• Recruiting challenges and resignations.
• Overworked staff in need of support.
• Training employees to work from home.
• Assuring compliance when safety guidance changes.
• Staying optimally staffed in a competitive market.

As a professional with HR responsibilities, your usual stresses have been amplified substantially by the ever-changing nature of the workplace.

You are not alone in feeling the strain.

In a study presented by Blind (teamblind.com), 77.3% of HR professionals surveyed reported experiencing burnout, up from 59.6% in February 2020...and that was already a significant number.

When it's your job to support employees, including those feeling the effects of burnout, what do you do when the burnt-out employee is you?

Here's why burnout happens -- and how to protect yourself against it:

SPOT THE WARNING SIGNS

There are many workplace predictors of impending burnout. Some include:

• Having more work than you can readily handle
• Not receiving enough reward for what you're being asked to do
• Juggling conflicting agendas or demands
• Lack of support from your team or management
• Insufficient boundaries between work and personal time

It's easy to notice when there's an abundance of work-related stress. But how do you recognize when you may be genuinely burned out?

While it's not a medical diagnosis, the Mayo Clinic does define job burnout as "a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity."

So, self-assess the state of your stress:

• Do you more often procrastinate or start work late?
• Have you been making more mistakes?
• Are you less tolerant of colleagues and more easily annoyed?
• Is it harder to focus on the task at hand or facilitate long-term planning?
• Do you have more frequent headaches, digestive troubles, or muscle soreness?
• Are you more apathetic?
• Do your work accomplishments no longer satisfy?
• Are you always exhausted?

If you answered yes to most of these questions, you are likely experiencing job burnout. Fortunately, many techniques to alleviate burnout are also useful for preventing it down the line.

PUT ON YOUR OWN MASK FIRST

Anyone who has ever flown on an airplane knows the instruction: If the oxygen masks drop, put on your mask first before helping those around you. The obvious truth is...you can't help others when you cannot breathe.

In human resources, you are tasked with keeping employees safe and happy. In order to execute that role, you first must ensure that you keep yourself safe and happy.

STRATEGIES FOR KEEPING BURNOUT AT BAY

• Take advantage of the benefits package you have so carefully curated for all employees.
• Use your PTO. Don't encourage staff to take time off when needed but deny yourself the same.
• See a therapist or mental health professional -- ideally, it is covered by the insurance package you've helped manage.
• Don't check work email or messages when you're off the clock. Apply this tactic to weekends and evenings as best you can, as well as for vacations.
• Use wellness dollars for the gym, the Y, or even a single class to get your body moving and positively affect your brain chemistry.
• Take more breaks. Mentally and physically disengage throughout the workday to prevent overload. Breathe. Stretch. Walk. Call your mom or best friend.
• Control what you can. Set boundaries and stick to them.
• Evaluate whether or not your current job is the best fit. If, despite your concerted efforts, you are still feeling burnt out, it's possible your work environment is not right for you.

UTILIZE A STAFFING FIRM

There's another strategy that helps alleviate untenable overload in HR: offload administrative and time-consuming aspects of staffing, hiring or training by partnering with a staffing firm.

How can a placement agency help you avoid burnout?

They can save you a lot of time and headache in multiple ways by taking on the burden to:

• Recruit job candidates -- especially for hard-to-fill roles. Evaluate and vet applicants.
• Handle the paperwork of hiring and onboarding.
• Fill staffing needs fast and from a potentially larger pool of contenders.
• Test out a candidate on the job before committing to a direct hire, reducing your commitment and decreasing the associated HR workload.
• More effectively staff roles with inherently high turnover.

BURNOUT IS NOT INEVITABLE

Being super busy, valuing the hustle, blurring the lines between work and personal time -- it's easy to fall into the trap of not recognizing burnout when it's happening because we tend to tolerate being overwhelmed.

We live in a society that likes to glamorize the grind, but you do not have to feel burned out at work as a measure of productivity. In fact, burnout is the antithesis of success.

Normalize working hard but not overworking.

Know the difference between tolerable stress and that which exhausts you mentally and physically.

Learn the difference between hard work and harmful work, utilize your strategies and resources, and you'll be able to be "all in" but not burned out.