By Diana Matwichuk, CHRP

We live in a fast-paced society in which the advancement of technology has throttled us into warp speed. For anyone living in a major centre with transportation woes, it is warp speed while carrying a set of 20-lb weights.

For those employees who have survived a recent downsizing and who have perhaps inherited the work and deadlines of past co-workers, life can be a veritable pressure-cooker.

Employee burn-out is a human concern indeed, but there is also the potential for significant cost to the organization if not addressed. You may be able to set up and use your HRIS to help you with early detection of employee burnout, which may allow you to implement timely change that will avoid costs to the organization.

The Price Tag

Employees who are suffering burn-out may be more likely to be involved in health & safety incidents, which can cost the organization in terms of increased Workers Compensation rates and, potentially, legal action. Your health & safety coordinator may wish to know, through trend analysis reporting, if there were any indications of over-extension of employees that may have contributed to the incident.

Similarly, there comes a point on the burn-out trajectory where productivity plummets – and this is augmented when output is decreasing at the same time that an employee is being paid overtime. Productivity = Outputs / Inputs. If outputs are decreasing and inputs (such as payroll costs) are increasing, then that is not good financial news.

Employees for whom workload expectations are consistently too high may ultimately choose to leave the company. Presumably there would have been reliance on that employee’s productivity if the situation were to come to that, and so a replacement would need to be recruited, thus incurring additional costs to the organization.

Forensic HRIS Reporting

Overtime analysis in conjunction with a review of employee attendance data could assist you in health & safety trend analysis and general proactive monitoring of the climate in your organization. Is employee personal time off being taken alongside excessive overtime? Are there any trends to sick time or personal time taken, perhaps in relation to departments with vacant positions?

Monitoring and reporting on vacation entitlements remaining in your HRIS may be a means for detecting potential employee burnout. Are entitlement balances being carried forward into the next year, and are they excessively high? Is there a connection between vacation not being taken by employees and excessive workload? Connecting this to the point above, do you have a situation where overtime and personal time off are being paid to an employee while the vacation liability continues to escalate?

Tracking position vacancies is another way in which your HRIS can be helpful in watching for employee burnout, especially in departments where there is cross-training. Employees may be trained to cover vacant positions, but an individual’s 1.0 FTE does not increase just because they are working 1.5 FTE position of effort. This is a discrepancy that is not sustainable in the long term and is certainly detectable on your HRIS.

The advantage of reporting from your HRIS is that it is generally possible to combine reporting components such as vacation, overtime, attendance, position vacancies. Considered independently, each of these components might not be an indicator, but when considered in conjunction with each other, they might indeed be clues to organizational issues.

If significant change has been taking place in your organization, and you find yourself being vigilant for signs of employee burnout, the clues may be in your HRIS. Effective reporting on various potential indicators may provide you with valuable metrics and set you up for derailing the burnout curve.

Diana Matwichuk is an HR consultant and Implementation Specialist at Avanti Software. Diana works with clients and HRIS stakeholders to develop a future state vision and implements the HRIS software to align with that vision. She provides training on effective use of an HRIS with the emphasis on meeting HR needs. You can reach Diana at 403-225-2366 ext 230 or dmatwichuk@avanti.ca.