Are you fighting mental fatigue and burnout?

Depression is on the rise during the pandemic and impacting our personal and work lives.

By Kathleen Waite, CCAM

Over the past nine months we’ve been bombarded with terms like “unprecedented times”, “adapting to the new normal”, and other news headlines that seem to drone on continuously about how as a society we need to adapt to COVID-19. The truth is, we’re all doing just that: adapting. If you look at your work life today versus nine months ago, it is likely very different. As our work lives morph into our home life, it is no surprise that mental health is taking a hit.

While we’ve all made changes to accommodate a vast majority of our work struggles in coping with our new COVID limitations, nationwide our mental health is still suffering with nearly three times more people reporting depression symptoms than pre-COVID times. With depression jumping from 8.5% to 27.8%, that means that even if you yourself are feeling fine, you have over a 1 in 4 chance of interacting with another person that’s struggling with depression. As any association manager will attest to, our job is heavily entrenched in person to person interaction. As managers it’s important to know these statistics not only for yourself and coworkers, but for the residents and vendors we’re in contact with every day.

1. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF BEFORE YOU HELP OTHERS.

Just like the well-known airplane analogy of putting your own breathing mask on before a dependent’s, mental health can be something where taking care of yourself first will offer the best results for everyone. Since the start of the pandemic, we have seen a huge increase in work orders, architectural modification requests, all on top of the new situations we’re navigating like managing recreational facilities in the midst of a pandemic, when clear information from agencies controlling these situations is often confusing. Owners are anxious for an immediate solution while we wade through the governmental restrictions that change almost as quickly as we reach a solution.

Homeowners are spending more time than ever at home, and that means they’re wanting to upgrade their homes and they have time to spot any little maintenance concern that may come up. Couple that now with the fact that statistically, a quarter of the owners you’re interacting with have depression, it’s rife for situations where owners are maybe less patient than previously and maybe not as forgiving as they once were. So how do we combat having a difficult job that just had an adrenaline shot of anxiety, depression, and unknown added to the mix?

2. STRENGTHEN YOUR TEAM AND INNER CIRCLE.

In my experience, the best way to fight this is by strengthening your team and inner circle (by the way, as CACM managers, we are all each other’s inner circle). We need to ensure teammates and ourselves are fighting burnout, mental fatigue, and working as a team now more than ever.

3. WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER.

Automating work order processing, sending out notifications to residents to stay ahead of the curve with repetitive issues, and staying in sync with our coworkers when many are working remotely or more separated can all be helpful tools in fighting against our ever-increasing workload.

4. CONNECT WITH COWORKERS.

Setting time aside specifically to meet with team members who are working remotely to remain a cohesive team is essential. The team building that happened at the water cooler or lunch table now needs to be replaced with scheduled, methodically planned time to connect with each other to check in on work items, as well as just to check and make sure one another are doing OK. We are not robots who can go on and on and on. We need compassion, care and sometimes just to vent about normal frustrations with our peers.

5. FOSTER PATIENCE AND EMPATHY.

There are many factors during the pandemic that go into each individual’s happiness or coping abilities that needs to be considered in every interaction we have. Having a bit more patience and empathy with each other may just lead to more satisfaction and productivity while combatting the burnout and fatigue many are facing.

6. SHOW APPRECIATION FOR OTHERS.

My challenge to all CACM members going forward: make sure that an owner, vendor or coworker you’re interacting with knows your appreciation for any small or big task in which they helped. We truly all are in this together and having some encouragement and affirmation from a peer rarely goes unnoticed or unappreciated.

Kathleen Waite, CCAM is the owner/president of American Management Services, Inc., a boutique management company based out of the South Bay area.