Tuesday Tips: Burnout

Burnout. You know it's real, don't you?

Burnout has been a problem for a long time.

It was in 2019 that the World Health Organisation identified burnout—workplace stress left unmanaged—as an occupational phenomenon.

Burnout pre-pandemic, and this is overwork alone, was responsible for the deaths of 2.8 million people a year.

There’s always a silver lining with any challenging event that happens in life.

One of them would be that it’s shone a light on burnout, but it’s also helped us as employees and individuals—because we faced our own mortality and many have made changes in how they want to live, who they want to be, and how they want to work.

People are saying, “I’m going to choose a different career,” and “I’m going to choose a different job.”

This is now a bottom-line issue and employers have to respond.

We’re seeing many more conversations about mental health at work.

We’re seeing more commitment to having well-being and burnout prevention be a part of the strategy.

This is great!

Here are a few tips in regards to some recent research regarding burnout and the pandemic.

Firstly, it is worth noting that introverts can be more at risk of burnout.

The research found that initially, introverts would say, “I’m living my best life. I’m so happy to be at home. I’m so comfortable being behind my desk. This is the happiest place on Earth.”

What was seen through the data, later on, was this desire to get back to work.

Self-reported introverts would say, “I used to at least have this one place that I would go where it would bring me out of my shell,” or, “I would have some friends to talk to,” or, “I would meet up with people.” Now it’s, “I’m finding it really difficult because I’m so isolated and lonely.”

The research assumed that extroverts would hate being secluded, but as extroversion and agreeableness tend to go hand in hand, the research found that extroverts figured out ways to adapt and demonstrated greater emotional flexibility during this lockdown.

I look at burnout prevention as part of an ecosystem; all parts need to be working together.

Before we can eradicate burnout, we need to have, at the organisational level, the systems and policies in place that are not so focused on self-care - for example, wellness technology, subsidised gym memberships, yoga, breathing - but more focused on the root causes of burnout.

Eighty-five percent of the global workforce feels that their well-being has declined, so those self-care perks alone aren’t going to work.

There are two groups, “us” and “them,” trying to solve for burnout. That’s why it’s failing.

We need to start creating sustainable ways of working at this moment. Ten to 12 hours of videoconferencing is not sustainable.

Just being able to talk about mental health at work is a better work perk than helping you to meditate when you’re really mentally unwell.

The research originally focused on social-emotional intelligence—building cognitive traits like hope and efficacy and resilience, which are all really important for us as individuals.

When you bring these traits into the workplace, and if you don’t have a workplace that’s going to be receptive of the work that you’re doing on yourself, and it continues to detract from your happiness, your emotional intelligence, and your psychological fitness, then you can feel defeated.

It ends up not actually increasing your life satisfaction or job satisfaction.

As a leader inside organisations, communities, and families, we have a responsibility to create a healthy workplace that supports the wellbeing of our employees.

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