The Work Wire
SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. and Bob Goodwin, President at Career Club, host a lively conversation on how the latest news impacts all things work-related.
The Work Wire
Burnout - The Work Wire
Unlock the secrets to combating burnout in the workplace with insights from Johnny C. Taylor Jr., President and CEO of SHRM. Burnout is more than just an individual issue; it's a complex problem influenced by political unrest, economic uncertainty, and personal challenges. In this compelling discussion, discover why addressing burnout is a shared responsibility between employers and employees and learn about the full spectrum of factors that contribute to employee well-being. Taylor sheds light on how burnout affects productivity and healthcare costs, making it clear that recognizing these issues is crucial for a healthier workplace.
Explore the intricate balance between personal and professional lives, especially through the lens of a Southern Christian, African-American background. Trust between employees and managers is key, yet many leaders struggle to identify personal struggles affecting work performance. This episode examines the philosophical differences between leaders and managers, emphasizing the importance of empathy, intentionality, and observance. Understand why building strong, supportive relationships in the workplace can help employees feel safe to share their struggles, ultimately fostering a healthier work environment.
Journey with us through the evolution of workplace culture from 2004 to 2024, where vulnerability and openness have become more accepted. Learn how fostering empathy, demonstrating genuine care, and modeling healthy behaviors like taking time off can prevent burnout. Johnny highlights the significance of aligning personal values with work, continuous learning, and viewing employees holistically. By promoting empathy, civility, and mental wellness, HR can play a pivotal role in creating a supportive and fulfilling work environment. Join us for an engaging conversation that will leave you rethinking how to navigate meaning, wellness, and gratitude in your professional life.
Hey everybody. This is Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club, joined by my good friend, the President and CEO of SHRM, johnny C Taylor. Jr. Johnny, how are you man? I'm doing well and you, I'm doing well.
Bob Goodwin:I cannot wait to jump into another episode of the Work Wire with you, thank you. Let's go Awesome. So let's just get right into it. You know SHRM recently put out a statistic that indicated that 44% of workers are identified as being burned out. You know, recently at work and you know we talk a lot about bringing the whole person to work and stuff like that, and I want to unpack burned out and the business implications of that and then how HR and as a function can help with that, what my responsibility and things I can do as an employee, as an individual, can be doing with that. But I just want to set the table really, really quick and then I'll hand the microphone over.
Bob Goodwin:We've got a presidential election coming up. People are freaked out about that. We've got a war in Israel that people are freaked out. We've got inflation. We've got layoffs, we've got potentially a recession Just lots of things going on.
Bob Goodwin:You know kind of outside right but impact me directly. Then there's my real life. I've got my aging parent. I've got my potential kid who's going off the rails. I've got the health issue maybe I haven't told you about, maybe my marriage isn't doing amazingly well right now. There's all kinds of stuff going on in my air. Quote real life. Oh, there's the work that I do. And do I have enough resources? Do I have a great boss? Am I capable? There are so many things acting on people that are resulting in things like burnout, which is not just physical exhaustion, it's mental and emotional exhaustion. It starts to reflect itself in loss of productivity, healthcare costs, attrition, absenteeism. There's just tons of things that are impacting businesses and people. That kind of fall under, I think, the general headline of burnout, and I'd like to explore that and then maybe some things that individuals and companies might be able to think about to address it.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:So this is a topic that I'm so glad you introduced in the way that you did. Too often, so I mean seriously, hats off to you, because what you did was you painted the entire picture. Too often, the discussion about burnout begins and ends at nine o'clock and five o'clock, so they put all of the responsibility, the onus, for burnout, on the employer and the people manager, as if that is the sole cause of burnout. And I'll tell you why this resonated with me. I was walking to the garage one morning morning and I walked into an employee and I said how are you doing? And she burst into tears. I'm like wow. And she said I'm exhausted, I'm just burned out. And so, literally standing there in the garage, I probed why? Because my natural thought was is she working for someone who is working her 70 hours a week? Are they calling her on the weekend? Are they doing things? Are we responsible, in short, for her burnout?
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:Just by listening, I learned her mother had been terminally ill. She'd been leaving work. Her boss was actually quite accommodating and letting her leave early to take mom to the doctor's appointment and come in a little late when she had like all of this. But the problem is she was working 20 hours a day between her familial responsibilities and her work responsibilities, and she had to do both. She had a moral obligation to take care of her mother who was transitioning. She also had a financial obligation to come to work every day and do high quality work. So I bring that up to say this is really complicated and we need to be careful not to think that the solution is you've got to be a better people manager or you've got to distribute the work more evenly. It's not that simple, because people are bringing everything with them to work. They could actually walk into your office in the morning already burned out.
Bob Goodwin:Exactly A hundred percent. I gave a talk last week to a local SHRM chapter on this topic and was sort of making the case that I just did to introduce this Afterwards. A lady who helps lead IND in her workplace, you know, and very familiar with the concept of bring your whole self to work, she's, like you, completely redefined. I had not thought of it that holistically and yet as human beings by definition. You know there's the mind, soul, body, spirit, kind of, you know, like it's all of those things and we can't compartmentalize them very neatly at all and all of it bleeds onto the other thing and part of the case that I was trying to make is that for businesses these aren't soft issues, nope, like, oh, I'm just being empathetic, right, and I'm just trying to be a good listener and whatever it's like. No, like there are some extremely hard. You're already paying for this, that's right. You are already paying for this.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:But Bob. The question then is because of people do try to compartmentalize. People are not as forthcoming. So it's one thing to ask a business or an employer, an HR professional, to help someone solve a problem, but you can't solve that. That you don't know. So in this case, the employee didn't tell any of us, right? So all I know is that you show up to work and you're not your best self, you're not productive, you're not efficient, you're irritable because you didn't sleep last night and so the person next to you you snap at that colleague doesn't know your story. But you want to hold the organization accountable for not being empathetic, not having a culture of inclusivity and, like you also, again, you'll you hear me say this a lot there's plenty of blame and culpability when it comes to these things. It really is, and it's easy to drop this at HR or at the people manager at leadership's doorstep and say you're responsible for having a burnout culture. My only point is that legitimately happens in some places, but we are seeing that it's far more complicated. I'll give you another one that we're seeing a lot In fact, if you saw, just recently, dc government, because of people's ability to work remote, either sometimes through hybrid or full-time.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:There are a lot of people working two full-time jobs, yeah. And so you complain about being burned out? And the answer is yeah, because you have chosen to take on full-time, two jobs in addition to all of your familial responsibilities. And I say chosen because I know someone might be saying, well, but I had to pay my bills again. You chose. We all make decisions, we make our own choices.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:And so what happens? When the person drove Uber, starting at four o'clock, did a four hour shift from four to eight and then came to work for me because they were trying to help put their kid through college, I get it, but is it fair for me as the employer to, at nine o'clock in the morning, get you five hours into your day and if I don't know that you're an Uber driver for those first four hours before you get to me, I have no way. Even if I wanted to accommodate it, factor it in, et cetera, I can't. You can't practice what you don't know and this is what I meant about the compartmentalization of it. If it's familiar responsibilities that last night you were with your mother or your kid and this morning you drove Uber and then you showed up to me. All I know is the person who showed up and their performance, so that makes this really difficult.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:Don't you get what I'm saying? And so I do. It's really. We can't overly simplify this. The discussions that I hear around burnout do a lot of dropping this at the feet of the organization and essentially blaming.
Bob Goodwin:Actually I want to pick up on that, john. I want to flip it a little bit here, rather than laying the blame at the feet of the company HR, if you want to pick on them is how the company and I think specifically HR can be part of the solution to help help meet people where they are.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:but you've got to where they are to meet them ah, I'm massively agreeing with that.
Bob Goodwin:So, um, one of our mutual friends, uh, carol reed, who's chro at coke industries, who I've got tremendous amount of respect for, we were talking earlier this week and she was saying you know, people experience the company through their manager. That's true and and she is leaning very heavily into like, you need to know your people. You need to be very intentional about knowing your people so that when you see that you know johnny's showing up a little bleary eyed, his work's been late a couple of times then that's not Johnny, or Johnny got a little snippy about something and it's like that's not the way Johnny usually handles himself to. To take that empathetic, what's going on? You, you don't seem like yourself. Is there something that is going on that I can help with in giving that person the opportunity to kind of share? Now the people have to choose to share.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:That's the only point I want. To double click, I know.
Bob Goodwin:I know that people have to choose to share. However, you know the the really first class frontline people manager really first class frontline people manager and I think there's a training and this is part of what Kara was saying there's a training opportunity to help people become better people managers. Oftentimes we get to be a manager because we're really good at the technical, the proficiency part of my job. Right, I'm a great at this, so I'm going to put you in charge of something else, versus. Well, now that you've got people responsibilities, that may be a completely new skill set probably is for you. Let us help you learn some of those skills.
Bob Goodwin:Again, not that we're absorbing that other person's burnout that's not the people manager's job or even the HR person's job but just to learn how to look for signs, learn how to engage and give people at least the opportunity to share more what's going on, so that, if we do need to be accommodating, do something that's more flexible. A lot of times, there's company benefits that people either don't know about or aren't taking advantage of, or it may signal hey, we need to bring another benefit in here, that because this seems to be a recurring need at the company. So I'm talking too much. I think you know where I'm headed.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:No, no and I want but I do want to unpack that a little bit more. I'm going to get really personal now, right? Oh, a moment to you. You, I, in 2005, six, my marriage started failing Okay, probably was failing before, but I mean I became acutely aware of it.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:And four years into my marriage and I was really struggling and I was general counsel of a huge 400,000 person, company board secretary I mean a big job, and I was in my early 30s. So you know a career, you know story that people dreamed of and I was making a lot of money and da, da, da, da, da, da. And I had my own burnout moment, I mean literally, where I just I could not manage anymore my organization. I had a great relationship with my boss, but culturally and this is I'm bringing in again some being vulnerable. But you don't. You separate work and your personal lives. You are, we were taught, and I can tell you this is probably true of all communities, so I'm not making an assumption about all communities, but in my Southern Christian, african-american background it was. You know, your work life is your work life. There are things you talk about at work that you don't talk about, but you know you separate them.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:So I never, even though I had a great relationship with my boss. I considered him a friend and never thought it appropriate and I would not share with him what I was going through. There was nothing he could have done to get out of me, what was going on in my life, until I literally hit a wall and messed up on something substantive at work. Now I'm well-educated. I didn't need a check. You know I wasn't like, oh my God, I have to be perfect because if I don't get this next two-week check, I'm in trouble. It wasn't any of that. But individuals, as you know, human beings are really complicated and complex at once, and I think I burned out literally to the point where I had to seek help. There was no reason. I didn't have a ton of children to feed, but we just do that.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:So I use when I think about burnout. It's not a theoretical topic to me, it's one that I had to live. I literally had to stop working and get myself together, but I never, ever would let the company know because I thought that's my problem. So I hope what we're doing as a profession is doing all that we can to your point to build trust with our employees, to let them know we're there, but then you have to, as HR professionals know, that sometimes you're just not going to know, people are not going to tell you.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:I've had staffers who have gone through chemo and they determined they had learned they were diagnosed with cancer, went through all of it and didn't disclose to me until it was obvious either loss of hair or they jump up in the middle of a meeting and go regurgitate their lunch in a bathroom. I had no idea and I am a pretty darn good people manager, if I must say so myself. I'm in tune to that because, again, with what I've gone through in my career, so I'd love you to react to what do you do? Because I think there's room for us to address burnout. You and I, on a past episode of WorkWire the WorkWire talked about, you know, working people 70, 80, 90 hours a week, consistently, check, got that, and that can lead to some really bad outcomes, including people's loss of life. But what do you do if you assume that there's some people are pretty darn good as people managers they but you just can't get it out of your people.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah. So that to me, is the second domino. The first domino is being observant, being intentional, right and knowing your people well enough to build trust. For me, this is all philosophical, but it's kind of the difference between a leader and a manager. A manager is good at managing tasks and work and what does the spreadsheet say, and you're at 92% of what the spreadsheet says you need to be. So, johnny, there's an 8% gap. Go fill it. Okay, way to go. For me, you know, a leader is somebody that can demonstrate that they care more about the person as a human being first than as a work producing unit. And when you can build that level of trust with somebody that that you know, is everybody going to share?
Bob Goodwin:no, but you're at least creating the environment. That that's okay. And one of the things that I have learned from smart people like you and other really top shelf CHRO folks is modeling vulnerability you just did it right and being able to share with people. You know like, again, you don't have to just like bear your entire soul and life, you know, to somebody at work but to say, you know, these past two weeks have been pretty hard on me and you know I'm going to take Friday off because I just need to decompress and I need an extra day.
Bob Goodwin:And if any of you guys are going through something like you know what I'm feeling right now like let's talk about it, let's figure out how you can get the rest that you need. It's like, oh, johnny's burned out. I thought Johnny was Superman, right, he gets tired too. And Johnny's like I'm going to take and I'm going to go spend the day with my daughter and I'm just going to recharge and refresh. And you're just modeling the behavior. In my experience, when you can show people that you care about them truly, genuinely, as a human being, to the extent they will let you to your well-made point and then also model you know, hey, I'm a human being over here too. Like you know, I got stuff going on, so I hear you. You've at least created the environment. And then the third thing I'll say I'll stop is.
Bob Goodwin:I think that, socially, that from 2004 or five that you were talking about to now, it's shifted. Not a small amount that it's okay to talk about I'm not doing great, it's okay to not be okay. Small amount that it's okay to talk about, I'm not doing great, it's okay to not be okay. Basically, is is part of our lexicon now that, before it's like to your point, nope, dude, what happens at home is what happens at home. This is work. Figure out how to separate the two. And that's where we see people burning out is because that work-life balance implies stress, that you have opposing forces that you're trying to balance.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:I'd love, love, love to, and I don't have the answers. I don't know the research answer, but I do wonder how much things have changed from 2004 to 2024. I'd like to believe that they have, but the instance the woman that I described in the garage, that happened in 2024, I know of an employee right now, a young kid, who has been married two, three years, maybe two years. He's going through divorce. We found out and then it was like ah, that explains the behavior of this employee and this is someone who I think in both instances are beloved. They're great employees, well-regarded. Before we got on this and it was purely coincidental, I'm going to hold this up I was watching this on my screen. Simon Sinek, actually 16 minutes ago before we started this call, said the following, and I think this captured it just popped up. We started this call, said the following, and I think this captured it just popped up Asking for help is an act of service.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:Don't deny the people who love you the honor of being there to support you. That is part of the solution is we have got to get that message out to our workplaces. That you know. I don't know that I'm calling obligation, because it's hard to put more obligation on people, but asking for help is in fact an act of service. If we could build that as a profession into our sort of zeitgeist and people believe that we could move this forward. But that just it was coincidental that that hit my screen just before you and I started talking. But so I say that we have got to do a lot of work on, yes, the employer side, but we've got to do a lot on the employee side.
Bob Goodwin:Right, that's all I'm getting to no, no, no, so it's messaging and it's messaging and modeling. Yes.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:That's well messaging and modeling and accountability on both sides.
Bob Goodwin:Always, always, it's not all to adult relationships. This is not parent, child and yeah, so, but you know, back to you know I wonder what the data would say. Like, yes, it really I think it'd be interesting to go look at actually SHRM communications over the years, because you guys do a very good job of messaging. You know empathy, civility, mental wellness, resilience, all these kinds of things you know I associate with SHRM right Versus, if we went 20 years ago, how much is it more legal compliance and that kind of stuff?
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:Yep, no, I think that's right, and so we're trying to fix for it, and I think most of our members, overwhelmingly, are HR professionals. Yes, so, but as you know, we're pivoting a little, remaining true to our core. But now talking work workers and the workplace and worker message is just that, like you have to tell your boss if you're in HR and you're under some insane amount of pressure outside of nine to five. That is creating burnout conditions for you.
Bob Goodwin:If you think I think this is highly related, if you think that it's not, but on the same slide that I see, the burnout statistic from SHRM is also an engagement statistic and thank you, dr Alex, for all the data collection and analysis and insights for that. But engagement is also because it's also a contributor to this right. If I don't, if I feel like my work doesn't matter, right right, it's not that important, what we do isn't that important. Now I'm working like for, for what? Like just to make some guy on Wall Street richer? Or like what am I doing all this for? Can I got?
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:to interject there. Go. What if you think your work is so important that you work too much? The opposite is true. The Wall Street guy, I this deal is so big, it is so important. I, young investment banker, matter because I'm going to help the organization land a $2 billion deal, so I'm willing to work 80, 90 hours a week. So that's the whole story.
Bob Goodwin:Actually, I kind of probably didn't communicate that. What I'm saying is I go in, I do my hours. You guys pay me every two weeks. I'm not sure why what I'm doing matters to me. I don't find it particularly fulfilling. I'm not sure how it helps the company or our customers. We're just making shareholders richer, but that's kind of as near as I can tell the net impact of my work.
Bob Goodwin:That lack of engagement also contributes to a lack of innovation, a lack of creativity, a lack of fulfillment, right, and either that's going to lead to we become a magnet for mediocrity, that people just sort of hang out here because they're allowed to, or attrition. It's like I need to go someplace else where my work matters. But in our work in coaching people, we definitely see that folks like I need to get involved in something that I find more fulfilling. This does not align with my values or my aspirations, and I think that you know you can get burned out more easily when you think your work doesn't matter. You can get. You can dig deeper. When you think your work doesn't matter, you can get. You can dig deeper when you think your work does matter.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:That's check, don't disagree with that, violently agree with it. And so I love the way we we take these topics because you know I'm I'm a lawyer, but I like these. I'm a puzzle guy, like I really try to figure things out, and the more complicated the puzzle, the more what can I call it engaged I become, because I like figuring out difficult things. This is difficult, this whole topic is difficult, and again I hearken back to your initial description of the situation, the state of the world, your burnout, to the extent people are experiencing it is. There are multiple factors that are leading to it.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:It may manifest itself at work, because that's where we spend most of our waking hours, right, so it may show up in that day somewhere between eight and six, but it's impacted by a whole bunch of things that we sometimes don't control, mostly don't control. If you're with me eight hours a day, there are another 16 for life to happen to you, so, disproportionately, we're at a little bit of a disadvantage, but we can't layer on to the problems. Now, how do you react to that? Maybe that's the biggest thing is, whatever is going on in your personal life, you should not come to work and then it be made worse and exacerbated by a bad people manager, by unreasonable expectations, by harassment from colleagues. That is the one thing we as an HR profession can do. Is that a?
Bob Goodwin:way, I totally agree with that. I'm actually going to be you for a minute, but at the same time, you can't bottle it all in, right, and so you have to. That on the complicated thing, and I want to be respectful of time here the way that that I've tried to break this down in my own mind and I think I think the model works is body, soul, mind and strength. And so you know, when we can get our values, like what I genuinely believe to be true, that's what impels me, that's what pushes me. But then there's the other part where I'm engaged, like what we do matters, that draws me, that woos me, if you will, right, and so I'm being pushed by what I want, but I'm also being drawn by what we do matters. Yes, right, those are energizing things, right, that allow me to feel less stress and maybe more fulfillment.
Bob Goodwin:Yes, but at the same time, I need to be taking care of my body. Like I got to sleep. I made you laugh a couple of weeks ago. Sleep is the most important meal of the day. But you know, I need to get enough sleep. I need to eat right. I need to eat regularly. Right, I need to not be abusing my body with alcohol or whatever else you know, in indulgence kinds of ways. I need to take breaks we talked about that earlier, right and I need to give my mind a little bit of time to just meditate, ruminate, just separate a little bit. And so when I think that we can think about, you know, the complexity of the human and then start to break it down into how I think about things, what I believe is true for me, what I need from my organization, and then, more broadly, my calling my purpose right and then taking care of my body, that to me starts to at least break it down into more corner pieces of a puzzle that the rest of it starts to fill in around. Do that?
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:acronym for me, bs. It doesn't sound right. B-s-m-s Body soul. What's the-.
Bob Goodwin:Mind, mind and strength.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:Right, okay, b-s-m-s. That's really good. It's our degrees. Let's call it degrees.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah. So part of the thing on mind is two things. You're very, very good about talking about upskilling, so, like, keep me mentally challenged right and keep this interesting. I'm curious, I want to keep learning. The world's changing from under me and like, how do I continue to have learning growth opportunities. But there's also the part of the mind of when a problem comes, when an unexpected change comes. How do I frame that out in my mind? How do I learn how to reprogram that this isn't a threat as much as it might be an opportunity, and how do we get creative and communal in solving this thing instead of being overwhelmed by it? So the mind is a really somewhere. That's very core to this whole thing is how we think about these things.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:I love creative and communal. You are so good at your. You're the man. You can say anything and it sounds good.
Bob Goodwin:I learned from the best. But you know, in all seriousness, it's when we can see people that holistically and be able to start to break it down into actionable, definable, measurable components, then we've got a really good chance of making a positive difference. Last thing I'll say, and I'm quoting you, the culture that somebody finds themselves at with work isn't necessarily good or bad. Back to investment banker. You can go choose that. I love that, I want to work my tail off, I want the prestige, I want the credentials, I want the money. Like, okay, that's not a bad culture For a lot of people, that's not a good culture for them. It made us back to autonomy and agency. You always have choices. You always have choices.
Bob Goodwin:I think when people can come to that, understanding that they're not victims. That is highly liberating, and letting people see that they have choices that they can go act on is a very, very liberating epiphany for a lot of folks.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:Yep, and great for HR. By the way, hr the profession and HR the people no hands down. I really really enjoyed this topic. I didn't know where we're going to fully go Me either. It was really cool. Like I said, I can't thank you enough for saying, for setting it up, to understand a lot of these discussions and to anyone who's listening today, a lot of these discussions immediately go to what the employer is doing wrong, what role has been in burnout? And I think we have to be thoughtful about how we think about this issue, because it's confronting us, it affects us and it's not good for business, it's not good for our people confronting us, that affects us, and it's not good for business, it's not good for our people.
Bob Goodwin:Well, and and, by the way, not only is it not going away, but the pace of change and the magnitude of change are only increasing and and it behooves us, as business people and human beings, to get a handle on this and deal with it, you know, in in an effective and empathetic way. That's right. Amen, awesome, all right Johnny anything else. I thought that was very good.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:Someone told me the other day it's unrelated, but they said yesterday was the slowest day of your life, and it's really. You know. I think you may have said that, but it's this idea that life is just. You know it's getting faster and faster and faster and more complicated, and you know it's getting faster and faster and faster and more complicated, and so these are important topics for HR professionals and people managers to, and workers and workers To brew on Awesome.
Bob Goodwin:Johnny, thank you so much. Always fun being with you here on the work wire Come on and to our listening and viewing audience.
Bob Goodwin:Thank you, guys, so much. You know, if there's a topic that you would love to see us tackle, send it to me. Bob at careerclub, We'd love to take it on. But mostly I just want to say thank you for investing a few minutes. If you're listening to this on your podcast platform, please just leave us a quick review. That always helps. But mostly I just want to say thank you very much, Johnny. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you, sir.
Johnny C Taylor Jr.:Take care, my friend.
Bob Goodwin:All right.
