Stop Underutilized PTO From Leading to Burnout (and How AI Can Help)

It’s summer vacation time and a lot of your people are using their PTO. Or are they? Some of your employees could be at risk for turnover-causing burnout, disengagement or mental health struggles because they’re not using their PTO benefits.

For example, in organizations that made reductions in force this year, the employees who were spared might be hesitant to take time off because they’re afraid unplugging from work could threaten their job security.

According to Sandra Moran, chief marketing and customer experience officer at WorkForce Software, among the “often overlooked 80% of the workforce, which are these shift-based, hourly workers … we still see a significant percentage of employees not taking the PTO that their organizations have afforded them.”

And in industries where labor shortages are pronounced — such as hospitality, leisure, retail, health care and manufacturing — many employees are unable to take time off because their employers are so handcuffed by a lack of staff that they simply can’t accommodate it.

Employers Can’t Afford Disengagement, Burnout

Recent employee engagement data from Gallup is troubling. In the first quarter of 2024, engagement among full- and part-time employees dropped to 30%. This represents 4.8 million fewer employees who are engaged in their work and workplace.

If burnout linked to not taking PTO is added to that volatile environment, that spells big trouble for productivity.

“Addressing employee burnout … has a great value to productivity, engagement and retention. It has such a significant financial impact on organizations that it behooves HR professionals to not just talk about it, but to do something to address it that is meaningful to employees,” she said.

PTO Strategies at Other Companies

According to Moran, WorkForce Software gives its employees the option of half-day Fridays during the summer, and the improvement in employee mental health and well-being has been noticeable. It’s one example of why companies shouldn’t underestimate the power of schedule flexibility.

In WorkForce Software’s annual Global Employee Experience Study, employees reported that:

• 79% want to work for an employer that offers scheduling flexibility
• 62% don’t see their schedules more than a week in advance, and
• 41% aren’t permitted to swap shifts with their co-workers.

Moran’s also noticed companies in the auto and tech industries are encouraging a lot of PTO-taking at the same time, or implementing a non-holiday, companywide day off or a “week of wellness.” When it’s part of company culture to have groups of employees taking a universal day off, they’re not worried about missing important meetings or emails, she commented.

Programmatic, Systematic Ways to Prevent Burnout

Breaking up work scheduling units to make schedules more flexible is another possibility to explore, especially for industries suffering from talent shortages.

“Would you take an employee who worked four days a week 7:30 to noon and another employee who works noon to 4:30?” Moran said. “It’s a little bit more difficult to administer if you’re not using modern capabilities, if you’re doing manual scheduling.”

In addition, you can get your front-line managers involved with burnout prevention with:

• Programs for managers to guide employees to when burnout is becoming an issue, and
• Peer-to-peer ideation support for managers dealing with employee issues, where they can ask, “What’s worked for you?”

Using Tech to Monitor for Burnout

Moran mentioned the benefit of using AI to perform employee sentiment analysis of what they’re saying on platforms like Glassdoor and Comparably.

Time tracking analysis of clock in/clock out, absenteeism, tardiness and overtime work patterns can also prevent burnout. “If we can use technology to look over the work patterns of employees to detect … certain thresholds at which we see safety incidents, we see more downtime … we can take that data and apply it back to the way that employees are scheduled in the future [and] the way employees are recruited,” she said.

AI-powered fatigue management systems, which are required in certain regulated industries and applicable to others with hourly/shift-based workers, provide valuable data patterns, such as:

• hours worked
• tasks performed
• break times, and
• previously scheduled PTO.

Moran noted that fatigue management is an embedded scheduling component of WorkForce Software’s WorkForce Suite.

A compelling related AI solution is app-based shift bidding, which enables rules-based shift swapping between employees and incentivizes hourly employees who want to put in more hours (or get paid a higher rate for doing so) to fill a shift for somebody who’s on PTO.