Half of workers would quit to move to an employer that provided burnout support

Report high­lights gap between man­agers and employ­ees on burnout and stress

• 51% of employ­ees would leave cur­rent role and move to new com­pa­ny if bet­ter sup­port for stress/​burnout was available
• 48% of employ­ees don’t feel their man­ag­er takes any steps to help them avoid burnout
• Yet 89% of man­agers say they can sup­port stressed or burnout employees
• New report sug­gests drop in per­for­mance man­age­ment con­tribut­ing to gap between man­ag­er and employ­ee perceptions

More than half of UK based employ­ees would leave their jobs in favour organ­i­sa­tions that can offer bet­ter sup­port for stress and burnout. A new report, Per­for­mance Man­age­ment Report 2022, by Clear Review, an Advanced com­pa­ny also reveals that near­ly half of work­ers don’t feel their man­agers take any steps to help them avoid the prob­lem of burnout – a prob­lem which impacts over 800,000 British work­ers with over half report­ing that this is due to the pandemic.

This is despite 97 per cent of man­agers report­ing they are equipped to recog­nise stressed and unen­gaged mem­bers of their team, and 89 per cent say­ing they are equipped to sup­port said employees. 

The gap comes at a time when employ­ers are already strug­gling to retain tal­ent in the wake of the Great Res­ig­na­tion – in fact, 39% of employ­ers have cur­rent hard-to-fill vacan­cies. With lev­els of stress and burnout reach­ing new heights in the wake of the pan­dem­ic, com­pa­nies are con­scious they need to tack­le burnout, with 84 per cent of HR direc­tors believ­ing it to be a major issue that needs addressing. 

Nick Gal­limore, Direc­tor of Tal­ent Trans­for­ma­tion and Insight at Advanced, said: ​“While it’s heart­en­ing to see that busi­ness­es do recog­nise the preva­lence of stress and burnout among their employ­ees, the gap between what man­agers believe and what employ­ees see is a sig­nif­i­cant cause for con­cern. The con­se­quences are clear and should be a wake­up call for employ­ers already strug­gling to retain and attract the right talent.”

The report also not­ed that per­for­mance man­age­ment is not receiv­ing the pri­or­i­ty focus it once was. Two thirds (65 per cent) of HR direc­tors believe per­for­mance man­age­ment has been put on the back burn­er, with a third of employ­ees hav­ing a per­for­mance con­ver­sa­tion once a year or less. At the same time, greater pri­or­i­ty has been placed on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and engage­ment, which is a focus for 48 per cent of organ­i­sa­tions this year, com­pared with 33 per cent in 2021. 

Gal­limore added: ​“Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and engage­ment are crit­i­cal to busi­ness results, but so too are engaged, com­mit­ted and moti­vat­ed staff. It is notice­able that as per­for­mance man­age­ment slips from focus, so we see this gap devel­op­ing between how man­agers think they’re tack­ling burnout and how they actu­al­ly are. Reg­u­lar con­tact with employ­ees to cov­er goal set­ting, devel­op­ment, engage­ment and gen­er­al­ly facil­i­tat­ing open feed­back and com­mu­ni­ca­tion are fun­da­men­tal to being able to iden­ti­fy how employ­ees are doing; not just from a per­for­mance per­spec­tive, but from a stress one too.” 

Author and lead­er­ship expert, Mike Parkes, com­ment­ed on the find­ings: ​“As remote work­ing pre­vails for many work­ers, the vir­tu­al work­place is increas­ing­ly becom­ing trans­ac­tion­al, with indi­vid­u­als con­sumed by a dai­ly del­uge of emails and meet­ings, often just to get the basics achieved. Indi­vid­u­als are hav­ing to work hard­er to com­pen­sate for the lack of col­lab­o­ra­tion and engage­ment that nat­u­ral­ly occurs in a vibrant work­place as indi­cat­ed by the report. Though man­agers seem to have the intent to spot the pres­sures of their team mem­bers, the vir­tu­al world is inhibit­ing this through the lack of the nat­ur­al conversation. 

“This too could large­ly account for the report’s high­light­ing of the drop off in per­for­mance man­age­ment. Those infor­mal con­ver­sa­tions con­tribute so sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the dai­ly man­age­ment of per­for­mance that this vac­u­um reduces the suc­cess of the more for­mal per­for­mance man­age­ment process, though one might argue that with this as a back­drop, man­agers need to give even more due care and atten­tion at har­ness­ing indi­vid­ual engage­ment and performance.”

The Per­for­mance Man­age­ment Report 2022 is avail­able to down­load now.

Clear Review, an Advanced com­pa­ny, sur­veyed 1150 HR deci­sion mak­ers, man­agers and employ­ees in the UK and USA. 

For media enquiries, please contact:

Joan­na Drake +44(0)7584 498029 / joanna@​fireworkpr.​co.​uk

Court­ney Glymph +44(0)7867488769 / courtney@​fireworkpr.​co.​uk