2. About Me
Likes
● Banjo
● My children & my partner
● Knitting & Embroidery
● Organization
● Baking
● SF Giants
● The City of Oakland
● Spirited Debates
Dislikes
● Bivalves
● Yucky Smells
● Bart (See Previous Dislike)
● Closed Mindedness
12. We Cause Burnout
● We work our brightest and most promising employees the hardest.
13. We Cause Burnout
● We work our brightest and most promising employees the hardest.
● We iterate, revise, push, curate, drive, hustle, and deliver - every
single day.
14. We Cause Burnout
● We work our brightest and most promising employees the hardest.
● We iterate, revise, push, curate, drive, hustle, and deliver - every
single day.
● We continue to increase workloads and deliverables.
15. We Cause Burnout
● We work our brightest and most promising employees the hardest.
● We iterate, revise, push, curate, drive, hustle, and deliver - every
single day.
● We continue to increase workloads and deliverables.
● And we schedule meetings to talk about meetings in which we will
talk about additional workloads and deliverables.
18. Paid Time Off
“Unlimited Paid Time Off!”
“Generous Time Off Policy”
“Flexible Work Schedules”
“Work from Anywhere!”
19.
20.
21. Practice What You Preach
Communications Curfew
Set boundaries
It’s ok to say no sometimes.
You have to take care of yourself.
Family, friends, dance lessons, whatever is
important to you outside of work is
important. Make time for it.
TAKE YOUR PTO! I REPEAT TAKE YOUR
PTO!
22. How Can I Help?
No Meeting Wednesdays
No Agenda : No Meeting
Less Frequent Meetings
Speak Up
Temps Can Be Your Friend
Set Boundaries and Remind Others
Pause
In English? Working yourself to death.
Personal connection: Obviously have experienced it. I’ve had to learn to set boundaries. But also - this topic is near and dear to me because I run the People function and I see it all the time. I don’t have all of the solutions but I see the patterns and symptoms. People don’t take time off because they think they can’t - everything will stop - helping people learn to set boundaries and prevent the ultimate symptom - losing folks who are burnt out. We hire the brightest and hardest working people - how do we protect them from working to the point of burn out?
Are they behaving out of character?
Can’t get out of bed in the morning. Just don’t want to go to work. Calling in sick because...
Suddenly missing deadlines? Your previous culture champion no longer cares?
Are they no longer wanting to be part of the team?
The ones who work hardest, produce the most, are the key to our success. This includes you. So...how do we take care of ourselves?
it’s usually unintentional - they burn the midnight oil to help us improve, get things done, take us to the next level - but these are the ones most susceptible to it.
It’s exhausting! And then we do it again!
And why wouldn’t we? The shit keeps getting done?
We lose countless hours every week to meetings that don’t need to happen and the emails. Oh Em Gee. The emails!
These things all seem like perks - but make it easy to stay at work until late into the night.
Speaking of PTO...
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organisation that works to build better policies for better lives.
So what’s the solution?
There’s no magic formula! But here are a few ideas...
It sets the example that we work round the clock as a culture.
No email, slacks, or texts after 7pm
Don’t perpetuate the cycle! You send a message - they reply - you reply…
Example of John at 2am.
