While Burnout may seem like it sneaks up on us, we can often attribute it to:
prolonged or chronic stress
lack of empathy and/or feeling ineffective
Burnout can also be a result of exposure to:
stressful environments;
burdening workloads,
a sense of disconnect from our passions,
or when we continuously push ourselves without adequate rest or support, where we can begin to feel both emotionally and physically exhausted.
The demands of our fast-paced lifestyles can make it challenging to maintain a healthy balance. We might feel pressured to be constantly available or to meet the expectations of others.
It’s essential to remember that burnout isn’t a personal failure; it’s a signal that our current way of being may not be sustainable.
Early research has defined burnout with these 3 dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism and decline in professional efficacy, as our responses to work stress.
In her many years of research, Dr. Christina Maslach, a Professor of Psychology of University of California, Berkeley, has revealed that burnout is not caused by just one thing.
The findings in her research have identified there are SIX common risk factors that drive of burnout:
Workload - This may look like high demands, low resources, and likely not enough time. Creating barriers for work to be done and inadequately meeting demands.
Control - How much autonomy, choice, discretion you may have, and how you do the work - and maybe you have, even if it's not great. You may have to do it one way and not a better way. There is a link between lack of control and high levels of stress; perceived autonomy and capacity to influence decisions that affect your work and how you carry out the work.
Reward - Refers to insignificant reward or recognition or even feedback as this devalues your work or yourself as the worker which is linked to efficacy and opportunity for internal sense of satisfaction.
Community - The ongoing relationships you have with others in the wor place, who you may have regular contact with or deal with; a sense of a whole larger community.
Fairness - The extent of which decisions are fair and and equitable; procedures and treatment as well as decision making process.
Values - The meaning of the work you do; the ideals and motivations that originally attracted you to the work you do.
These predictors affect a person’s level of burnout, experienced burnout and determines individual work outcomes including personal behaviours, home life and personal health (even if we love our jobs!).
Although burnout can be incredibly challenging, it can also serve as a catalyst for change. Particularly when we consider these six factors and use them as a lens to help identify our challenges with work.
Perhaps we view burnout as more than simply just a workload issue and beyond a “me” issue. These positive pivot points can give us hope, optimism, creativity to redesign, recreate, or to identify chronic stressors and explore options to mitigate intensities of stressors, helping us to reframe and rethink our relationship with work.
Source: Maslach, C. (2017). Finding solutions to the problem of burnout. Consulting Psychology Journal, 69(2), 143–152. https://doi.org/10.1037/cpb0000090
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