Alex Kozhevnikov, CTO Overgear.com, ex-TL EPAM has a long work experience in the development of gaming, e-commerce, and fintech projects. Being an executive who is responsible for the management of the dev team, he is engaged in all team processes and looks after his employees. Understanding that 2020 was a difficult year for everyone, it's important to pay close attention to team members' mental health. That's why Alex decided to share his observations and solutions for such a dangerous process as burning out.
This article is mostly devoted to the developers. But it will be also useful for the young CTO, product managers, and everyone who works at a fast pace depends on sprints or is characterized by high idealism, excessive perfectionism, not understanding of such things as good enough.
In terms of business, in most cases, we don't need super high quality. It is often more important to release with lower quality, but earlier.
But here is the issue - among the developers, there are often guys who want everything to be perfect. I learned that the hard way.
The common problem is poor communication with not detailed tasks, not explained goals. Because of it, we get the situation when a developer assumes tasks in his own way, prioritizes on his own. He begins to try his best to do it and start overworking. It may turn out that he makes efforts where it is not required and can even change focus from really important tasks.
What to do: clearly prioritize, explain the tasks, their impact on the business, the team.
How to spot burnout in your team
1) The easiest thing is to track the working time so that the employees do not overwork. On remote work, it is a little more difficult to do, that's why you should constantly speak about it, explain that overworking is bad for both company and employee.
2) Be interested in how your employees or teammates are doing after work. You always have small talks to ask how they are. When people are struggling, they tend to be more irritable. Knowing the normal reaction of a person, you can understand when something goes wrong with him/her. It is important to pay attention to such moments.
Except burning out It also may mean that he/she has a high level of stress or is upset with something and doubts to talk about it. And here it is important to raise this topic on one by one session, or go and talk right away.
3) One by one session is another moment when you can understand people's mental state. There should always be questions examining mental health, level of stress, critical moments and etc.
4) Do not blame people for the fact that you do not have time to finish the project. If you don't have time to finish it, you should think about why it happened.
Usually, you fail to meet the deadlines, because you cannot evaluate all tasks properly. For sure, there is always a chance that the task will take more time than you could have planned. You need to reflect on it, next time do some research before setting deadlines. And the key point here is to make sure that it does not lead to overwork and the feeling that "we are not doing anything all the time".
Preventative actions
1) Give a helicopter view, explain what you are doing, keep motivated.
It is important that the employees do not have problems with motivation, they always need to understand what and why you are doing, what will be behind the implementation of this or that feature, in other words, they need a helicopter view.
If the team understands why they did it, what they got from it as a team, a company, only in this case they will understand that their work is important, it leads to some results.
It always brings you an awareness of what you are doing. Along with awareness, motivation appears, which in its turn has a positive effect on the work process.
2) Control workload and analyze the workflow. In Overgear I tend to analyze who has problems and with what tasks. It is not a reason to read a lesson to the people, it's done to help him/her. It is important to look at what kind of problems they have, then try to find out why it happened. If these were personal problems, then you need to try to put yourself in another person's shoes, perhaps to decrease the level of workload. If these were problems with tasks, then it's time to change your explanation or rearrange the tasks.
3) Pay attention to newbies
Newbies often make the same mistake. They begin to think that they are doing something too slowly or that many more things are expected from them. It leads to the fact that they begin to overwork.
Some percentage of careless managers think that it's great and give them more tasks. All in all, it may result in burning out.
For newbies: it is important to understand that no matter how great you try, everyone will always want more from you, so, think about you at first.
It is necessary to explain work processes, speak about the pace of work, build a friendly atmosphere.
How to recognize that you are burned out or on the way to it.
Symptoms of burnout:
1) Depressing thoughts and lack of energy.
You think that you are in the wrong place, that what you do is useless. When you do not want to go to work in the morning, you want to get enough sleep, but you cannot, no matter how much time you spend in bed.
2) Eating disorder. When you eat, for example, not three times a day, but one or two and it includes just some kind of snacks.
3) Sleep deprivation. Imagine the situation that you go to bed and you are very tired, but instead of sleeping, you have a lot of thoughts in your head. In the morning you wake up with the understanding that all night long in your dream you were solving some work problems, and in the morning you feel awful. It's a clear sign of sleep deprivation.
As a result, your brain works worse, you do tasks more slowly, you try to spend even more time on it, and in the end, it does not lead to anything good.
How to cope with it.
Mistake: hoping to sleep off on a weekend or vacation. As when you return to work, the same routine and problems appear again as they were before.
Tips. What you can do with it:
1) Finish your work clearly on time. Work no more than 8 hours a day. If you come at 10 am, at 7 pm you should finish. Whether you managed to complete all tasks or not it doesn't matter.
If you have to overwork, it means that the next day you should work less. If you had to sit for an extra hour, the next day you work for an hour less. Remember about your work-life balance.
2) Coming home, do whatever you like but don't think about your work. A common mistake is that a person comes and starts learning. If you are burned out or on the way to it, then, first of all, you should recover, you need a recharge. That is why don't use your free time for self-education and development. Spend this time on a hobby, give your mind a chance to have a rest. As an idea, it would be great if you start walking for an hour a day.
3) Sometimes it is better to do nothing at all, but the key point is to go to bed somewhere around 10-11 pm. Ideally, before this, do some kind of walk or light workouts that are not exhausting.
In 2020 a great number of people struggle with mental health. But it's not a reason to burn out, it is better to listen to yourself more carefully and take care of your beloved ones. Epic fight "mental health vs 2020" is coming to its end, and it depends on you what the final will be. Take preventative measures, learn how to juggle workplace stress with the daily pressures.
