By Mike Antich

Today's workplace environment for public sector employees is the perfect storm for staff burn-out. Every public sector fleet manager is all too familiar with downsizing — doing more with (substantially) less. More and more fleet managers cite staff "burn-out" as a growing concern. Staff burn-out is a term used to describe a state of mind brought on by long-term exhaustion, characterized by low employee morale and diminished work interest.

For the first time since the early 1980s, many political subdivisions laid off employees in 2008-2010 to help close budget gaps. Many of these layoffs are multi-phased, with subsequent layoffs still slated to kick in during the 2011 calendar-year.

Fleet managers are entrusted with managing an operation, but more importantly, managing people. For public sector fleet managers, employee management is becoming a major issue. In the past, public sector employees were accustomed to economic downturns impacting businesses, but not local government. However, as any government worker will tell you, this is not the case this time around, as employees are impacted by layoffs, forced furloughs, and across-the-board pay cuts.

"It is harder to keep morale up with employees fearful for their jobs, no raises, and increased contributions for employees for medical insurance and related services. Stress levels are up, which affects productivity and time-off from work in times when you need to get more out of your employees," said Doug Weichman, director, Fleet Management Division for Palm Beach County, Fla.

Vacant Positions Remain Unfilled

Many fleets have not filled vacancies since 2008 and expect this trend to continue. Fleets are also consolidating and reorganizing to strengthen core operations. At many fleet operations, additional services such as night shift and pickup/delivery of customer vehicles are things of the past. Most fleet departments have hiring freezes for technician vacancies. Often, when a position becomes vacant, no replacement is permitted. Also, if personnel quits or retires, those positions are often frozen. Remaining staff members are forced to work harder to maintain "normal" operations.

What makes this environment more stressful is that fleets were already operating very lean even before these vacancies occurred, so it has put an extra strain on productivity. Stretched technician resources affect repair turn-around time. In addition, many fleets have eliminated overtime work ­— except for emergency situations.

The one "silver lining" to this era of economic constraints is that public sector fleets are finding somewhat easier to recruit or retaining qualified technicians following the closure of many local automotive dealerships, which created a pool of unemployed qualified technicians. Of course, this only applies to fleets with the funding to hire technicians; not all have the funding to do so. In addition, this pool of technicians is likely to shrink as experienced technicians from closed dealerships are absorbed elsewhere within the economy. 

Avoiding Staff Burn-out

Is staff performance improvement a goal (or key performance indicator — KPI) of yours? A manager's job is to keep his or her staff productive and maintain good morale. Job burn-out leaves once-enthusiastic technicians with low morale, feeling cynical, and ineffective. Avoiding staff burn-out needs you to call on your leadership skills to maintain an environment that fosters high employee productivity. But you can't do it alone. Utilize the resources of your HR department, talk with other department heads, communicate with fleet manager peers, read management books, and search the Internet, which contains many useful articles on how to minimize staff burn-out.

While management and individuals can cope with the symptoms of burn-out, the only way to truly prevent burn-out is through a combination of organizational change and education. Progressive organizations combat the threat of staff burn-out through management development (training managers to cope with these situations) and engaging HR (and if money allows, external consultants) to assist in establishing new policies and practices in developing a supportive workplace. It is in everyone's interest to do so — management, employees, and the constituents they serve.

How are you coping with staff burn-out? Let's use this forum to share among ourselves successful strategies to maintain staff morale and productivity. If you've been successful, we want to hear from you.

Let us know what you think.

mike.antich@bobit.com