Capacity reflects how employees feel about their emotional and psychological resources that are needed to invest themselves in their roles. Think of capacity as a gas tank that employees rely on to determine what they can bring to their daily work.

Capacity is about the mental energy employees can bring to their job and the way that impacts their ability to prioritize, focus, and troubleshoot issues that may arise during the day. When it is low and employees are concerned about their capacity, this can signal a risk for burnout.

In the Emplify Engagement Assessment, employees are prompted to reflect on the following statements related to Capacity and share how strongly they agree or disagree:

Capacity impacts how employees "show up" to work and helps us understand if they have the bandwidth to be engaged. Employees with high capacity are able to prioritize competing demands, are confident in their role, and feel they can be successful as they think through and encounter different situations at work.

As an organization leader, look at the perception in your company culture related to handling stress and mitigating burnout. Are employees given the flexibility to recharge when they need to? As a top-level leader do you model appropriate work hours? How does the organization promote a whole-person culture of wellbeing? Making sure that the organization emphasizes this as important and valuable can create en environment where employees feel safe to recharge when needed and come to work with full capacity.

As a direct manager, you can help to promote and improve capacity as it more directly relates to work tasks. Working with your team to continuously prioritize their responsibilities and provide guidance on where they can say "no" can help to create bandwidth. Promoting cross-training can help with shifting capacity when someone is overwhelmed or over-capacity and allows for delegation of tasks when needed.