Addiction treatment has always been a tough field to operate in. COVID 19 makes it even more challenging. 

Employee turnover at addiction treatment centers is one of the biggest obstacles facing our clients. One study pegged voluntary pre-pandemic turnover rates at 33.2% for counselors, 23.4% for clinical supervisors. The coronavirus pandemic has only compounded this issue. 

As addiction treatment centers around the country downsize their programs to respond to the virus-related reduction in demand for treatment services, we are placing an ever growing burden on the employees that remain. Now more than ever, it’s important to keep staff happy, healthy, and productive at work. 

Today, we’ll discuss our top 5 strategies for preventing burnout in addiction treatment center employees. 

Don’t Overwork Addiction Treatment Staff

It’s well-known that unmanageable caseloads overwhelm workers, causing them to experience the exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficiency associated with employee burnout. When staff have too many responsibilities to attend to and not enough time to get to them, their stress response hormones are elevated. This activates the fight or flight instinct in your staff, leading to poor decision making and decreased levels of interpersonal competency on the job. 

If the stress response is triggered on a long-term basis, employees begin to shut down emotionally. Productivity plunges and absenteeism skyrockets as employees begin to “dial it in” and seek employment elsewhere.

The best way to prevent employee burnout is to keep caseloads manageable for your employees.  

Define Employee Roles Clearly 

Ambiguity at work is stressful for employees, so eliminate uncertainty by clarifying job responsibilities wherever possible. 

Job roles at your addiction treatment center should be well-defined, with obvious benchmarks for success that can be easily and fairly evaluated in supervision meetings. If you don’t have thorough job descriptions, now is the time to create them. Make sure each employee knows where their job begins and where it stops so that they have the tools they need to self-evaluate success in their role. 

Provide Staff with Ample Feedback At Your Addiction Treatment Center

Many people find social isolation at work to be stressful. We are social creatures who need collaboration and feedback to provide context for our shared goals and add meaning to our work. Lack of frequent contact with supervisors can lead employees to feel undervalued and ignored.

Make sure your managers are doing frequent check-ins with employees, even if those communications are just to congratulate a job well-done. 

Get to Know Each Employee At Your Treatment Center

There is no one-size-fits-all panacea for burnout. Every employee will have different preventative measures that will best protect them from overwhelm at work. 

For one employee, it may be a flexible schedule on Tuesday nights for a kid’s soccer game. For another, it may be the freedom to develop a new yoga class for the center’s group schedule. Treat burnout prevention as an individual problem for the best results. That means getting to know what’s important to each employee and learning what you can do to help them out individually at work.  

Provide the Addiction Treatment Tools Meant for the Job

One of the easiest ways to prevent burnout in the addiction treatment sector is to provide adequate tools for your employees to complete their jobs. Clunky, obsolete EHR systems are far too common in addiction treatment centers, adding unnecessary layers of frustration to an already challenging job. 

If chosen with care, a single software update can immediately eliminate that source of unneeded stress from your workplace. 

At BehaveHealth, we specialize in easy-to-use, intuitive, all-in-one software solutions made especially for addiction treatment providers. Imagine accessing everything you need to run your business—EHR, CRM, billing, ERP—all in one place, anywhere, anytime, from any device. No more mysterious, glitchy, PC-bound systems that take years to learn. With BehaveHealth, your employees can quickly and easily finish their “paperwork” and move on to the part of the job they love: working with your patients.

Give BehaveHealth a Try Today 

You can’t eliminate burnout from your workplace entirely. Addiction treatment will always be a challenging—and at times, stressful—environment for employees. 

Why not focus on what you can control? The software you use at your center has a big effect on your employees’ work experience. Claim your free BehaveHealth trial today and see the difference for yourself.