How can you prevent burnouts with GOOD conversations?

A burnout is a feeling of being burned out, empty and depleted, and can manifest in concentration problems, fatigue, listlessness, sometimes crying spells and chaotic thinking. Employees approaching a burnout often dread everything, are more easily irritated and less engaged. Employees may also withdraw from work and colleagues.

GOOD conversations about small changes with big impact!

The feeling of being burned out is a process. The reason can be an imbalance between workload and capacity, work and private life, unpleasant work relationships, a lack of job satisfaction and/or an unpleasant work environment.

In GOOD conversations, it can be discussed how the employee can eliminate this imbalance, how they can improve the work atmosphere and how they can regain job satisfaction. This is called job crafting – implementing small changes with the goal of making work more interesting, challenging and enjoyable. These adjustments reduce the chance of absenteeism and burnouts. Job crafting shapes the job or molds the work instead of the employees. It is a continuous process in which employees keep themselves optimally and sustainably employable in their own work.

Below are two tools for crafting your own position:

Job crafting questionnaire in brief:

Make a top 10 of your tasks/roles;
Number 1 is the task/role you spend the most time on;
Indicate the tasks/roles where your strengths are used;
Indicate the tasks/roles you would rather lose because they rely on your weaknesses;
Make a sketch of your ideal workday/workweek? What do you do, with whom and for whom?

Source: book: Het GROTE gesprekkenboek

The Energy Cup

Have the employee do the assignment The Energy Cup before The GOOD Conversation and let them think about how they can increase energy sources and plug energy leaks.

Is your own energy cup well filled at the moment?

You can see yourself as an energy cup. The art is to keep the cup well filled. Map out which activities give you energy and which activities cost you energy. How do you ensure the right balance?

which activities give you energy and how can these be used even more?
what are energy leaks and what is the reason for them?
can you organize activities that cost you energy differently or swap them with someone else?

If you have a position that largely consists of activities that cost you energy and this cannot be changed, then ask yourself the honest question whether you are fulfilling a position that suits you.