Life in New York is exciting, vibrant, and fun, but it also comes with its challenges. In the last year especially, New Yorkers were forced to adapt to a new way of life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the city that never sleeps re-emerges back to normal life, many New Yorkers are struggling with returning to the workplace. After over a year of social isolation, employees may carry their burnout back into the office with them.
What can you do to provide mental support for your employees? Offering wellness classes is a great way to avoid worksite burnout. Keep reading to find out how onsite Twello can help your employees’ mental health and get your workplace back on track.
The Stress of Life in the Big Apple
Many people dream of living in New York. The bright lights, culture, opportunities, and endless things to do attract people from all over the world to the Big Apple. However, what they don’t always consider is how much stress can come with life in New York.
New Yorkers work long hours. In fact, New York has the longest work week out of 116 cities. The cost of living in New York is extremely high, so people have to work overtime just to afford their rent and expenses.
Even though Manhattan is just a 13-mile island, commutes are long and busy in New York. It’s hard for New York workers to find downtime to de-stress and unwind.
A New Generation of New York Workers
With all of these factors working together, it makes sense that many New Yorkers experience burnout at work. In the U.S. as a whole, one in five highly engaged employees is at risk of burnout. It’s likely that that number is even higher in New York given the added stressors of daily life.
Burnout is also high in New York because many New Yorkers overlook their mental health. In a culture that prioritizes climbing the ladder to the top, employees often put their jobs over a healthy work-life balance.
However, that is changing with a new generation of workers. Millennials have made it clear that they want an employer who has their mental health in mind. They want to work for someone who offers health and wellness benefits, like wellness meditation programs.
If you want to retain the best young talent in New York, you need to pay attention to their mental health needs and wants.
Worksite Burnout in New York City
As we said, worksite burnout is common all over the U.S. Employees are forced to handle heavy workloads and work in toxic corporate environments every day. They are held to high standards that they must meet if they want to get ahead, and they don’t have enough vacation time.
Lack of control over their jobs and future also leads to mistrust of their employees. Let’s look at a few statistics about worksite burnout.
In a recent survey of 7,500 full-time employees, Gallup found that 23 percent of those workers said they felt burned out more often than not. An additional 44 percent reported feeling burned out sometimes. To put that into context, nearly two-thirds of full-time workers are dealing with burnout at some point while at work.
The Effects of Workplace Burnout
As an employer, how does employee burnout affect you? Well, burned-out employees are typically unproductive, irritable, and have more health issues. Addressing burnout will benefit your employees and your daily operations.
In the past, having an employee that worked long hours, put work over their family, and always strived to meet high expectations seemed like a good thing. You might think you have a highly dedicated employee that will benefit your business.
What you actually have is an employee on the brink of intense burnout. Once burnout happens, it’s hard to come back from it. Now your once overly-dedicated employee is unproductive and not contributing to your team.
Simply put, burned-out employees are expensive and bad for business. The best way to avoid the effects of workplace burnout is to address employee well-being before burnout becomes an issue.
Using Mindfulness to Cope With Workplace Burnout
What is mindfulness? It’s the act of focusing on your breath flow and being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling at every moment. During mindfulness practice, you do not judge or interpret your feelings, you simply feel them.
In a work setting, mindfulness helps employers and employees face situations with more openness and patience. It’s not always easy to stay mindful, but it is a skill that can be learned and mastered over time.
Regular mindfulness practice can help side-step burnout in the workplace by helping employees address their daily stressors. It opens up communication between employers and employees, and it gives employees a coping mechanism to use during stressful moments.
Mindfulness can also help with improved creativity, which allows your workers to contribute and get more done.
Using Yoga to Cope With Burnout
Your workplace can also offer yoga classes to give employees mental support during the workday. Yoga is a restorative practice that will help your employees feel refreshed and in the present.
The benefits of yoga in the workplace include:
- Employees can relieve stress
- It boosts morale and job satisfaction
- It enhances creativity and decision making
- It reduces pain and muscle tension from sitting throughout the day
- It boosts concentration, memory, and mental clarity
- It enhances confidence
- It decreases headaches from looking at a computer screen
Offering yoga during the workday gives them a break to put aside their job stressors and focus on their health. When they come back, they are rejuvenated and ready to get back to work. Plus, yoga is great for overall health, which can help combat the health issues that arise with burnout.
At Twello, we offer onsite chair yoga classes to help your employees manage stress and our classes are tailored specifically to the corporate world.
Using Resilience and Stress Management Training to Cope With Burnout
One way your employees can deal with stress is by learning how to manage it. Oftentimes, employees are so exhausted and overworked that any added stress leads to a breakdown.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Resilience and stress management training can help them learn how to handle each individual stressor as it comes. They can learn how to reduce their stress and worry and cultivate resilience.
The three pillars of resilience in the workplace are a challenge, commitment, and personal control. When your employees learn how to use these pillars effectively, it can help them avoid burnout in the future.
At Twello, we offer a resilience training class that gives them the skills they need to reduce stress, build resilience, and cope with burnout.
Banish Burnout With Onsite Twello Classes in New York City
Adding onsite mindfulness, yoga, and resilience training will go a long way in supporting your employees’ mental health. When you provide mental support, along with the high-quality benefits and time off they need, you can avoid worksite burnout.
At Twello, our goal is to give employees a toolkit to deal with workplace stress. The more tools they have in their kit, the better they will feel and perform at work.
To get started with in-person Twello classes for your workplace, contact us today.
