048: Mitigating Workplace Burnout with Dr. Jacqueline Kerr

Evolve: A New Era of Leadership

In an era where employment-related stress and burnout are increasingly prevalent, it’s essential to understand and address these highly damaging issues at the corporate level. In the first episode of the year, Dr. Jacqueline Kerr, a globally recognized behavior change scientist, community advocate, and TEDx speaker joins me for a conversation about burnout, public health, and the role of organizations in mitigating burnout.

Dr. Kerr deeply resonates with the intersection of public health and personal behaviour change, particularly with respect to the effects of workplace burnout. Burnout can affect every facet of a person's life and might be induced by pressures from multiple areas of life in its myriad versions. Dr. Kerr emphasized the value of intervention, noting the vital role that organizations can play in learning from and adopting community-based approaches to prevent burnout.

Driving home the importance of collective efforts in combating burnout, Dr. Kerr highlighted the pivotal role of leaders. Leaders are encouraged to forge a healthier atmosphere in the workplace, thus decreasing the possibility of burnout. Flexible work hours, limiting non-essential meetings, and fostering a culture of appreciation can all contribute to a more engaged and less stressed workforce.

Furthermore, a thriving culture of inclusiveness is essential along with recognizing the link between bias and burnout. The approach must be comprehensive, considering individual, family, organizational, and societal level factors.

Workplace culture is often linked to changes in behavior patterns. As with managing any change, understanding where people stand in relation to the concept of change is crucial in bringing about effective behavioral adjustments. The key is to create a safe environment where employees feel comfortable discussing changes they'd like to see in the workplace.

Dr. Kerr highlighted the importance of reducing unnecessary meetings and encouraging more focused work time to boost productivity and reduce burnout. She recommended considering the reduction of meeting hours and introduced the concept of a "meeting-free week” as a productive approach to address the perceived need for continuous meetings within teams.

Moreover, job crafting, cases of biased promotion systems, and other nuanced aspects of workplace practices can significantly impact burnout levels. Encouraging transparency, promoting flexibility, and valuing employee contributions can significantly ameliorate these effects.

As much as organizational changes are vital, individual mental habit changes also play a critical role in mitigating burnout. Acknowledging that behavior change is tough and requires support, Dr. Kerr emphasized the importance of setting realistic daily behavior plans.

It is our aim to provide practical inputs and insights on mitigating workplace burnout, emphasizing collective responsibility and action. Through strategic implementation of behavioral sciences, workplaces can become more vibrant, engaging, and less stressful environments, where every individual can truly thrive. Job burnout is recognized by the World Health Organization, but there is also caregiver burnout, emotional burnout, and parental burnout that leads to #nervoussystemexhaustion . While self-care helps you manage your stress it does not solve the structural inequalities that create the conditions that cause burnout. We need to use behavior change science to create individual, organizational and cultural change to prevent burnout.

Dr Jacqueline Kerr is a mom, behavior scientist and burnout survivor. She is in the Top 1% of Most Cited Scientists worldwide and her work has informed the US Center for Disease Control Community Prevention Guide. Dr. Kerr left her position as a public health professor in 2018. She now hosts the Podcast 'Overcoming Working Mom Burnout' where she interviews researchers, diversity experts, and leadership coaches, focusing on #mentalillness. She is on a mission to dismantle the causes of working mom burnout and #genderbias with individual, organizational and cultural change through behavior change science. Connect with Jacqueline Kerr on LinkedIn and YouTube @Dr Jacqueline Kerr. Filming and video editing credits go to NSHAPS Productions and Kamal Ismail. Food photography credits go to Tom Adams.

We talk about:

• [0:00] Intro

• [3:13] What got Dr. Kerr into the burnout and behavior change space

• [6:19] What does it mean to be in a state of burnout

• [12:47] How can leaders help mitigate burnout for their team

• [18:33] Making burnout a collective responsibility

• [23:44] What do we commonly get wrong about behavior change

• [35:29] Mindset of "this is never going to work" can also be a sign of burnout

• [42:16] The importance for leaders to be self aware, and have an emotional connection with emotional intelligence

• [46:15] Rapid fire questions

Join Dr. Kerr and I for this conversation, as we talk about understanding and mitigating burnout in the corporate and leadership spaces You can find the full transcript of our conversation on my website, along with more information about Jacqueline and her work.

Thank you for being a part of my podcast community, and remember to stay tuned for more inspiring episodes to come!

#PodcastEpisode #TraumaInformedLeadership #SelfAwareness #EmotionalIntelligence #ProfessionalGrowth

Connect with Dr. Jacqueline

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jacqueline-kerr-a62581173/

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/me2wemoms

• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.ca/drjacquelinekerr/

• TedX Talk: https://youtu.be/9YY0gVnVPoQ?si=OMv0XbcX7_BW4kBG

• https://www.thehuumangroup.com/

• https://www.drjacquelinekerr.com/

Connect with me

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolynswora/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolynswora/

• Website: https://www.carolynswora.com/

• Contact: [e-mail]