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| Photo by Danylo Suprun on Unsplash |
The acronym VUCA is commonly used to describe today's business environment. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity are the order of the day. Burn-out, Anxiety, Stress, Work-life Balance, EAP (Employee Assistance Program), Counseling, Wellness programs etc are the buzz-words among HR & Management, across companies.
Burn-out as an occupational hazard is not limited only to corporate world, but seen in various people oriented professions such as human services, education & health care. The context varies, in Corporate sector the burn-out can be related to pressures of project timelines, product launch, productivity, demanding customer, while in Human services the prevailing norms are to be selfless & put other's needs first, the service providers develop with the recipients an intense level of personal & emotional contact.Although such relationships can be rewarding & engaging, they can also be quite stressful, leading to burn-out in long-run.
In the recently published 11th edition of ICD (International Classification of Diseases), WHO (World Health Organisation) revised Burn-out as an Occupational phenomenon (previously it was categorized as a medical condition).
In online search engines, you will come across tons of scattered articles & papers on Burn-out, describing it's various facets. In this article, I have attempted to provide readers a simplified, consolidated, comprehensive coverage on the topic Burn-out, through a single reading.
List of topics we shall explore together:
- WHO definition of Burn-out
- Conceptual models of Burn-out
- Assessment/Measurement of Burn-out
- Causes of Burn-out
- Engagement
- Outcomes of Burn-out
- Intervention strategies
- Feeling of energy depletion or exhaustion
- Increased mental distance from one's job, or feeling of negativism/cynicism related to one's job
- Reduced professional efficacy
This three dimensional model, clearly places the individual's experience of Burn-out within a social context & involves the person's conception of both self & others. Therefore, Burn-out is a psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job.
Conceptual models:
The earlier theoritical models focused on the relationship between the three dimensions (exhaustion, cynicism & reduced efficacy) of burn-out & these were described in sequential stages.
More recently, burnout models have been based on theories of job stress & the notion of imbalances leading to strain. The first such model was the transactional one, which served as a conceptual bridge between sequential stages & imbalances. It's three stages are: a). job stressors, b). individual strain & c). defensive coping.
Subsequently, three models based on Demands-Resource Imbalance have emerged. There are:
Job Demands-Resources (JD-R), Conservation of Resource (COR) & Areas of Worklife (AW) models.
Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) - Burn-out arises when individuals have inadequate resources at their disposal for meeting the increasing job demands.
Conservation of Resource (COR) - Burn-out arises when individuals strive to maintain their valued resources, which they perceive are under constant threat.
There are four basic kind of resources: Objects, Conditions, Personal characteristics & Energies.
Objects are physical entities such as transportation, house etc.
Conditions are social circumstances such as marriage, tenure, employment.
Personal characteristics include Skills (technical & social skills) & Personality Attributes (sense of mastery, self-esteem, optimism) that enable an individual to better withstand stressful conditions & achieve desired goals.
Energies are resources which are used to obtain other valued resources.
Areas of Worklife (AW) - This model identifies six key areas in which person-job imbalances arises. These areas of worklife are: Workload, Control, Reward, Community, Fairness & Values.
The greater the mismatch between the person & the job, the greater the likelihood of burn-out. Conversely, the greater the match, the greater the likelihood of engagement.
Assessment/Measurement:
Assessment of burn-out has evolved over the years. In 1980's, the focus was only for caregiving occupations such as healthcare & human services. The measures developed in 1980s tended to reflect the experience of those professions. Over the years, the scope expanded to encompass other professions & the assessment tests were broadened with more occupation-neutral wordings, to include experience of non-healthcare, human services professionals.
- Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is the most widely used, standardized, validated test for measuring burn-out. It can be purchased in the link: https://www.mindgarden.com/117-maslach-burnout-inventory
- A free, informal Burn-out Self-test can be obtained in mindtools website: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTCS_08.htm
The organisational risk factors which lead to Burn-out can be categorised under Six key domains:
- Workload
- Control
- Reward
- Community
- Fairness
- Values
Control: The feeling of loss of autonomy, inability to take or influence decisions at work causes a feeling of lack of control at one's work place.
Reward: Insufficient recognition, lack of positive reinforcement & lack of rewards (whether financial, institutional, or social) devalues the work & the employee, thereby causing a feeling of inefficacy.
Community: If there is lack of support, prevailing mistrust & conflict in the team, there is greater risk of burn-out.
Fairness: Fairness is the extend to which decisions at work are perceived as being fair & equitable. Cynicism, anger & hostility are likely to arise when people feel they are not being treated with respect & fairness.
Values: Values are the motivating connection between the worker and the workplace, which goes beyond the utilitarian exchange of time for money or advancement. When there is a values conflict on the job (gap between the individual's & organization's value), it leads to burn-out.
Let's think about Burn-out & Engagement as two opposite poles on a continuum.
Burn-out <-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> Engagement
The Positive state of Burn-out is Engagement.
So what are the interventions which can be made in these Six key domains of organisational risk factors for promoting engagement?
Workload: A sustainable & manageable workload, provides opportunities to use & refine existing skills as well as to become effective in new areas of activity.
Control: When employees have the perceived capacity to influence decisions that affect their work, to exercise professional autonomy & to gain access to the resources necessary to do an effective job, they are more likely to experience job engagement.
Reward: Consistency in rewards & recognition, between the person & the job offers both material rewards & intrinsic satisfaction.
Community: Team work, social connect & support, enhances the experience of job engagement.
Fairness: Practice of mutual respect, fairness, empathy enhances the experience of job engagement.
Values: Greater the overlap & congruence between employee's & organisation's values, stronger would be the cognitive-emotional experience of job engagement.
Outcomes of Burn-out:
There are many undesirable outcomes of burn-out at psycho-somatic & cognitive-emotional levels, such as:
- Job withdrawal
- Job dissatisfaction
- Low organisational commitment
- Absenteeism, more than usual sick leave
- Turnover
- Cynicism
- Lowered productivity
- Impaired Quality of Work
- Increased personal conflicts
- Physical ailments (exhaustion, headaches, chronic fatigue, GI disorders, hypertension, cold/flu episodes, sleep disturbances)
- Work related anxiety, low mood & depression
- Alcoholism
Intervention strategies can be have two broad approaches:
- Prevention of burn-out & Treatment of burn-out, once it has set in
- Individual level actions & Work-group/Team/Organisation level actions
- A. Prevention of burn-out:
- Make your own health & Well-being a priority. Eating right, regular exercise, proper sleep, meditation, having a channel to share/vent out are all the right steps towards self-preservation.
- Have good role models who have been successful in striking harmony in their life & emulate their actions in your daily life.
- Develop life skills: Stress management, Coping skills, Time management, Problem solving skills.
- Nurturing social support (both from2 colleagues & family)
- Developing a better self-understanding
- B. Treatment of burn-out, once it has set in:
- Changing work-patterns (taking break times, avoidance of over-time work, balancing work with the rest of one's life)
- Utilizing relaxation strategies
- Seek help form a Counselor (counseling sessions; CBT - Cognitive Behaviour Therapy)
An individual should take responsibility of their own health & well-being. The self-realisation that outsourcing one's health & well-being to government or corporation is being irresponsible & laid-back, is the first step towards being responsible. This self-realisation then needs to be put into action by practicing preventive steps (listed above in 1.A).
2. B. Work-group/Team/Organisation level actions:
A Team Leader, has a very important role to play in tackling burn-out:
- In the daily grind of work, it is easy for people to forget what drew them to their career & organisation in the first place. They start experiencing burn-out by getting disconnected from their values & work at hand. As a Leader, one needs to 'develop a shared sense of WHY' in the team. Remind them why this work important for the organisation, for the customer & for them. When a team has shared values & connection, they are more likely to feel positively about their work.
- If the team is reeling under chronic heavy workload, it is the Team Leader's responsibility to get to the root cause to break the vicious cycle. It could be work-resource imbalance, skill-gap, process inefficiency, process breakdown, lack of teamwork, project planning & project management issues. Addressing the root cause in a time-bound manner, monitoring & controlling the situation on an ongoing basis, can significantly improve the situation.
- Be a role model for the team. Being humane, spreading positivism & optimism, exhibiting empathy, compassion, understanding, active listening, goes a long way in re-energizing the team.
- Plan regular short breaks through the day's work & take out time to celebrate team success, milestones & personal occasions.
- Help team members, wherever possible by redesigning their jobs (job-enrichment, job rotation).
- Nurture a good team culture, social connect & social support. Team Well-being, should be put into practice & not remain just a philosophy.
- A good work culture, is always a top-down approach. Senior management has a very big say, in driving this organisational culture.
- Initiatives like EAP (Employee Assistance Program - Counseling), Wellness program, Planned Celebrations/Outings breaks down monotony & facilitates team bonding.
- Two-way communication, Trust building measures between management-employee, employee surveys & addressing the issues, goes a long-way in setting the right tone for the organisational culture.