The landscape industry is a demanding field, and it’s natural to experience stress for short periods of time. However, if you or your team members are in a state of constant stress with no relief in sight, this can lead to cases of burnout.
When the topic of burnout is brought up, you may think it’s simply a personal failing that other leaders and teams have to deal with, but often it can appear in any organization that is overworked or lacks clear expectations.
Early Warning Signs of Burnout
Indicators of burnout can appear as physical, emotional, or behavioral traits. Pay attention to whether you or your team members are displaying any of these warning signs.
Some of the physical symptoms include brain fog, headaches, stomach or muscle aches, loss of appetite, getting sick more often or general exhaustion regardless of how much you sleep.
Emotionally, individuals approaching burnout may show increased irritability, less joy, lower self-esteem, or hopelessness.
Behavioral signs of burnout feature a lack of motivation, a desire to isolate, lost creativity, making poor choices, or cynicism towards others. If a team member suddenly has increased absenteeism, a shorter fuse on jobsites or starts cutting corners with tasks, these can all point toward someone heading towards a breaking point.
What Happens When Burnout Is Ignored
Burnout is not something that goes away on its own. Failing to address it in your organization can cost you in the long run.
Erin Stafford, social psychologist and best-selling author of The Type A Trap: Five Mindset Shifts to Beat Burnout and Transform Your Life, says burnout costs companies $300 billion per year.
As reaction time and situational awareness decrease for burned-out employees, safety risks skyrocket. Fatigued employees are more likely to make mistakes with equipment and chemicals, putting themselves, their peers and the client’s property at stake.
Allowing your team to become burned out can also result in higher turnover as individuals leave suddenly. This can create additional pressure for your remaining staff as they struggle to pick up the slack.
Production quality can also slip as those who are burned out are less likely to care about detail work and will feel overwhelmed by normal tasks.
Dr. Laura Leone, senior consultant with the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, says that individuals cannot respond, learn or process if they do not feel seen and safe first. They can even regress to the mindset of a three- to eight-year-old if they remain in mental state of alarm for too long.
“The brain stops working well in these cases,” Leone says. “It defaults to a primal state of only worrying about safety and survival.”
If, as a leader, you are the one experiencing burnout, you can find yourself disengaging from your team as a whole, making short-term decisions that hurt your long-term operations or becoming reactive instead of proactive.
Stress Management Strategies for You and Your Team
The good thing about stress management is it can be implemented proactively so you don’t have to wait until someone is in the danger zone to start these practices.
One main method to manage stress is building recovery into your schedule. This could look like rotating crews during peak workloads so one group isn’t always working the hardest route or providing protected days for your office staff so they have one day a week where they can catch up on administrative tasks without interruptions.
Some landscape companies have opted to go to a 4-day workweek, so employees have more time to recuperate over the weekend.
Stafford says that proactive rest leads to a 26% increase in performance. One tactic Stafford suggests is to keeping Fridays meetings free so your team doesn’t carry stress over into the weekend.
Burnout is often caused by disorder so look for areas of your organization that are chaotic and could use some standardization. Providing this level of stability can greatly reduce stress levels when employees have an exact routine and know what to expect.
Unclear expectations are another stressor so take the time to clearly define what success looks like and then regularly recognize and praise it when you see your team meeting those standards. Conduct daily or weekly huddles to ensure everyone is on the same page. When changes are rolled out, share the ‘why’ behind them so employees aren’t left in the dark and creating a stress-filled rumor mill.
You can encourage resilience with your team by supporting them in their roles, providing the resources necessary to get the job done and making them believe their voice is heard and matters.
Evaluate your workload and that of your employees to see if there is a need for an additional role versus having someone handle two jobs’ worth of work.
Leone says one overlooked method to breaking out of the stress loop is to practice acts of kindness. She says kindness not only benefits you but also the recipient and whoever witnesses the act of kindness.
Being kind reduces cortisol by 23% while increasing dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and oxytocin.
Stafford adds that taking time to connect with gratitude and appreciation is crucial for combatting burnout. Often individuals can become burned out when they feel unrecognized, unappreciated or struggle with perfectionism.
Pausing to focus on what you are grateful for and celebrating your wins can remind you and your team of what is going right, instead of fixating only on what is going wrong.
“You’re stressed because you’re doing too little of what makes you feel alive,” Stafford says.
