Burnout is a growing risk and one that threatens to slow the important progress of different workers rights across many workplace settings. After 18 months of navigating a global pandemic, which has placed increasing pressure on the physical, mental, and financial wellbeing of the UK’s workforce, many employees are suffering from burnout. From managing remote employees, to reducing bias in recruitment practice, weak points remain in every workplace’s drive for meaningful diversity. 

According to a survey conducted by Mental Health UK in March 2021, almost half (46%) of UK workers feel increased levels of extreme stress compared to the same time last year. Many studies have addressed how age and gender are significant factors that affect the employees most likely to feel burnout in the workforce. More likely to suffer from stress, depression or anxiety, women, young adults and professionals (25–34-year-olds), and other minorities face the risk of burnout more severely than their colleagues. 

The Bias of Burnout

Since early 2020, when the UK workforce retreated to the safety of remote working, life seemed to change permanently. Restrictions of all kinds meant that many families were forced to transform their homes into their daily office or classroom, ‘commuting’ to and from their laptop, whilst balancing their home lives in the background. Just as quickly as new solutions were embraced, problems arose, including the likes of ‘Virtual Fatigue’, which can be described as a kind of burnout, or exhaustion, felt from excessive video conferencing.  

However, the affects of burnout aren’t felt evenly across employees. Minorities, facing greater bias in the workplace, are more starkly affected by burnout when compared to their cisgender, white, male, or straight counterparts. 

Racial burnout is prevalent, largely owed to its coverage in the media, high-profile crimes, and everyday micro-aggressions felts inside (and out of) the office. Another group suffering from burnout, LQBTQIA+ members have struggled with acceptance and inclusivity both at home and within their wider communities. And those with neurodiverse conditions have likely found the abrupt disruption to their routines unnerving, just as other ethnicities were unable to celebrate their traditions, whether religious, cultural, or otherwise.  

Employers should be aware of how the context of the global pandemic exacerbated burnout differently across many minorities in the UK. It’s a frequent misgiving to overlook how a minority burdened with unfair or stereotyped perceptions experiences life and work differently. 

Bias Reduction in Hiring 

Many employers who strive for a diverse and inclusive workplace often overlook their hiring processes at a weak spot. Diversity starts from the smallest interactions that occur between your organisation and a prospective employee, including early greetings, down to the kinds of questions you ask during an interview and the impression you form immediately afterwards.

Afterall, a more inclusive interview and hiring practice is a strong foundation for a diverse and thriving workplace culture. 

There are many kinds of biases that happen when interviewing new talent, whether that’s forming assumptions based on age, or falling too easily into a perception about a person based on their gender presentation. Being aware of bias is the first step in enabling an employer to proactively develop a hiring practice that reduces discrimination in the search for the best talent available on the labour market. 

Maternal Bias 

When motherhood triggers unfair assumptions about a woman’s professional commitments, maternal bias can limit the kinds of working women that your business recruits. Like many other types of discrimination, maternal bias doesn’t just happen on the surface. Employers may be less likely to offer a position to a woman of a certain age because of assumptions that she will be more committed to family than work. 

The existing conditions of work for most mothers - a perfect storm of remote working and caregiving responsibility in the same space – means that maternal bias is a risk just as large and unnerving as the pandemic itself. Compared to working fathers, there is often a kind of invisible penalty for motherhood, where professional women with families are more likely to fear being judged negatively. 

This is a problem that exists in many cultures, and therefore should be addressed in global employee relations, but when these misconceptions about women influence the recruitment phase for a role, a business could be locked out from promising opportunity to find the best talent.  

Ageism 

In certain industries, the problem with age is one that could challenge hiring in education, medicine, and nursing. This means staff and talent shortages could limit how successfully an industry is able to keep up with growing demand. 

Ageism, or age discrimination, is the act of unfair treatment because of age. Typically, stereotypes about age hinder older professionals from accessing the same opportunities when compared to younger candidates. These include making assumptions about physical capability or similarly, which is often buried in the kinds of language businesses use when defining a role. Casting for a “go getter” is a smokescreen for hiring younger (and more cheaply), rather than hire the right talent to fill the role. 

Perceptual Bias 

Generalised assumptions and stereotypes can hinder how successfully a hiring manager finds talent to fulfil a role. Whether unconscious or otherwise, a bias can inhibit effective decision making – because stereotypes create a kind of blindness that prevents a hiring manager from seeing the full potential of a candidate.

Perception bias can be an easy mindset for employers because, given the demand to find and recruit new talent effectively, they tend to take shortcuts. But these aren’t always innocent, and these shortcuts can be bias disguised as a loose reasoning. For example, if a hiring manager leans on intuition, they may be hiring because they seem themselves in the candidate. 

How Employers can Hire Inclusively 

Proactively reducing bias in your hiring requires close attention to the interview process, job description and how you asses talent. 

Neutral Language: Being aware of how an employer defines a job role is a good starting point. A job profile is a kind of invitation, and it tells prospective talent what you’re casting for. If your language is closed off and heavily caters to younger professionals or males, then you’re unlikely to notice more diverse talent applying the same roles. 

Auditing your advertisements is a great opportunity to open your business to greater diversity. 

Revisit how you test talent: Design an interview process – from greetings to any tests – that aren’t limited to one set of skills. You can even use these tests to target more diverse candidates, by understanding how those from different backgrounds have access to unique perspectives and skills. 

Create policies that attract the right people: recruitment strategies should be developed into policies that attract greater talent. For example, you can amend time-off policies to be more inclusive of religious holidays, or encourage flexible hours for working parents. 

Reduce Burnout through Bias Reduction

Every employee is different. As a result of employee difference, it’s increasingly important to audit how bias and burnout are affecting your employees. This can be arranged through line managers, and personal meetings to discover how employees are experiencing your workplace.