3 Things That Cause Burnout in Entry-Level Employees – And How to Prevent It

Even in uncertain times like these, starting a new job is exciting. This is especially true for entry-level employees who have spent their college careers working toward this milestone. However, transitioning into a full-time role – especially with added complications from things like remote work – can be overwhelming for new employees and eventually lead to burnout, defined as emotional & mental exhaustion from periods of prolonged stress.

With everything going on in the world, preventing burnout before it crops up in entry-level employees is more important than ever. Fortunately, there are data-backed, concrete ways to safeguard against burnout, even with added challenges from virtual onboarding and managing.

Bravely, a career-coaching app that connects companies and employees to on-demand professionals who help guide them through common workplace challenges, has been collecting comprehensive data from their coaching sessions on the warning signs of burnout at the entry-level. To find out how employers should approach this issue, we spoke with Maureen Kennedy, Head Pro at Bravely, about why entry-level employees experience burnout and how employers can prevent it from happening.

Reason #1 for burnout: A lack of role clarity.

For entry-level employees, a new job can come with a bit of confusion. But there’s one thing that should be clearly laid out from the very beginning: the job description. Any vagueness in this description can cause employees to feel like there’s a lack of role clarity, which means they don’t have a concrete understanding of their tasks and responsibilities.

Approximately 29% of employees said they were reluctant to bring up the topic of role clarity to their managers, according to a Bravely study. Of that group, about half said they thought their managers were too busy to discuss their roles with them. This lack of communication can negatively affect productivity and will eventually cause stress.

Kennedy says the fix is less complicated than you’d think. “The best way to give clear hires role clarity is a clear job description,” she says. “That’s not as self-explanatory as it sounds – if it were, a lack of clarity wouldn’t be a problem for so many employees.”

Here’s how you can prevent a lack of role clarity in your company, according to Kennedy:

• Clearly define an effective job description with not only tasks and responsibilities, but also an outline showing how success will be measured.
• Managers and employees should have regular one-on-ones to help keep the line of communication open.
• Managers should watch for signs that their direct reports don’t know what their top priority should be. This can look like not asking the right questions about their own work, being unsure which parts of a project they own, or not being able to articulate what they’re working on despite being busy and clocking a lot of hours.
• Managers should use scheduled time with their reports to talk about obstacles and challenges the employee might be facing. Be curious about what their day looks like: where are they focusing their time and energy? What do they find the most and least fulfilling?
• Finally, the job description should be updated by the employee and reviewed regularly by the manager. The employee and manager should keep an eye on the current job description and the former job description to assess workload and shifting priorities.

Among employees who sought coaching related to role clarity, 94% of them were able to reach a satisfactory resolution using the next steps from just one coaching session. And according to Kennedy, this is because entry-level employees are eager to learn and want to feel their work has an impact on a company’s success.

Reason #2 for burnout: Employees are looking for more meaningful feedback.

Employees often tell Kennedy they don’t receive enough positive feedback. She says there is no balance between positive and negative feedback, and employees should demand meaningful feedback instead. “All feedback should be actionable – not personal, not emotional,” she says.

Stress related to receiving or soliciting feedback from a manager is 17% more likely to have a negative effect on employee attitude than stress related to giving feedback to a manager, according to Bravely. During these sessions, employees were split 50/50 between wanting more positive feedback along external conversations with a manager or peer, and internal perspective shifts that help process feedback and improve self confidence.

Kennedy urges employers to alter the way they give feedback by asking themselves one question: Am I just nitpicking, or am I helping someone get to a desired outcome?

“I often challenge managers to think of feedback as a two-way street,” Kennedy says. “Managers should be soliciting feedback from their direct reports. But making feedback flow organically takes some legwork, like having a ‘reset’ meeting for a manager and their report to align on a format for giving and accepting feedback.”

To help employers start the conversation, Kennedy offers this format for giving feedback to employees:

1. Set the scene: The feedback should be timely and not only during the annual review.
2. Discuss just the facts: Focus on the behaviors and leave out emotion.
3. Share the impact of the behavior: Explain how certain changes can impact you, another co-worker, the team, or the business itself.
4. Ask and listen: After you give feedback, be open to listening. Ask for the person’s perspective on the situation.
5. Decide what’s next: Agree on next steps – together.

Kennedy ensures that giving meaningful feedback is not difficult and requires managers to describe the behavior and explain its impact. For example, instead of saying, “You were great during that client meeting,” say, “During the meeting today, you answered the client’s difficult questions with poise and you nailed the data – you won the client over!” This can be followed by, “How about you take the lead presenting the data in the next meeting?”

This feedback lets the employee know exactly what they did right and what impact they made, while encouraging them to lean into their strengths.

Reason #3 for burnout: Employees struggle with an uneven workload.

None of us were ever taught “how to work,” according to Kennedy. She says managing an inbox, creating a to-do list, and setting reminders are often new to people who are just starting their careers. This might cause employees to overwork themselves without actually being productive, and once they tell their managers they have a large workload, no one really knows how to manage it.

About 61% of employers whose sessions were about workload management said it’s a process that will extend over a period of time, according to Bravely. To get started, Kennedy encourages managers to consistently ask questions about how the process is going. “It’s not about micromanaging,” she says. ”It’s about being curious and taking on a coaching mindset.”

Here are a few things to keep in mind when helping employees manage their workload, according to Kennedy:

• Managers can encourage their reports to experiment with their time management: try something new, stick to it for six weeks, and see what the impact is.
• Managers should talk explicitly with their employees about their expectations for responsiveness outside normal work hours, especially while remote work remains the norm. They should not only encourage employees to be off when they are off, but help them come up with a concrete plan for achieving this, such as setting ‘Do Not Disturb’ hours or turning off notifications at certain times.  
• Set the urgency level of a new task. Create clear deadlines and show employees what closing the loop at the end of a project should look like.
• Managers should get curious about how their people manage their time. Ask an employee to document what they did for an entire day, in 15-minute blocks. This will help get your report to a more productive place.

When it comes to the employee’s responsibilities, Kennedy suggests they develop their “managing up” skills. This means that when an employee has an unmanageable workload, they should approach their manager and be prepared to show what they’re working on along with possible solutions.

With the added stress and uncertainty placed on entry-level employees right now, it’s especially important that employers know how to clearly define roles, give meaningful feedback, and help employees develop a healthy workload. Burnout among is far from inevitable – and these tips from Kennedy and Bravely can give employers the playbook they need to mitigate it.