5 ways to reduce admin burnout

Admin burnout can be insidious. It can be hard to tell whether you’re just very busy, or you’re completely overloaded. But in frantic sectors like healthcare, burnout is always a risk. And while you can’t magically make your pile of admin disappear, there are a number of ways you can prevent that burnout - and boost your mental health in the process.

In today’s blog we’ll be looking at five tips for reducing admin burnout, from digital dictation tools, to simple self-care.

Tip #1: reduce admin burnout with digital dictation tools

Speech recognition tech has come a remarkably long way in recent years, and many professionals in the healthcare sector swear by it. Digital dictation tools tend to have a number of different features, but at their core, they serve a very simple purpose: to reduce the amount of manual typing in any given work day. You just click where you’d like to start ‘typing’, start speaking aloud, and everything you say will be automatically transcribed into the document (or whichever application you’re using).

As we said, there’s a lot more to these tools than just automated transcriptions. But by utilising those transcriptions, you can dramatically reduce your admin burden. That might not add up to a lot of time saved in a single work day, but over the course of a week or multiple weeks, you’ll ideally start seeing a huge difference.

Tip #2: setting boundaries in your workplace

A lot of us are people pleasers, and that can extend to the workplace. If a colleague asks us to do something extra, we won’t hesitate to add it to our work pile, even if that pile’s too big already (and even if that colleague isn’t authorised to give us work in the first place). But sometimes it’s okay to say no. If your plate’s too full, your plate’s too full.

Tip #3: practice self-care

This one might seem obvious, but it’s easy to let self-care slip. You shouldn’t think of self-care as a luxury, nor as something you ‘don’t have time for right now’. Little things like keeping your workspace tidy, and stepping away from your desk every now and then, can help prevent the rabbit hole of burnout.

Tip #4: take regular breaks throughout the day to reduce admin burnout

Again: pretty obvious! But the key to a healthy work-life balance is forcing yourself to take regular breaks. Regardless of what you’re working on, giving your brain short breaks throughout the day is far better (and often far easier) than ploughing through your entire shift non-stop. Get up, walk around, and give your eyes a rest from screens.

Tip #5: be transparent with your manager

If you’re feeling burnt out, you should be able to be transparent about that with your manager. If you’re scared they won’t be understanding, then they haven’t exactly cultivated a healthy work environment. At the end of the day, having a work environment where you feel you can be open is worth a lot more than meeting deadlines.

Conclusion: 5 ways to reduce admin burnout

Admin burnout is a big risk, especially in sectors like healthcare. If you find yourself overloaded with work, and you assume the solution is to just keep working… you could end up spiralling. Self-care is vital, but it’s also worth looking into applications that exist specifically to tackle admin burnout, like digital dictation.

We help organisations reduce the time and cost of producing correspondence via speech recognition software, information workflow apps, and digital dictation hardware & software. Think we could help your business? Book a consultation today.