For human resources expert Kristi Searle, preventing staff burnout comes down to flexibility, work-life balance, communication, having the latest tools and understanding what makes Vancouver particularly stressful.
“Everyone is stressed out because if you look at Vancouver as a whole, it’s one of the most expensive cities,” said the owner of Richmond-based Peoplebiz Consulting, which she began in 2002.
“They don’t know if they’re ever going to be able to afford to buy a house. You’ve got those extra stresses that affect people’s job performance,” she told Business in Vancouver.
Searle said psychological stress might be from the job, or from outside if employees are dealing with aging parents, childcare, a death or other life transitions.
“As an organization, we have to make sure that we have strong employee assistance programs to support our staff through those transitions,” she said. “Yes, those programs cost money but at the end of the day if you’re having a highly productive, motivated employee, it’s a small price.”
Organizations may have Cadillac programs, she said, but the number using them can be as low as 1% or 2%.
“It’s a constant PR job for human resources to make sure employees understand what resources they have access to because it can make a huge difference,” said Searle.
Searle also underlined making sure staff have the current tools. “For finance and HR, there are so many new software programs that continually come out that make our jobs more effective.”
Flexibile working hours can help reduce stress, she said. “Sometimes we have expectations that everyone has to work an eight-hour day to be productive. But one person can do one job and be more effective in four hours and someone else might take eight or nine or even longer.”
Form3 Design takes a similar approach. Alex Feldman and Herb Bentz launched the industrial design firm in 1997. They work with four full-time product designers in an open-office environment near Gastown.
“Rather than have everyone work an exact 9 to 5, we have a very flexible approach to things,” Feldman said. “We respect people’s will to spend time with their family or to do sports or to travel. One of our people takes a laptop home one day a week so he can spend time with his young children. Another person wanted longer weekends so he worked longer hours so he could be with his partner.”
He said Form3 takes on projects that create stimulating work. “Our office is an office of generalists so that we don’t like to be pigeon-holed into doing one type of work. When it comes to keeping the staff happy, the job is fun and interesting.”
Their solution to stress is to share the burden. “We work as a team and if we feel that one person is feeling too much pressure because of deadlines, because we have a general set of skills, we’ll jump in and help,” Feldman said.
That kind of responsiveness is also important to Jamesie Bower, owner of Staff Systems in downtown Vancouver, with a staff of four.
“The most important bellwether for how an employee is feeling mentally, physically and emotionally is communication,” said Bower, who opened the recruitment agency in 1991. “As a business owner you have to have a certain amount of intuition in order to be successful. You should be able to assess when an employee has reached a burnout stage.”
She said it’s crucial to have a relationship with each of the people who report to you so they know they can come to you when they’re feeling tired, burnt out or have issues at home. “You have to have your ear to the ground and know when to say, ‘Take a day off.’”
That’s exactly what Bower recently offered to a staff member who was bearing the brunt of a major renovation in the office and needed some time to recharge.
Bower is also planning to offer her staff a corporate membership at the new Chopra Yoga Center nearby.
“In all the stress that goes on around us I think we forget the importance of physical exercise,” she said.
“As employers we have to be much more nurturing than we have been in the past. When I started in this industry the employer was king and that was that. Now I think it’s definitely a 50-50 road.” •
