Singapore business founder explains how to distinguish burnout from adaptation
In Singapore, Joan Chia, founder of the haircare brand Rehues, shared her personal experience of professional exhaustion and explained why managers need to distinguish employee burnout from a difficult period of adapting to new responsibilities. She wrote about this in a column for Channel NewsAsia.
Chia said that at an early stage of her management career, she mistakenly believed she was exhausted because of burnout. After being promoted, she was responsible for other people, found difficult conversations with subordinates hard to cope with, and repeatedly went over in her mind the feedback she had given them. Later, she said, she realized that it was primarily a lack of experience and a need to learn how to manage people.
When rest does not restore you
According to Chia's description, genuine burnout proved more difficult to recognize. She began dreaming about Excel spreadsheets, unfinished financial reports and work problems. Even after seven to eight hours of sleep, the entrepreneur woke up feeling as though she had never stopped working.
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The Rehues founder noted that she stopped feeling satisfaction even from successful results: as soon as one problem was resolved, her attention immediately shifted to the next one. Rest also ceased to be restorative — physically, she could be in bed or having dinner with her family, but mentally she continued running the business. Familiar and simple tasks were exhausting, while minor difficulties caused stronger irritation.
Employer responsibility
In Chia's view, when an employee says they feel overwhelmed, a manager should determine whether the cause is an excessive workload, unclear priorities, a lack of training, or several factors at once. She advises asking what exactly takes the most energy, whether the person was able to rest over the weekend, and whether the overload is a one-off occurrence or has become constant.
If employees regularly say that everything is urgent, priorities are constantly changing, or it is unclear what a good result should look like, the problem may lie in the organization of work, Chia believes. At the same time, she does not support an approach in which every difficult task is taken away from an employee: difficulties can be a necessary part of gaining experience. Support, she says, involves clear expectations, proper context, training and readiness to help when a person has reached a dead end.
