Preventing Burnout?
Good morning everyone,
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I work for a marketing company, and I recently received an email from the CEO/owner looking for direction on how we can prevent burnout within our executive ranks. Our company philosophy is that we never say "no" to our clients, and "we work around the clock marketing your company so you don't have too".
Here is the e-mail I received from the owner of the company:
“This new, faster pace world where we’re available 24/7 cannot be good for us or society long term. We can’t put down our cell phones or iPads, we don’t play with the kids anymore because we’re on conference calls throughout the night, we don’t have dinner with our families because we’re on the cell phone.
We had better figure out how to control this or we’re going to be a bunch of zombies.
Do we tell IT to shut off all communication servers at 7pm or require no cell phone usage after a certain time or what?
Like most of our dedicated associates, I’m so paranoid of missing an important contact that while in China (14 hour time difference) I wake up every time my phone dings to see if it’s something I need to address right then.
We’re allowing this fast pace to consume us. It has to be controlled or we’ll all suffer for it. We need direction”.
OK. So now we have recognized the problem, what approach do we take to solve this? I don’t think that shutting down our IT access is the answer. I have done some research and the consensus is to offer coaching skills, training on time management, recreational retreats (we just did this, and the executives were complaining that it was an ineffective use of their time).
Does anyone have any ideas for a different approach? I would appreciate any feedback.
Thank you!
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