Avoiding the promotion penalty for those experiencing burnout

I was recently asked to comment on a new study showing that employees who return after an episode of burnout are less likely to be supported for promotion. 

https://academic.oup.com/esr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/esr/jcac055/6777722?login=false

Burnout affects promotions and is ALSO caused by lack of promotions, so it is a very important issue. Often people who are contributing to the business in important ways such as through ERGs and DEI initiatives end up burned out because they are not being recognized for those efforts. McKinsey found this in the Great Break Up. It is also related to why we have so few women leaders, especially women of color - they have burned out from the effort of getting into leadership positions.

I have also been asked - how do I give a merit review to a caregiving employee who is burned out? There 2 main strategies to re-think promotions – reward different contributions and remove the bias from promotion processes.

Reward different contributions

1. Promotional criteria currently focus on business related performance. Most companies do not reward contributions to DEI, team morale, retention or career development of team members. So if instead of seeing a merit review as a stretch assignment that requires more time or responsibility, a manager could consider merit as what the employee is doing during the work day to support the mental health and diversity of the team.

2. Consider an equity review instead of a merit review and confirm that the employee is being fairly compensated. Burnout is caused by lack of reward so this may solve two problems in one - recognition and burnout prevention.

3. Employees who are burned out are probably doing more than their fair share of the office housework and may be over contributing to ERGs. Such tasks should be paid and recognized in promotional criteria. If they are not, a manager can review this burden and actively reduce it. The challenge here is that such contributions give employees purpose. Many women recognize if such efforts are not made by them they will not be made by others, leaving the company in a poorer state, and for many women this contributes to their decision to leave a company.

4. Job crafting can help with engagement so instead of a promotion, a manager could consider a more focused task orientation plan that will help reduce burnout and provide more fulfillment for the employee. This could be considered even more beneficial to an employee than a promotion. Aligning employee’s role to organizational goals can also improve sense of purpose.

5. At the time of career development plans, managers should be also working with the employee on a well-being plan.

Remove the bias from promotion processes

Another cause of burnout is lack of fairness. There is clearly bias in many existing promotion processes, hence why we have so few diverse leaders. Rectifying some of these biases could lead to more fair promotions, increase diversity, and reduce burnout. So for example:

1. Avoid the need for self promotion as women are penalized by self promotion. If there is a way to automate the promotion schedule so that everyone is considered on a schedule or on achievement of certain milestones this will support a fairer process. Another way to avoid self promotion is for each employee to submit a log each month of milestones or achievements. This becomes a regular process and helps with on going feedback and recognition.

2. Avoid self appraisals in the promotional process. Women will underrate themselves and men will over rate themselves. Even if a manager adjusts these scores to try to mitigate for the bias, women will still end up with lower scores.

3. Make sure criteria are objective and measurable based on performance not potential as research has shown that men’s potential is rated higher regardless of performance.

4. Make sure a team of diverse employees is responsible for the promotion decision so a single manager’s bias is not at play.

5. Check for equality in the work opportunities that have been provided.

6. Check for proximity bias, for example a manager could track how many 1-1s or informal meetings they have had with employees in remote or hybrid work positions.

Another point to think about in this process is that managers are also likely to be burned out, sandwiched between helping employees with their mental health issues and meeting their own performance criteria. When someone is burned out they are more likely to be biased as their brain does not have the additional energy to mitigate bias. This then reinforces the lack of fairness that causes burnout in employees.

Having fair promotion processes and rewarding employees for their efforts beyond the simple metric of more time will not only prevent burnout which is leading to less promotions, but also create more promotions opportunities which in turn will prevent burnout.