Supporting employees during burnout leads to more loyal and productive teams with Jennifer Harris Kroll

This heart warming episode of the Leading Real Change podcast with Jennifer Harris Kroll talks about her burnout journey and how her company, Anthill, supported her through it. This led to her team becoming more focused and productive, and at the end of the day, Jennifer is a better leader following this experience.

Key take aways include:

1. Women’s health care: Jennifer found a functional nurse practitioner who could diagnose her adrenal fatigue.
2. Company support: As an over achiever, it was hard for Jennifer to reduce her workload and she didn’t really know what she needed. But her employer gave her the flexibility to alter her schedule and work with her team to find solutions.
3. Experiment: Jennifer had to develop a whole new way of working for herself and with her team. They didn’t know what would work best, but they communicated openly and many of her team had opportunities to advance their skills through additional tasks.
4. Compassion: Jennifer has much more awareness now of her employees’ needs because she was able to take more time to recognize her own needs and take care of them.
5. A system of caring for everyone’s needs: Jennifer’s company, Anthill, provides a communication platform for desk-less employees. It allows them to access resources from their phone, instead of being dependent on computer software etc. Employees who are in the field are able to check in and get their needs met without having to be in an office or wait to be serviced by a call center. On average employees use the system 22 times a month, meaning there are a lot of unmet needs that are being attended to.
6. Be kinder to frontline employees: Jennifer describes the challenges faced by employees who are customer facing and not working from home or in an office. They are stressed and facing burnout too. As customers, we can have more empathy for such workers by being patient and kind when we need our needs met.