Poor leadership adding to employee burnout at companies like Amazon, Microsoft, survey says

Dive Brief:

Poor leadership and an uncertain direction of the company is the largest driver of employee burnout, according to a Blind survey of about 9,100 employees at tech companies within its online community. Work overload, insufficient reward and a toxic culture rounded out the four reasons.
Work overload only slightly outpaced poor leadership for burned out Amazon employees. The same was true for Microsoft employees, according to the report. But lack of control and career growth was a burnout factor for about 17% of Microsoft employees.
More than one-third of current eBay employees experience burnout as a result of poor leadership and unclear direction. More than one-fourth of Salesforce and Intel employees feel the same. Only about 14% of Facebook and about 15% of Uber employees feel poor leadership leads to burnout.

Dive Insight:

There are many factors that go into maintaining employee satisfaction including engaging working environments, updated technology and listening to employee feedback. But companies may find they are inadvertently encouraging employees to overwork themselves.

About 60% of tech workers feel burnout from their current job and this is largely due to the high expectations and the demands of the job. Contributing factors of employee burnout include questioning leadership, a poor commute, difficult coworkers and long hours.

Silicon Valley-type companies have faced scrutiny over how they handle discrimination and sexual harassment, thus contributing to burnout and employee-raised lawsuits. Tech companies like Tinder and Uber have undergone changes in CEOs after such activities.

Burnout has some health-related side effects including depression, coronary disease, insomnia, substance abuse and other chronic illnesses. And yet with some much at stake organizations struggle to manage burnout.

Many have had success when companies and executives reshape company culture and evaluate workloads and expectations. And sometimes the onus of managing factors contributing to burnout falls on the employees. Owning personal purpose can contribute to sustaining motivation.