Tackle the causes of staff burnout, not just the symptoms

In an industry with round the clock demands to respond to flooding, droughts, bursts or spills – staff are at risk from burnout. Pennon's health and safety director Rich Rogers says identifying causes - not just symptoms - of stress and leading by example to prioritise well-being, can help staff avoid cumulative fatigue

The last few years have been challenging for water companies. In early 2022, Storm Eunice created significant operational challenges for us. More recently, the drought placed unprecedented pressure on our colleagues and networks.

These events, coupled with the mounting political and regulatory scrutiny on our industry, have had a knock-on impact on staff. Our teams work tirelessly, often over long hours, to address these added tensions on top of their day-to-day responsibilities.

These events in isolation are manageable, but over time, this build-up of pressure can impact our ability to perform and result in cumulative fatigue across our organisations.

In a workplace context, fatigue is a state of mental and/or physical exhaustion that reduces a person’s ability to perform work safely and effectively. Cumulative fatigue can lead to more mistakes being made and increased chances of suffering an injury, which could require time off to recover.

Current trends show that work-related ill health is increasing, with stress, depression, or anxiety being the the most commonly reported causes in Great Britain.

The people who work in our business care so passionately about supplying water, alongside taking and treating sewage, all while protecting the environment. At times, this passion can override their own personal wellbeing.

Having happy and healthy employees is one of our key goals at Pennon. We want to ensure our colleagues are energised in the workplace so that we reduce time lost due to injury and ill health. It’s the right and responsible thing for us to do as a business.

The benefits of supporting your colleagues in this way is clear to see; if your people feel better and are more energised they will be more productive, you will create a happier environment with colleagues feeling more engaged.

The challenge for us as businesses is how to support our colleagues when many of the external pressures are outside of our control.

What we can do is focus on the factors which we can control within our business, such as workloads and providing adequate resources, and leading by example with senior leaders demonstrably prioritising their own wellbeing.

Importantly, we must ensure we are adopting the right practices and the culture across our organisations to support our colleagues and empower them to make the right decisions for their own wellbeing.

One of the key things we can do as a business is look to address the causes of stress and ill health, not just the symptoms. Pennon is renewing its Stress & Wellbeing Risk Assessments, looking at our potential short comings and identifying areas for improvement.

We would urge all businesses in the sector to adopt a similar approach.

At Pennon, we constantly promote our HomeSafe campaign, which puts in place the policies and procedures to ensure our colleagues go home safe and well. We also share advice, guidance and tips with colleagues for both their physical and mental health.

As part of this, we recently launched our Take 5 For Safety initiative, reinforcing the need for colleagues to pause and think before starting a new task. The aim is to ensure that colleagues are carrying out their work safely at all times.

We have put a range of support and advice in place for our employees. This includes confidential counselling, trained Mental First Aiders right across our business and a range of internal sessions with external speakers designed to encourage wellbeing, share best-practice.

We have also partnered with Champion Health to provide a wealth of information and self-help which our employees and their families can take advantage of.

As leaders, we really need to understand the challenges our colleagues face and lead by example. Importantly, we need to step in when our colleagues are not getting adequate rest and when we can see they need to take time out.

The pressure facing the industry is unlikely to diminish any time soon, so we must adapt. We need to ensure that we prioritise the wellbeing of our colleagues above all else, while having the policies in place to enable them to access support at the times when they need it most. This allows our people to be at their best and to do what they care passionately about, serving our customers and protecting the environment.