Reducing burnout and the compliance risks it triggers

Meeting compliance deadlines. Contending with complex tax structures. Keeping pace with legislative updates, rates and rules changes, new digital services taxes and state-specific revenue thresholds…  

That’s a decidedly incomplete list of the challenges confronting indirect tax teams. Given these pressures and time constraints, it’s no wonder that staff burnout represents a growing concern for indirect tax leaders.   

While burnout triggers vary by function, other organisational leaders contend with the same issue. Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace survey report finds that 41% of employees throughout the organisation experienced “a lot of stress” the previous day. Gallup’s report also contains unsettling statistics regarding the workforce’s level of involvement and commitment: only 23% of employees are “engaged”, while 62% are “not engaged” and 15% are “actively disengaged”.  

An effective defence against stress-induced workplace exhaustion is an approach that might surprise tax leaders: regular, frequent one-on-one meetings between leaders and team members.  

A Journal of Accountancy podcast explores the dynamics of burnout and resilience in an interview with Hamza Khan, author of The Burnout Gamble and keynote speaker at several AICPA and CIMA events.   

Hamza experienced a debilitating stress attack in 2014 while working at one of Canada’s top-ranked employers. His manager’s approach to meetings, and it’s not an uncommon one, was “if we’re not meeting, consider that a good thing.” That was fine at first – but when meetings did happen, they were “jarring”, Hamza recalls. “Firestorms rained down on me. Looking back, I wish we had more frequent touch points so that it wouldn’t have to be all bunched up and delivered in such a violent way.”  

As a business owner, Hamza later realised that neglecting one-to-ones with key staff resulted in a star employee leaving the organisation. These days, anytime he finds himself tempted to push meetings away, he regards it as “an indication that I’m faltering at the level of strategy as a leader”.   

While candid conversations between leaders and employees are the single most important habit in building a burnout-resistant organisation, there’s no doubt one-on-ones can be uncomfortable. Here are Hamza’s suggestions for making meetings less awkward and more meaningful:  

• Be aware of the broad range of factors that can lead to burnout, as captured in the acronym CASTLE: competition, alienation, societal pressures, technological innovation, loneliness and an economy in flux. 
• Aim for one meaningful conversation with team members per week, or every two weeks at a minimum. 
• Ask the questions you’re most afraid to ask. Use open-ended, coaching-style questions: “Do you respect our leadership? Are you happy here? Do you feel like you belong?” This approach can identify CASTLE factors hindering employees’ performance, which can also have an impact on your effectiveness as a leader and increase your own risk of burnout. 

Managing talent can present significant challenges for tax leaders. But by taking tangible steps to create meaningful conversations and reduce discomfort in one-on-one meetings, they can guard against burnout in their teams and reduce their own stress levels.