All-staff PTO, No Video Fridays, Wellness Checks: How Team Leaders Are Countering Employee Burnout

Agency leaders are sounding the alarm on the stress and pressure their employees are under after months of being isolated at home, a race to finish client work for 2020 on a revenue high and no respite in sight from COVID-19. 

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my career. Folks who usually run through walls are hitting walls,” says Andy Pray, founder of Praytell Strategy. “Those walls are coming from fatigue, stress and build-up of having been in this mental and physical space for eight months.”

“People are feeling the pressure to give 100% when they don’t always feel 100%,” he adds. “They’re hitting walls at rates I’ve never seen before. That’s troubling because we’re not through the woods of this.”

Scott Allison, chairman and CEO of Allison+Partners, agrees.

“There is no sugar-coating it. It has taken a real toll on people,” he adds. “In the first few months of the pandemic, we could be like, ‘We’re all this together, no one was laid off at our agency and we’re all happy to have our jobs.’ But the pandemic went from a sprint to a marathon and it is hard to play that ‘grateful’ message for the long haul.” 

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