental health of these professions.
They are the backbone of any company and keeping them happy and healthy should be a priority. In this context, it is important for managers to have the right tools and resources to ensure that their team can function properly and perform their work more efficiently without impairing their mental health..
In this article, we will provide 5 tips on how to prevent burnout of your admin teams and keep them happy and healthy in the workplace.
1. Discuss and review workloads
It is important to keep an eye on workloads of teams to make sure there is a fair split of tasks and loads of work.
In most cases an over-staffed employee is easily recognizable but the high number of deadlines and projects that are part of the admin functions, make it often hard to identify the most urgent situations. Most times individuals may not share their excess of work or stress out of fear or shyness.
It is important for team managers to remove any taboos about mental health and check-in often on their team members to ensure they have a comfortable space to open up about their workload and mental health.
2. Create bonding occasions
Planning social events outside work is important because it allows employees to get away from their work for a few hours and relax. It also allows members of the team to get to know each other on a deeper level. This will help them create stronger ties with one another and create an even stronger team spirit.
A solid and supportive team helps each other and can help any member that is suffering from excessive workload or is facing work-life balance issues.
3. Help employees take a break
Working on spreadsheets, contracts and presentations every day is a very demanding task and having the occasion to disconnect is a key part of getting them right. In this sense, team leaders should lead by example. It is important for team members to see in their manager someone who knows how to put boundaries between their work and their private life. Having supporting managers that can share tips on how to improve work-life balance can be of great help to team members struggling with that.
4. Make mental health a priority topic
Too often, mental health and work-life balance are considered as a secondary topic by team leaders. In reality, a team’s mental health and happiness is a key part of “getting the job done” and the best way for a team to achieve its ambitions and grow is to have an environment that fosters and prioritizes their mental health and work-life balance.
Particularly in admin teams, the high number of tasks, the tight and growing deadlines tend to lead to a “I’ll rest once I’m dead“ culture which is highly unhealthy and unsustainable.
Team leaders should really treat work-life balance and mental health as a top priority and share mental health resources with their teams as well as tips to improve work-life balance.
5. Leverage technology
Most admin teams report spending almost half of their week in admin tasks in repetitive, manual and low value-added tasks rather than focusing on the main parts of their job. This is one key source of employees frustration and unhappiness as well as a massive waste of resources for companies. At Dokin we are working on a easy solution that can help setup powerful automations in a matter of seconds, saving teams time and resources.
Conclusions
Admin teams’ burnout is a serious and urgent problem which becomes a real challenge during busy periods like Year-End. Building a healthy environment should be a company’s priority. We are here to help. The Dokin add-on will allow teams to build powerful document automations in a matter of clicks. We are on a mission to make automation accessible to everyone. If it sounds like something that would interest you and your team, join our waitlist and enjoy a free trial of our solution.
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