What 33 Sticks is Doing to Address Burnout
Burnout is a serious concern (or should be) for every business. According to the American Psychological Association in their 2021 Work and Well-being Survey of 1,501 U.S. adult workers, 79% of employees reported having had experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey. The survey reported that nearly 3 in 5 employees reported negative impacts of work-related stress that resulted in lack of interest, motivation, or energy.
Coming from a consulting background, we’ve been hypersensitive to burnout having witnessed many highly talented consultants, pushed to work 60+ hours a week in order to bill clients 36 hours a week, crash and burn. Some taking months or even years to fully recover from their burnout.
So when we decided to start 33 Sticks, being deliberate in how we would address the threat of burnout was of critical importance for us. We didn’t have it all figured out up front, and we still don’t as we continue to learn and adjust how we work, but putting a focus on people first has proven to be the correct strategy for us.
So what is 33 Sticks doing to address burnout?
Autonomy To Design How We Work Best
One of the biggest investments we made was to create an environment, a culture, a way of doing business that has allowed our employees to custom design how, when, and where they work. This freedom has created amazing value for our clients and our company, as employees are empowered to create an environment where they can do their best work, not just today, or tomorrow, but long into the future.
When asked how we were able to create such an environment, the answer always starts with, “We hire people that we trust. We trust them to do what is best for themselves, our clients, and our company.”
The responsibility of leadership is to give people a cause to belong to and then give them permission to find ways to advance that cause.
— Simon Sinek (@simonsinek) February 4, 2022
We’ve created a shared purpose, we’ve hired people we trust, and we’ve given them permission to make our purpose a reality.
No Billable Hours
Under the billable hour model, most agencies pressure their employees to bill around 36 hours a week. This number is near impossible to reach given a traditional 40 hour work week. That means that either A) employees are working more like 50-60 hours a week in order to bill the required 36 hours or B) they are lying on their timesheets and are submitting more billable hours than they actually did work for the client. In either scenario, the employee is on a path to burnout.
In Scenario A, the constant pressure to work unreasonable hours will quickly burnout even the most talented of employees.
In Scenario B, the internal conflict of constantly being in a state of having to make unethical decisions will also lead employees to burnout.
For many, many reasons, we have rejected the billable hour and that decision has made for happier, well balanced employees, that aren’t at a constant risk of burnout.
Unlimited PTO
We know, we know. Everyone HATES Unlimited PTO. It’s called a scam. It’s just another way for employers to abuse their employees. We get it. We understand the arguments but for us and our team, it works. Here is what we are doing:
No pre-set limit on the amount of time one can take off. This was primarily put in place to remove the “buy decision” of our employees every time they wanted or needed time off. If we have some arbitrary limit, then each time we want to take time off, we have to do a cost-benefit analysis. We didn’t want our employees doing that, if they wanted to take time off, we wanted to make that a simple decision.
To make sure our employees knew we wanted them taking time away from work, we have set a minimum number of days off (25 days + company holidays + end of year shutdown) we expect them to be off work. The argument we hear from other business owners is, how are you not losing money with this policy? And we really don’t have a great answer to this question other than, the more we invest in giving our team time to rest and recharge, the more the company benefits financially. We don’t know, it just works!
We got rid of the idea of “making up hours.” If one of our employees wants to take the afternoon off to go to Legoland with their kids, then they do that and then call it a day. There isn’t the concept of, “i’ll make up these hours when I get back home or on the weekend.” Our team isn’t being paid to work 8 hours a day, our team is being paid to create value. This freedom to come and go has complemented our formal PTO policy in a way that has created a real sense of comfort for our employees.
2 Weeks Off Before Starting
Something that we have recently discovered is that a contributing factor to employee burnout is this never ending cycle of moving from job to job. You quit one job on Friday, decompress (or try to) over the weekend, and then start your new job on Monday morning.
If employees are joining your company already tired and worn out, you are starting from a less than ideal position. To address this factor, we are starting to offer new employees 2 weeks off, fully paid, before they formally start work. They will be an official employee, with benefits and all, but we want them taking some downtime before formally jumping in. This time to rest, recharge, and properly prepare for a new job will pay off in a very big way for us, that we are certain of.
Burnout is a very serious issue and if companies are not taking a deliberate approach to address this issue, they will find that they are burning out and losing their best and brightest employees.
