This article was contributed by Bryan Smith, co-founder of LEON. LEON is the first ever AI-powered employee performance platform. To hear more from Bryan, tune in to his Better Product LAUNCH podcast interview. 

Burnout. (The thing you don’t understand whatsoever)

I promise you that it’s one of the most misunderstood concepts in business today. It’s a problem so large, it costs the workforce an estimated $1 trillion in lost productivity each year.

Yet, most of you reading this have zero clue what burnout actually is. How it affects your employees (both physically and mentally). And most importantly, how to fix it once burnout sets in at your office.

What we fail to realize is that burnout, fatigue, mental health, and even employee performance as a whole is all based in complex systems theory. It’s based in a complex system that has multiple inputs that range from your genetics, your ability to run a mile, and even the fight you had with your wife this morning after she watched a new episode of The Boys without you (which is a damn good show by the way.)

It’s biology on its simplest, most evolutionary level.

Yet, we treat things such as burnout and “resiliency” like it’s a one trick pony that can be fixed with a day off, a nice conversation or yoga at lunch.

This stuff is complex, and we are getting better, but we need more data to actually understand how complex the system really is. If not, we keep running on the same “employee engagement” treadmill, year after year, while you steal years away from your employees.

Managing burnout with your team is difficult because we humans are strange, adaptable, and very different in our capabilities to manage stress. Everything and nothing can work for your team. So unless you have data and a strategy for implementation for every single person on your team, this sh*t gets hard really quick.

So, what’s the answer?

The answer is to stop looking at employees like “capital” and “resources” and instead see them for what they are: humans. Humans that are wildly unique with their own set of needs and personalities and problems. Humans that require a tailored way of achieving the very thing all of us are after: a healthier and happier existence.

This is where LEON comes in.

LEON is building humankind’s healthiest and happiest generation of employees with the planet’s first-ever AI-powered employee performance platform. Our big hairy audacious goal is to super-power people inside of companies rather than companies themselves.

‍Not because we don’t care about the companies, but because if we focus on improving the humans inside of them, the companies will naturally become better as a result. We want you to focus on growing employee-first, because the employee is ultimately what is making your company run. They keep the wheels rolling.

‍Here’s how we’re doing that:

‍We collect a combination of survey data, historical (and benchmarked) user information and engagement metrics to understand how your employees are feeling, perspectives and opinions about themselves, their work and their place of work.

‍From there, our algorithm recommends a combination of tried and true “playbooks” that are pre-built to curate exclusive pop-up events, educational content designed to super-power employees, live and virtual gatherings, as well as a rolodex of partnership services with the world’s most loved brands (SoulCycle, Headspace, Spartan etc).

‍To be clear, we’re not against working in Vinyasa or thoughtfully improving the “culture” within an organization, but you best be damn sure we’re measuring what’s working (and what’s not) every step of the way.

‍Let’s work together to end burnout, improve mental health, and dominate performance!

Over and out.