Working at Heights Training: Impacts of Workplace Burnout on Employees Who Work at Heights

Workplace burnout can have serious impacts on the health, performance, and safety of employees who work at heights. In this guide to the impacts of workplace burnout on employees who work at heights, we highlight exactly what workplace burnout is, the causes of workplace burnout, and how the symptoms affect employees who work at heights. Workplace burnout in employees who work at heights can be avoided with working at heights training, adequate management, and a balanced workload. EMCARE offers working at heights training that will ensure employees have the skills and confidence to perform their work safely and reduce their risks of workplace burnout.

What Is Workplace Burnout?

Workplace burnout, also known as occupational burnout, involves work-related chronic stress that results in a physical, emotional, or mental state of exhaustion. The important aspect of the work-related stress is that it is a stress that employees experience consistently that slowly starts resulting in the signs and symptoms of burnout. Workplace burnout is becoming an increasingly prevalent problem, especially in industries that involve a high workload volume and prevalent health and safety risks, like workplaces that require employees to work at heights.

Causes of Workplace Burnout in Employees Who Work at Heights:

The causes of workplace burnout are dependent on both elements in the workplace that are resulting in stress and individual experiences in the workplace. For employees who work at heights, two major workplace factors can result in workplace burnout.

1) Heavy Workload:

In any industry, a heavy workload will start to take a negative toll on employees. A heavy workload entails any expectations regarding work completion that exceeds the capabilities of the employee. The need to meet extreme deadlines or complete intense physical work in a short time can be labelled as a heavy workload for employees, which can start affecting their physical and mental health.

Working at heights is a physically taxing job. Employees are required to climb ladders or scaffolding, operate heavy tools, extend their reach to perform their work, and continuously maintain their balance. If an employee spends hours on end day after day performing this physically taxing job, it will slowly start resulting in workplace burnout.

Work performed at heights is already a physically straining job, which means that if employees are expected to complete an excessive workload in a short time frame, they are going to be placing their bodies under immense stress. If the job is understaffed, the pressure from the heavy workload will fall on the few employees hired to perform the work at heights, straining their bodies further. The combination of a heavy workload and the physical intensity of working at heights will quickly start resulting in employee workplace burnout.

2) Disregard for Safety:

A safe and healthy workplace is essential for employee experience. A safe workplace enables employees to feel protected, productive, and happier performing their work. These are essential to reducing the prevalence of workplace burnout in your business.

A workplace that involves the need for employees to work at heights needs to make health and safety a top priority. A workplace that does not demonstrate consideration for safety will have a negative effect on the employees who work at heights. We have listed four ways that a workplace with employees who work at heights can disregard safety and thus affect their employees.

1. Provide employees who work at heights with substandard personal protective equipment.
2. Hire untrained employees who are not confident working at heights, which increases the stress for other trained employees and the risks of injuries or death whilst performing work.
3. Having no fall protection plan in place to offer employees additional safety whilst they perform their work at heights.
4. Erecting scaffolding that is not professionally inspected to assure employees who work at heights that the scaffolding is safe for them to use.

How Workplace Burnout Symptoms Can Affect Employees Who Work at Heights:

The symptoms of workplace burnout can be physical or mental, with each having varying consequences for personal health, job relationships, and job performance. Symptoms will vary across each employee and have different impacts on their ability to work at heights. We explore the common symptoms of burnout and how they can have a negative effect on employees who work at heights.

1) Stress:

Working at heights entails a high level of risk. Despite the increase in safety measures and better training for employees who work at heights, there is still a high prevalence of injuries and deaths related to this occupation. This can elevate the stress levels of employees who perform work at heights, resulting in them experiencing chronic stress which can start resulting in workplace burnout.

The stress of working at heights paired with stress as a symptom of workplace burnout creates a negative cycle for employees who work at heights. The problem with chronic stress is that it can start leading to health problems, which can impair the employees' ability to perform their work. Additionally, stress can take a toll on physical and mental capabilities, which can place the employee in jeopardy of acting unsafely whilst performing their work at heights.

2) Fatigue:

Workplace burnout can quickly lead to fatigue. Fatigue is the experience of extreme exhaustion or weariness. When fatigue is caused by workplace burnout, this experience of exhaustion becomes pervasive and will quickly start affecting the employees' ability to perform their work.

Fatigue can greatly affect the capabilities of an employee who works at heights. Physically, fatigue can result in a lack of energy, weakness, and slowed movements. In a job as physically intense as working at heights, any impairment to physical capabilities can place the employee at greater risk of acting in ways that will put their safety at risk. Fatigue can also impair mental functioning, such as impairing the ability to concentrate, which can affect the decisions the employee makes.

3) Irritability and Anger:

Increased irritability and anger is another common symptom of workplace burnout. Heightened experiences of irritability and anger can be detrimental to employees who work at heights as it creates negative relationships among employees or managers. If an employee working at heights is easily triggered by other employees' actions due to workplace burnout, they may act irrationally and make life-threatening decisions that can result in injury or death for themselves or others.

5) Inability To Do Job Well:

The combination of workplace burnout symptoms can drastically start impairing your employee’s capability to perform their work at heights well. In a job that is as high of a risk to safety as working at heights, you need to ensure that your employees are always on their top physical and mental performance to complete the job safely and well. If your employees who work at heights are experiencing burnout, the overall performance and safety of your team will be impacted.

How to Reduce Workplace Burnout for Employees Who Work at Heights:

As an employer, there are measures that you can put in place to reduce the risks of workplace burnout for your employees who work at heights. We have highlighted these easy and essential steps to take to reduce workplace burnout for your employees.

1) Working at Heights Training:

Working at heights training is the most essential step to take to reduce the risk of workplace burnout in employees who work at heights. As an employer, you should ensure that every employee you hire has received the best working at heights training before they begin the job. Working at heights training will provide employees with the essential skills to perform their work at heights safely and well.

Included in working at heights training will be risk assessment, learning about the different types of personal protective equipment, and how to reduce the risk of injury or death if a fall occurs. Ultimately, working at heights training provides employees with a confident attitude that they can perform this risky work safely. The skills and important attitude learned in working at heights training can be essential for assisting employees to reduce their risk of experiencing symptoms of workplace burnout.

2) Balance Workload and Capacity:

Proper planning of workload is essential to prevent the risk of workplace burnout for your employees who work at heights. Proper planning includes creating a realistic work schedule that matches the capabilities of your employees who work at heights to reduce them becoming excessively strained whilst working. It also includes hiring enough employees to equally share the workload so that your employees are not put under unnecessary physical and mental strain to get the job done.

3) Adequate Management:

Increasing the safety of your workplace will reduce the risk of workplace burnout for your employees who work at heights. This includes having adequately trained inspectors to authorise the safe erecting of scaffolding and on-site managers to inspect personal safety equipment and enforce the use of the correct personal safety equipment. Managers should also assess the physical and mental state of employees before they start working at heights to ensure that they are capable of safely performing the work. Your employees will feel that their workplace views their safety as important, removing this as a stressor that can lead to workplace burnout.

4) Allow For Regular Breaks:

Regular breaks are essential for employees who work at heights. Allowing your employees to take consistent, short breaks will provide them with the time to rest their bodies and minds. This will ensure that they are not being pushed to the max continuously and avoid the workplace burnout symptoms of fatigue, irritability, and high stress.

EMCARE Working at Heights Training:

EMCARE is a health and safety training company that offers professional working at heights training. Our working at heights training is designed to equip employees who work at heights with the skills and confidence to perform their work safely. Our working at heights training will ensure that employees who work at heights will perform their work well and safely, and equip them to avoid the negative symptoms of workplace burnout.

Increasing safety whilst working at heights will drastically reduce the causes of workplace burnout. An important element of our working at heights training includes learning about personal protective equipment. Students will learn in our working at heights training about the different types of personal protective equipment and how to use them, how to inspect the standard of them, and when to report substandard personal protective equipment.

Another essential aspect of our working at heights training includes learning about a fall protection plan. Our fall protection plan in our working at heights training is designed to enable employees who work at heights to minimise their risk of injury or death should a fall occur. This aspect of our working at heights training allows employees to perform their work more confidently because they have a measure in place that will keep them safe.

EMCARE’s working at heights training will equip employees who work at heights with the skills and confidence to perform their work well and avoid the risks of workplace burnout.