From Overwhelm to Resilience: Burnout Prevention for Content Moderators

Unknown speaker

Welcome, everyone. Today I am joined by Ryan, one of the well-being specialists that works in Zevo Health, who delivers our services to content moderation teams in Costa Rica. So today we’re going to be talking about one of the core presenting issues that we see when working with moderation teams, which is burnout.

Unknown speaker

So you’re very welcome, Ryan. Hi, everybody. Hi, Michelle. Glad to be here. So I’m super excited regarding talking about this topic, about burnout, because it’s something that a lot of people sometimes are not conscious of happening.

Unknown speaker

Sometimes people think that burnout is something unreal or doesn’t exist. And it happens quite often. And specifically, it happens a lot with content moderators, because they don’t notice how long or exposed they have been to content or the nature of that work itself.

Unknown speaker

And eventually, they can get burnout. It’s like super exhausting for them. Well, we got to understand what burnout is in the beginning. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I think you’re absolutely spot on.

Unknown speaker

We see it a lot in content moderation teams. We try and tackle it as best as we can. But there are numerous various factors that can contribute to burnout. So like you said, important for us to understand what burnout is.

Unknown speaker

So could you even just give our audience a better understanding of what burnout actually is? Yes. So for understanding what burnout is, it’s like exhaustion, a level of exhaustion that it can be mental, it can be physical, it can be work wise, where the person has come to a level where there’s a total lack of interest in what they do.

Unknown speaker

They have come to high levels of stress where they have been so stressed for so long time. So for a long time, that they just don’t care anymore. They’ve practically burned all their motivation or they’re willing to go to work and stuff like that.

Unknown speaker

And it’s like, I don’t want to work anymore. I think they just don’t care. And it’s not like your regular Monday, all Oh, she’s gone. I don’t know what I don’t want to go to work. No, it’s like every single day.

Unknown speaker

It’s like, I don’t care. I just don’t want to go. That’s one of the typical behaviors we can see when people are going through burnout. It’s like they so that they don’t care. They really are exhausted.

Unknown speaker

And one of the manifestation is like, I don’t want to go. Yeah. And I don’t care about the consequences or anything like that. Yeah. And I think that’s like maybe one of the kind of hallmark symptoms is that sort of like real disinterest or that sort of like a lack of motivation to even like do anything.

Unknown speaker

And you could really care about the work that you’re doing, particularly when it comes to content moderation. But you’re just at that point where you’re so exhausted, whether that’s mentally, physically, spiritually, you know, whatever it is that you’re just like, I can’t, I can’t do this.

Unknown speaker

I have no interest in what it is that I’m doing. And so, like, is it? Like, how does it differ maybe then to like your everyday kind of stress or like even just like like you mentioned, like on a Monday, just feeling really tired?

Unknown speaker

Yeah, okay. That’s a great question. So like one of the key differences is with stress or like with healthy stress is like you get all excited, not excited, but when you get like an important email is like, oh, I got to reply this, I got to do this quick, like there’s a there’s a spike in your emotion is like you go quickly, oh, I got to do this and I got to do the other thing and I got to reply this email and I got to moderate all of these videos and images.

Unknown speaker

And then you cool down like with a healthy stress level is that you go in an exciting level emotionally and then it goes down. But with burnout, there’s a difference you stay up here, your levels of stress, say here like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and the interesting thing is like sometimes if you even on Saturday and Sunday, you start thinking about the things that you got to do on the work week again.

Unknown speaker

So your levels of stress is still up here and it happens like for a period of days, weeks, even months. So imagine yourself going through these high levels of stress constantly and never going back down, never cooling down.

Unknown speaker

Eventually, all of these levels of stress is what it’s like slowly burning you up, slowly burning you up, slowly burning you up. And when you see you won’t come back to your natural level, no, you’re going to go even lower.

Unknown speaker

And when you go lower, it’s going to be a little bit harder just to come back to your base level of your everyday work. So that’s one of the key differences between stress and burnout is like you go way down because you burn too much.

Unknown speaker

You were going through so much stress for so much long time. Yeah. You just don’t want to keep on going. And I think that’s like a really good kind of way to think about stress versus burnout is like stress is like there’s like a lot happening all at once and like you’re able to respond to it as you need to.

Unknown speaker

And then you, like you said, you have that kind of cool down period. then with burnout, it tends to be this huge depletion of resources. All of a sudden, I cannot cope with anything anymore. I don’t know what I’m feeling.

Unknown speaker

My thoughts are all over the place. I’m just totally out of sorts. It’s just that really, really low feeling of there’s nothing I can do to remedy this, or to make myself feel better, or even if I work extra hard, it’s not going to make any difference.

Unknown speaker

I’m just completely out of resources, mentally, physically, spiritually, all of it. Yeah, totally. Because you’re so overwhelmed that you just won’t do anything about it. It’s too much, and you’d just rather sit down or just chill, and it’s like, I don’t care.

Unknown speaker

That’s an interesting practice, because in stress, you do care for the consequences. It’s like, oh, I got to do this because I can get fired. I got to do this because I have to pay the bills. I want to do this because I got to spend time with my family and friends.

Unknown speaker

But when you burn out, it’s like, well, I don’t care. They’re so overwhelmed, it’s like they have so much stuff going through their head that it’s like, no, not anymore. That’s it. I don’t care. Yeah, and I think it’s like particularly, I think when we think about content moderation and trust and safety, it is a busy job.

Unknown speaker

There’s a lot of various different hats that you have to wear. There’s a lot of different moving parts when it comes to what it is that you’re doing to make a decision. And so you’re constantly on trying to work through your tickets or through your cases.

Unknown speaker

And so I think it’s quite easy to become very overwhelmed with the amount of work that there is and the cognitive load that it takes and the time pressures and things like that. That burnout is very possible and that we have to be very considerate of that in ensuring that we’re mitigating the risk of burnout for people who are working in these really fast-paced environments.

Unknown speaker

Totally, totally. And the thing is, it’s so normalized. People are normalized going through all of these high levels of stress constantly where they got to reach out to burnout. Yeah. And it’s like some level of frightening that we’ve got to do something about it.

Unknown speaker

Because people are like, oh, this is super normalized. It’s super normal to have high levels of stress every single day. And it’s like, yeah, this is not the way we’ve got to do these kinds of things.

Unknown speaker

This is not a healthy way to cope with all of this. And look, there is healthy stress, like you mentioned, right? Everybody’s going to go through stress at some point during their days, whether it’s one particular email or one particular interaction they have with a customer or something like that.

Unknown speaker

When it’s consistent and it’s ongoing and there’s no way out of that stress, that’s where it becomes really problematic. So you’ve worked with content moderators for a couple of years now. So based on your experience, what are some of the factors that can increase the likelihood of moderators experiencing burnout?

Unknown speaker

Yes, that’s great. question. So one, there’s like three specific elements that can contribute to moderators experience at burnout. Number one is the monotonous work. So sometimes these kinds of jobs, the nature itself of counter-moderator, it’s stressful enough, you know, from reading harmful comments from seeing really horrible videos, really nasty pictures and stuff like that on the internet, the nature of this job itself,

Unknown speaker

it’s really stressful. So having this being constantly every single day can experience or can add an extra layer of stress to that job itself. So being monotonous of going from Monday, let’s go from Monday to Friday and working, you know, between six and eight hours.

Unknown speaker

You’ve got to watch an experience and sometimes it’s 100, sometimes by fun, but depends on the needs of the client itself that sometimes these constant moderators have regarding the world situation. So they got to see a lot of these videos, a lot of these pictures constantly, continuously, so much so many times during their day.

Unknown speaker

So it’s not really nice if you think about it, because yeah, sometimes there’s weird videos really odd stuff that people report is like, okay, that’s not bad. But imagine yourself seeing the same thing every single day for the next couple of weeks.

Unknown speaker

That can be so stressful itself. It’s like so overwhelming. So that’s one of the elements that can contribute or put a higher risk of burnout of content moderators. The second one is the lack of support.

Unknown speaker

Sometimes people don’t understand how content moderators work itself. And sometimes it’s just they get the spot just putting quotes here like the call centered treatment, like this work just continue just produce.

Unknown speaker

And if you think about it, they’re being constantly exposed to a lot of these videos, a lot of these pictures, a lot of these comments. And well, naturally, they’re going to bring all of that to themselves, to their family, to their friends, to their life.

Unknown speaker

So they need an extra support, they need extra breaks, they need just to save space so they can vent out what they seem to sometimes they lack a lot of support, they just like, oh, you know, you’re gonna work for the next five straight hours.

Unknown speaker

And that’s it. Instead of like having, you know, breaks here, you know, to go check your phone, go walk outside, have a cup of coffee, you know, these kinds of stuff can really help content moderators cool down.

Unknown speaker

Yeah, in those high levels of stress. And another element that we’re going to see a lot is job insecurity. Some were stating before, sometimes it’s a high level of stress itself. So job insecurity, in these cases is like they’re not getting paid enough, or there are a lot of people resigning.

Unknown speaker

So there’s a lot of people coming in, or they’re firing a lot of people and a lot of people coming in. So that can put in an extra layer of stress naturally, to cause the moderators is like, am I gonna get fired?

Unknown speaker

Am I not like what’s going on? Am I getting paid? This is like, all of these kinds of thoughts appear and it’s like, okay, so they’re already going through the stress of constant moderators. They’re already having the stress of those meetings, customers, or those emails.

Unknown speaker

And now I’m thinking about, am I losing my job? Am I doing my job correctly? Is it what’s going on? They just fire a colleague of mine. Does this mean that they’re layers? So all of these rambling thoughts appear.

Unknown speaker

And those rambling thoughts are going to add a new layer of stress. So we’re seeing like the monotonous work, lack of support of the job insecurity is going to add so much new layers of stress. So if you’re already up here and we couldn’t cool down, we’re going to go higher and higher, stay up here.

Unknown speaker

This is just going to add more burnout. Even burnout quicker, instead of spending months, it can be weeks because it’s high levels of stress and people can come to a point like, I don’t care. they’re naturally going to contribute with like the last element shopping security of people like, oh, okay.

Unknown speaker

Yeah, absolutely. I think like what’s really important in what you’re saying there is that it’s not necessarily like one thing that is going to cause burnout, or that’s going to put someone at higher risk of developing burnout.

Unknown speaker

There’s various different layers to it. And so somebody who’s experiencing monotonous work because they’re viewing the same thing every day, and they’re taking the same actions every day, and it might get a little bit boring, or it’s just like a lot of kind of stress to deal with.

Unknown speaker

And then on top of that, maybe like they’ve had a little bit of a conflict with like one of their colleagues or like a team leader and or like they were told that they couldn’t take their break because they’ve got a backlog of content that they’ve got to get through.

Unknown speaker

And then layer that on top of like the industry as a whole experiencing like layoffs. And is our company going to be next? Like, is it going to be me? And then I don’t care about my job anymore. So am I going to perform as well?

Unknown speaker

And then is that going to impact my job? Like it’s all just sits one on top of another. And it’s just layers and layers and layers of stress at one on top of the other, which eventually leads to burnout.

Unknown speaker

That’s the whole idea. And it’s like, we got to be so conscious about it because we normalize. The thing is, we normalize this, it’s like, Oh, this is the job, you know, this is what it is. And the thing is, it’s not, it shouldn’t be this way, we can take some action.

Unknown speaker

And if we add some good coping skills to all of this can help a lot of content moderators to moderate even better. And to produce a little bit more comfortable. Yeah. And we can, like, we can have a better flow work, instead of like adding all of these layers of stress.

Unknown speaker

Yeah, absolutely. So if you were, say, like a team lead or a supervisor to content moderators, are there things that you might kind of notice in your team that would indicate their experiencing burnout?

Unknown speaker

Yes. So one of the key indicators, it would be like checking for their emotional state, like sometimes, when you when you go to the floor and stuff like that, you can see like if they’re going through an overwhelming state.

Unknown speaker

And you can see this constantly. It’s like, this is odd. This person has cried maybe three times this week at the job and it’s like, hey, are you doing okay? Do you need extra breaks? Do you need something about it?

Unknown speaker

Or you start seeing a level of lack of interest. You see people are just coming in late, not doing their, not tagging or non-marking on time, stuff like that. It’s like, everything okay? Do you need extra support?

Unknown speaker

Stuff like that. You start seeing like these small details or you see them really stressed out, you know? Like sometimes you see them having extra anxiety or panic attacks. And it’s like, this is something interesting.

Unknown speaker

There’s something happening here with the job or is everything going okay with the job and stuff like that. And if you’re a team lead, practically my recommendation would be check for your agents or your work colleagues, emotional studies, hey, how you doing?

Unknown speaker

These constantly checkups is how you doing? How you feeling? Is the work doing okay? Because if you see people like, you know, moving a lot in their chairs, and it’s like, they’re feeling a little bit anxious, and you can notice these things.

Unknown speaker

It’s like, Oh, is everything okay? Do you need extra support? So, or they can start saying phrases or words like, Well, I don’t care. This is just an extra job. I don’t mind. Start seeing this lack of interest.

Unknown speaker

It’s like, Oh, okay, so is there anything I can do for you? Is anything I can support you? You know, you start seeing all of these behaviors, and all of these words, a ton of general demeanor. It’s like, there’s a social level of panic attacks, or even anxiety attacks.

Unknown speaker

Start seeing them more often. And it’s like, Oh, what’s happening here? Yeah, why are people going through all of these levels of stress? Besides the job itself, is there something that we can start doing?

Unknown speaker

Yeah. So if you’re a team leader, a supervisor, just be aware of the emotional state of your, of your team itself. This way, you can check on them, see what they’re doing, how they’re doing. Like the words they say is like, Oh, I don’t care.

Unknown speaker

I don’t mind. Or you see these behaviors, like they don’t come in time, they live early, stuff like that. It’s like, maybe a lack of lack of motivation. Who knows? But if we see these patterns, okay, but then we can do something about it, do something about it, we avoid getting to that point of right now, where it’s totally out of person.

Unknown speaker

It’s like, Oh, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t mind the consequence. While there’s still some levels of stress, and we can cool them down. Yeah, higher level, the person is going to still be in the company can be useful and the person itself.

Unknown speaker

But I think it’s the most important will feel better. Yeah. And I think that’s like, what’s really important about like, team leads and supervisors in these organizations working with content moderators is that you’re you’re sort of that first line of defense, you’re going to be the first one to notice if someone’s behavior has changed.

Unknown speaker

If like, they’re starting to say things that they wouldn’t normally say, or if they’re acting in ways that seem like a little bit different to how they usually are. And that’s that sort of indicator just to check in and say, like, how’s everything going?

Unknown speaker

Is there any additional support that you need? need and like, you know, there’s always going to be people I think who don’t really want to talk about the difficulties that they’re having or they’re worried about talking about their difficulties, but I think fostering that really like open communication between a team lead and a content moderator where it’s just like consistently checking in and saying hope everything is going okay.

Unknown speaker

If it’s not, I’m here to kind of lend you support and try and offer you the best supports that I can. You know, it’s building that relationship and that’s I think really key when it comes to burnout is making sure that you have that really strong relationship with your team so that when they are experiencing difficulties, they’re open to kind of sharing that with you.

Unknown speaker

Yeah, definitely. Because it’s having a support network. Yeah. For people being there is like, or even the content moderators who are more senior in their roles, it’s like, hey, how you doing? I’m just checking on you.

Unknown speaker

Like, I’m not necessarily the seniors as well as team leads. It’s like, just as you’re stating, just having this checkup, it’s like, hey, you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to talk about it, but just letting you know I’m here for you.

Unknown speaker

Yeah. So I’ve gone through all of this before so if you need any support or anything like it or you don’t feel really comfortable with the job or you’re seeing too much of this kind of content, let me know so we can see what I can do to fix it.

Unknown speaker

Yeah. In the kind of way people feel more comfortable to expose themselves or like talk about what they’re going through. Yeah. It’s way more better this way. It’s more healthier this way for people to express.

Unknown speaker

Yeah. And I think we’ve had multiple experiences before where team leads have also struggled and they’ve gotten support from our services or maybe they’ve phoned an EIP line that they have access to.

Unknown speaker

So I think a team leader role modeling and saying, oh yeah, I’ve also been through challenges like this before. Offering that little bit of vulnerability helps develop that relationship and also makes it seem like they’re open to kind of having people discuss the challenges that they are having without being judged or without kind of like fears of losing their jobs or like having some sort of like negative consequence or impact.

Unknown speaker

Definitely. Because it’s like you’re treating with a person, you’re not treating with a robot. Yeah. Sometimes people see team this, oh they got to respond to their company, they got to respond to the client, we got to hit these markers and stuff like that.

Unknown speaker

But when your team lead shows this kind of level of vulnerability, like as we said it, emotionalist or being emotional, sorry, people can approach you. It’s like, oh I’m going to this tough time. I also experienced fair enough before I don’t want anyone to experience this.

Unknown speaker

It’s horrible, it’s awful. So if I can do something about it, let me know. And there’s a lot of companies that usually provide all of these support systems. It’s like, you just raise your hand, let us know and we’re going to give you all of this support.

Unknown speaker

Yeah. Because people know the nature of being a content moderator, so let us add extra layers of support. As we go through extra layers of stress, let’s add extra layers of support. Absolutely. And we can cope with it better.

Unknown speaker

It leads into the next question really well, I think. In your experience, what have leadership or even companies as a whole done that has helped decrease the potential for moderators to experience burnout?

Unknown speaker

Well, as we were saying, Empathic Team Lead is going to help a lot. As a team lead, really Empathic can understand the needs of your team. It’s like, well, let me know if you need anything because if you’re going through a tough time, let me know.

Unknown speaker

Maybe we can add some extra breaks. That’s super useful. Sometimes, and you don’t have to have like these enormous break of one, two hours off. Sometimes it’s like 15, 10, maybe 20 minutes. It’s like, you know, cool down.

Unknown speaker

So you go grab a cup of coffee, walk around the building, have some sunlight, you know, go up and down the stairs, just move a little bit. If you’re going through a lot of things, just move a little bit.

Unknown speaker

It’s going to help you cope with it. So extra breaks, having an Empathic Team Lead, sometimes understanding the performing targets. We can be flexible about that because if you’re going through high levels of stress and sometimes the content during weeks, you know, regarding what’s happening to the world, it’s going to become more difficult to moderate.

Unknown speaker

It’s going to become more stressful. You know, if there’s wars around the place, if there’s some weird stuff going in some places of the countries, people are going to start seeing more of these videos.

Unknown speaker

So it’s like, okay, so we’re going through a tough wave. So maybe let’s be more flexible regarding their goals, their targets. And having a support system itself with senior content moderators, so being more aware of the new ones.

Unknown speaker

It’s like, hey, do you need extra vise, do you need extra support, do you need something that I can help you with? So this way people all as a team can help manage this burden. So it’s not all relying on one person, it’s like, oh, all as a team.

Unknown speaker

So these can work out a lot to people to moderate even better and can help companies to avoid the high levels of resignation as well. Yeah, absolutely. And I think like, you know, some of the key things that you mentioned there, like even things like performance targets, you know, we know they’re in place for a reason.

Unknown speaker

We absolutely don’t want to be going down like any of our social media feeds and seeing really horrible content as users, right? So, you know, content moderation teams are really working hard to kind of make sure that users don’t see that stuff, which is why they have the performance targets in place.

Unknown speaker

But if we can offer even the tiniest bit of flexibility, that might be beneficial to the teams. And it could be like you’re saying, like, there’s a period of time where things have gotten really, really hectic.

Unknown speaker

The volume of content has increased because there was some sort of global event. And, you know, for like three weeks, it’s just been very intense. But then if there’s a sort of come down period, OK, what can we do during that come down period when volumes of content aren’t as high, when people are feeling a little bit more like less kind of like intensely pressurized to work to themselves to the bone?

Unknown speaker

at those kinds of stages can we like implement some additional supports or like minimize some of those performance targets or even just offer additional breaks and stuff like that so that they have a chance to kind of cool down and that they’re not just sitting in the like high stress area for the next like 12, 18 weeks.

Unknown speaker

Yeah, definitely. That’s why we kind of add these cool down periods. Yeah, and it’s sometimes it doesn’t have to be like, oh, we’re going to give you a week off so you can cool down stuff like that. Sometimes it’s the small breaks and it’s small moments in your day that is going to help you like high levels of stress, cool down for a little bit.

Unknown speaker

And then we can go like this, this is more manageable. Yeah, than just staying up here. Yeah, hitting yourself right. Absolutely. And like there’s loads of great like, you know, mindfulness techniques and stuff that people can do within like two minutes or even five minutes to get that kind of down regulation and that cool down, right?

Unknown speaker

Like a two minute breathing exercise does so much for someone who’s just viewed something really, really egregious. and they can just sit there for two minutes, breathe, and then that helps regulate their entire system.

Unknown speaker

And then they can go back to work feeling a little bit better. Yeah, it’s super easy. And as you’re saying, there’s a lot of techniques, like there’s a lot of grounding techniques, mindfulness techniques.

Unknown speaker

There’s like, just sometimes I work with people and I always say to them, if you feel really stressed, you know, go talk to your TL for a second and just go walk around the building, you know, cool down, have some physical activity, go up and down the stairs.

Unknown speaker

If you’re in the fifth level, awesome. If you have no knee problems, go up and down. It’s gonna help you cool down a little bit so you can liberate all of this stress and then you can’t come back. And it’s gonna take you, as you say, two, five, the most 10 minutes, and then you’re gonna feel way better and you can continue moderating.

Unknown speaker

Absolutely. So I guess my next question is, as much as burnout is a sort of organizational issue that can impact things like productivity and like ticket handling times and accuracy, it’s also very much a kind of individual experience that needs to be appropriately managed.

Unknown speaker

So what kind of strategies have you seen work best when moderators are experiencing burnout at that sort of individual level? All right, awesome. That’s a great question. So as an individual level, well, we can start, first of all, physical activity is gonna help you a lot.

Unknown speaker

Physical activity, not only for your levels of stress, but for your day-to-day, like we should move a little bit. And I’m not saying that you gotta hit the gym six times a week and like lift the heavy weights, just do any kind of physical activity.

Unknown speaker

Like you can go to the park, you can walk, you can swim, you can, whatever you wanna do, just move your body a little bit. That’s gonna help you a lot coping with all of these levels of stress, because it’s a healthy way we can manage stress and some kind of way of iterating.

Unknown speaker

So another resource is mindfulness, as we were stating before, like having your daily mindfulness sessions. If you can find our recording, you can find a podcast, you can talk, if you have a counselor in your building, you can talk to your counselor.

Unknown speaker

there as well. Sometimes they’re mindfulness sessions in the week, so you can ask for those extra support and it can help you cool down for a little bit. That as well. Journaling is going to be another great tool where you can have a safe space where you can write everything that you’re going through, your emotions, your thoughts, whatever.

Unknown speaker

And the great thing is paper doesn’t judge you. Paper won’t criticize you. You’ll receive everything you want to put in, so do it really. You know, so those three things are going to help a lot as well as seek social support.

Unknown speaker

You can talk to another team, another members of your team. It’s like, hey, I’m feeling kind of stressed. Have you ever experienced this before? You know, looking for social support or even after work, you know, looking for some support groups, talking to your friends, your family is like, oh, I’m going through all of this tough time.

Unknown speaker

Have you, has somebody gone through this before or can you just listen to me and validate my emotions and go through my thoughts? That can help a lot. verbalizing what we’re going through can help us cool down instead of just carrying everything inside of us like and I used like this movement because people feel it on their shoulders people like they’re carrying the whole world in their backs it’s like talk a little bit that can help you a lot yeah so these things can help you a lot and the other one that I like to practice it’s like unplug yourself digitally and physically it’s like you know go to the park if you have the moment just go just stay in touch with nature or unplug your phone just chill at your own house no need to be so connected because sometimes we’re so connected to everywhere like yeah stop moderating you’re sitting down in front of your computer and once you finish you go to the phone and you start seeing social media yeah it’s like you’re being exposed to much time so disconnect disconnect it doesn’t have to be like for a whole month and you gotta isolate yourself in a cabin in the woods and nothing like that yeah sometimes it’s just you know for a couple of hours maybe even for 15-20 minutes just unplug yourself just sit there with your emotions with your thoughts have a cup of coffee have a cup of tea just enjoy the moment with yourself just be with yourself and that can help you a lot to cool down yeah like oh I’m not being so much stimulated by all of these devices all of this social media all of everything but we finish moderating or we use our phones we use our tablets you we go watch tv everything everywhere and I think that’s that’s like really sort of important is that the job is very stimulating right like exactly like you’re saying like you’re sitting in front of the desk and you’re like having to watch videos or review text or like switch between like looking at your your content that’s in front of you and reviewing a policy to make sure that you’re taking the right action so it it is a very stimulating job and so having that time to just slow down in whatever way works best for you whether that’s the journaling or doing a mindfulness practice um or some sort of like grounding technique or just getting out in nature.

Unknown speaker

That’s I think what’s really key is that we just need to kind of slow everything down when we’re starting to feel really, really heightened and really stressed. So when we discuss burnout, we often focus on symptoms that are obvious, like that kind of job dissatisfaction or absenteeism.

Unknown speaker

But one of the key indicators is that feeling of sort of negativity or cynicism towards your job. So what could be done to address this particular kind of symptom? Awesome. So one of the key things that we can start doing is acknowledging the hard work that they’re doing, like recognizing that, or the impact as well they’re doing to the world.

Unknown speaker

So there’s two things. So recognizing the hard work, because it’s a hard work, it’s a hard job, like watching videos every single day, pictures, comments, everything that are going through the internet is exhausting.

Unknown speaker

It’s a hard work to do. So if you have this small motivation regularly, it’s like, hey, you’re doing a good job. Thank you so much. We are really thankful for about this. It’s like, it makes you feel in some kind of way fulfilled.

Unknown speaker

It’s like, oh, I’m impacting in a good way. And this is the other part of it. It’s like the whole idea is keeping the internet safe. So sometimes we got to expose ourselves. So we know that maybe our friends, maybe our family, other people around the world are not seeing all of these horrible, nasty stuff that we’re watching our day to day.

Unknown speaker

So in some kind of ways, like, oh, I’m doing my part in this. So this can help you a lot fighting all of these negativism, personism is like, I don’t care. I don’t mind. No, I do care. Yeah, I do mind.

Unknown speaker

Like I’m doing, I’m putting my small grain of salt in this. And it’s like, oh, put in my effort here. Yeah. That can really help a lot. So if companies, TLs or other peers in your day to day can help you be mindful of this.

Unknown speaker

It’s like, oh, remember that we’re doing good at the world. We’re keeping the internet safe. So that can help you a lot. Yeah. And I think it’s really about driving that sense of kind of like meaning and purpose behind what it is that they’re doing.

Unknown speaker

Like, they’re not just sitting behind a computer screen for fun, looking at the phone. It’s very much to protect users and to keep kids online safe and to keep like elderly people who are like subjected to fraud, say from scams, you know, like there’s there’s so much real world impact that I think like content moderators might not really realize when they’ve been doing the job for so long, it can feel very routine and just kind of wrote and monotonous like you were saying before.

Unknown speaker

But like they need that kind of reassurance and that recognition regularly to say you are having a real world impact. What you’re doing is making a difference. There’s meaning and purpose behind what it is that you’re doing.

Unknown speaker

And that can really help mitigate that feeling of like this job doesn’t really mean anything to me. Yeah, definitely. You can help a lot like you have an impact. And this job is important for me. Either whatever the reasons you are in content moderator, but you’ve got to be mindful of your reasons.

Unknown speaker

Not just saying, oh, it’s another job, it’s another day. It’s like, no. have an impact on this. I’m in some kind of way thinking about myself but thinking about others as well and that can motivate people to continue moderating better and to avoid these levels of burnout or these levels or high levels of stress that’s going to take you to burnout.

Unknown speaker

Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve covered a lot over the last sort of like 20 minutes. Are there any kind of last thoughts you want to leave with our audience on preventing and managing burnout amongst content moderation teams?

Unknown speaker

Yes, let’s be mindful of how we’re feeling. Sometimes we normalize all of this. We think, oh, this is supernatural. This is going to happen. This is, no, be mindful of how you’re feeling. If you’re feeling stressed, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, if you’re feeling even burnout, you’re starting to feel all of the symptoms that we talked about.

Unknown speaker

It’s like, reach out. You don’t have to go through this all by yourself. You can raise your hand and a lot of companies are going to have a really good support system or look for your support yourself.

Unknown speaker

something about it. Don’t carry it all by yourself. And it’s like, oh, well, this is what it is. It’s not, we can do something about it. Yeah, we can cope with it a way better ways. We can feel much better.

Unknown speaker

We just talk about it. Yeah. So if you’re a content moderator, going through high levels of stress, just raise your hand. Say you need help. There’s nothing wrong with it. And you’re going to feel much better way sooner than you expect.

Unknown speaker

Amazing. Well, listen, it has been fantastic chatting to you, Ryan. I’m sure that our audience has learned a lot through this webinar. And I’m looking forward to continuing to work with you, as we have been.

Unknown speaker

And thank you very much. No, thank you for having me here. I’m super excited to talk about new topics in the future. So we’re happy to be here. Yeah. Let’s hope we can see each other again in the future.

Unknown speaker

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, everybody, for listening in.