The Case for Calm

According to ASAE research, workforce burnout is practically all-pervasive today. (See sidebar.) Social and economic disruptions, combined with the accelerating pace of work, have made it more difficult for employees to maintain their focus and feel positive about their jobs.

Addressing that challenge, experts suggest, requires a combination of hard and soft skills — practical office policies that alleviate the risk of burnout, alongside regular practices designed to support the mood of employees.

“Wellness at associations went from being a taboo topic to really mainstream,” says Holly Duckworth, CMP, LSP, CAE, a coach, speaker, and workplace consultant who’s worked with associations. “We’ve always asked how we can take good care of members, but now we’re asking how to take care of staff, so they can take care of members.”

Often, she says, the temperament of the workforce depends on leadership’s behavior. “Leaders need to model the behavior you want to see and communicate the behavior you want to see,” she says. “If you’re responding to emails at two in the morning, you’ve set an unconscious understanding that your staff now feels they have to respond to emails at two in the morning.”

The Association of Corporate Counsel regularly checks in with its staff about its workplace environment, scheduling two surveys a year about it. According to ACC’s Senior Director, Human Resources, Cindy A. Pol, “the top responses can always be narrowed down to ‘keep providing flexible work arrangements.’”

In response to that feedback, ACC offers a variety of flex-work arrangements, including the opportunity to work one month of the year fully remote. (According to Pol, 41 of ACC’s 75 staff members in its Washington, D.C., office took advantage of this benefit in 2024.) It’s also responded directly to current White House rules requiring federal employees to return to the office. “We acknowledged the impact this would have on commutes and schedules for those staff members who have a spouse working in the federal government,” Pol says. “We asked supervisors to be flexible as staff members adjusted to this change.”

Mission First

In recent years, and especially since the pandemic in 2020, workplaces have rushed to provide various wellness benefits ostensibly designed to make employees feel less stressed — workout groups, massages, and so on. However helpful those might be, such perks can risk putting the cart before the horse, says wellness consultant and speaker Rachel Druckenmiller.

“So much of what happens in wellness is blaming and shaming and guilt-tripping people for all the things they’re not doing enough of,” she says. “It’s like the wellness police showing up to tell you to put down the Snickers. That’s what a lot of people think wellness is: chair massages and apples in the kitchen, Fitbit and pedometer challenges.”

Instead, Druckenmiller says, wellness should be treated less like a program and more like a practice built around leaders’ active listening to employees’ workplace concerns. “It’s about fostering an environment where people feel valued, supported — and psychologically , that is the best thing that we can do for someone’s well-being,” she says.