
Burnout is a word that seems to be on everyone’s lips at the moment. Business leaders are worried about it, mental health professionals are telling us that it is on the rise and we probably all know someone who has experienced it. What is it, what causes it and what can your organisation do about it?
What is Burnout?
Leading psychologist, Dr Sarb Johal, believes that there are three dimensions to burnout:
Feeling drained of energy or exhausted.
Experiencing increased mental distance from your job or feelings of negativity/cynicism about your job.
Reduced professional efficacy.
Dr Johal advises that if these three elements are present, the person experiencing this, may well be burning out. (However, his view is that if feelings of hopelessness are present too, depression, rather than burnout may be present).
Other organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the NHS classify burnout as a state of physical and emotional exhaustion and advise that this can occur when you experience long term stress in your job or when you have worked in a physically and emotionally draining role for a long time.
Experts agree that a clear sign of burnout is when someone still feels exhausted even after they have had a few days rest away from work and some good quality sleep.
What causes it?
The NHS view is that long term exposure to stress or working for a long time in a draining role might be the root cause of burnout. The World Health Organisation, MIND and other leading mental health organisations have identified a number of workplace factors which can adversely impact mental health. There is no doubt that unhealthy work practices and poor culture can lead people to burnout, but there are other factors too.
In her book, ‘The Mindful High Performer’, Chelsea Pottenger (psychologist, coach and Mental Health Ambassador) states that in her experience, the main reasons people burn out are lack of boundaries, lack of focus on self and the constant need to tick every single item off the list. However, research undertaken by McKinsey in 2021, led that organisation to conclude that there were 9 factors which caused people to feel burnt out. These were:
Money worries
Working from home*
Worries about job security
Isolation
Physical health
Sleep
Relationships
Home schooling children*
Caring for others
*As this research was conducted in 2021 during the pandemic when lockdowns were in place, homeworking at that time often meant that parents were attempting to work while also supervising children who were home learning. In many households, people were without adequate space, and there was a lack of control of external noise, interruptions etc. Recent research (McKinsey 2022) shows that high performers welcome flexible and home working, rather than regarding it as a factor leading to stress.
The OMHAS assessment tool will allow your organisation to assess whether there are workplace factors that could be causing or risking burnout. Our tool will also help to identify other factors (outside of work) which may be causing your people to experience burn out. Lots of leaders and managers are simply unaware that working in a certain way can lead to burnout. As the saying goes, ‘knowledge is power’ and our assessment tool will give you the knowledge to make simple modifications to working practices which will help your organisation to significantly reduce risk.
How prevalent is burnout?
The organisation Mental Health UK has published research which estimates that 50% of UK workers are on the brink of burnout. In other countries, such as Australia, the estimated figure is even higher, coming in at 60%. With a finite talent pool, those statistics are stark. As covered in our last article, industry leaders, McKinsey, believe that burnout is a particular risk to your organisation’s top performers because those people are the ones who often volunteer (or are selected) to take on additional work projects as they are perceived as reliable as well likely to deliver quality results. It’s imperative that action is taken now to prevent loss of talent through illness and absence.
What can we do about it?
Step one has to be to control what you can control. Identify workplace factors which carry obvious risks of burnout and make changes. To take email use, for example, reducing emails to include only the people who really need to receive them is one way of avoiding inbox overload. Another might be to avoid sending emails outside of core hours or if doing so, to use the subject bar to indicate the urgency or otherwise of the message. There are many more examples of adjusting working practices which can go a long way to reducing the risk of burnout.
Step two is to educate your people on how to recognise work related (or non-work-related) stress which is mounting and to educate them on how to manage stress before things become too difficult.
Step three is to communicate within your organisation the support which is available for people suffering from stress. This might be support you provide or support provided by external organisations. You don’t need a big budget to direct people to very helpful support organisations. However, if your people perform work which is very challenging or potentially traumatic, providing proper support to help them bounce back from difficult experiences may be necessary. In some cases, this could mean providing counselling/access to specialist help.
Going hand in hand with these three steps, is committed leadership. Managers and leaders need to keep a watchful eye on work practices and culture, check in regularly with colleagues and must be role model healthy ways of working. Most of us will experience periods of intense pressure at points in our working lives. The more senior you are within an organisation, the more pressure you may experience, but that doesn’t need to result in burnout. If organisations can promote healthy work culture and individuals can take steps to recognise and manage stress, people will recover from intensely busy times, usually after a short period to rest and reset.
A wise person (a former banking senior executive) I have known for a long time has often said to me “the bigger the job, the fitter you need to be for it”. Therefore, if you can, commit to doing three or more things this week which you know are good for your mental and physical health and keep doing them over the coming weeks and months. This small investment in yourself could make all the difference in helping you to cope when you hit the next busy period.
If you or someone you know is experiencing burnout and self-help is not helping, you may need professional help. Talk to your GP and request a referral to an appropriate mental health professional.
Jennifer Nicol
Director, OMHAS Ltd
Helping organisations to help people thrive at work
For more information contact one of our Directors:
e / mental health issues in the workplace positively.