Women are burnt out – a look at the past year and how we got to this point.
Submitted by Rebecca Hatton
“Frankly, women are hanging on.”
In the article, The state of burnout for women in the workplace by McKinsey and Company, this is the one sentence that stuck out. Being a woman in corporate has always been tough, being a woman in general has always been tough, however external forces, such as a pandemic, has shifted the perception unlike anything seen before. A whopping 42% of women report being burned out. It’s interesting to note that in this article, as we’ll often see at our own workplaces, when companies implement action to fight against burnout – women are the ones taking action more consistently. Women are the ones who are checking in with employees, some of them not even on their team. This isn’t just physical burnout; this is mental and emotional burnout. A full body burnout, if you will.
So, what can companies do to stop burnout in women? Well, this article says, don’t just wait around to let it play out, which a lot of companies are doing. Waiting is detrimental to the health of the women who are feeling burnout and to the company itself who can be facing a talent crisis. Where in the first year of the pandemic, there were articles extrapolating on women’s role in the workplace and what burnout and the pandemic is doing to women, especially women of colour in particular, this article provides some tangible advice and steps to take in response to some of the findings from the previous year.