Burnout was recognized as an epidemic before Covid-19. Now it is a global issue due to its rapidly growing numbers. It also generates extremely high medical and productivity costs for businesses. The soft solutions that are currently applied by managers do not resolve the problem and it leads to financial losses.
What is burnout?
In the last decade, the World Health Organization defined burnout as “an occupational phenomenon, driven by a chronic imbalance between job demands and job resources”.
In Jan 2022 the definition was corrected to:” chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”.
Personally, I find this definition very accurate. The main trouble lies in the aspects of “chronic” and “not successfully managed”. As it is a relatively new business phenomenon on this scale, it is difficult for employers to set up some protective mechanisms. How to identify the signs and how to manage people who may be facing burnout has never been taught to leaders and managers in typical development programs. So out of sheer lack of knowledge, it often remains unattended for a long time. When it hits, it hits hard, and then it hurts both the employee and the employer.
Who is at the most risk of burnout?
The studies focus on the typical personalities that are more prone to burnout. The age, gender, and amount of experience seem not to matter here. Evidence points towards employees who are outgoing, ambitious, rigidly organized, highly status-conscious, impatient, anxious, proactive, and concerned with time. Fast pace, complex organizations have thousands of them on onboard. They seem to be the most popular extroverts in the office and are often considered the “high performing and high potential” talent. These are the most precious group of employees for fast-growing organizations. However, people in this group are constantly in a state of anxiety or stress, which makes them an “easy target ” for burnout.
The second type more prone to burnout is the “caregivers” – mostly from the healthcare industry, but all sorts of customer services or education business professionals also, who put the needs of others ahead of their own and who feel that they have to put a happy face on every day.
These are the most prone groups, however, the increasing numbers show that burnout can actually affect anybody. It is because it is not a problem in the employee’s head – it is a problem of unbearable conditions at work.
How does burnout develop and feel?
Burnout starts in an innocent way when we work a lot under heavy pressure and when the same heavy circumstances continue for too long. The intensity and symptoms change with time.
There are commonly known 5 stages of burnout where, the first one is the extremely happy time, called “Honeymoon”, and the last one is a chronic state that can lead to mental illness.
Here is what happens.
In the first phase, called Honeymoon, you would feel joy mostly related to a new job, promotion, or a newly owned business where, as a consequence, you would want to prove yourself and start taking up too much work, too fast and neglecting your health.
The next phase, called the Onset of stress, is where the stress becomes a part of your everyday work. Physical fatigue makes it impossible to focus and perform challenging tasks. You may start losing interest in social activities and start withdrawing.
The Chronic stress phase manifests itself in feelings of apathy, not completing work on time, being late for work, or procrastinating during tasks. You may become angry and lash out at coworkers. There is a high chance these feelings may follow you home and can affect relationships with friends and family.
And then comes the Burnout phase. At this point, you most probably have reached your limits and can no longer function as you normally would. Problems at work begin to consume you to the point where you obsess over them. At times, you may also feel numb and experience extreme self-doubt, fear, and insecurity. Physical symptoms will become intense, leading to chronic headaches, stomach issues, and gastrointestinal problems. Friends and family members may also notice behavioral changes.
Very often ambitious and “tough-minded professionals” still keep trying to make it work at this stage, by trying even harder and taking up even more. They believe that they can resolve the issue themselves if they “only do XYZ” to overcome the extra barriers. They mostly find themselves in stage 5 soon after.
If left unmanaged, burnout can become a part of your everyday life – we then call it the Habitual Burnout Phase which can eventually lead to anxiety or depression. You can also begin to experience chronic mental and physical fatigue that prevents you from working. Your job status may be put in jeopardy for those who stay on this path.
If you are a healthy and strong person you probably are wondering now “how can anyone allow this for so long and go this far?!”
Well, when it happens to a “busy” person who loves the job it is very difficult to slow down and reflect. Most typically people get to phases 3-4 without noticing. When they do notice the mental changes and the emotions are already limiting the self-protective instinct and then it seems too hard to speak up or ask for help.
With the stigma that is still hanging over burnout, it is also scary to admit how it feels at the risk of being labeled as weak, or worse, incompetent. As a consequence cynicism and lack of care begin to dominate the attitude toward work.
Is burnout a big issue for business?
Losing valuable and engaged employees to an illness is never good. I would think that, at the current scale of this phenomenon, the impact on the overall company performance makes burnout a big business risk, but it does not seem to be perceived this way.
When Deloitte asked 1000 respondents in a survey, 77% said they have experienced burnout at their current job and 91% of them said that it is unmanageable stress or work frustration that impacts the quality of their work results.
It is a lot!
Imagine, if you lead a Sales Department with 300 people, achieving the usual targets with almost 80% of the team feeling physically and emotionally exhausted seems like a mission impossible, right?
An exhausted and frustrated team is likely to make big mistakes due to miscommunication conflicts and delays. If it is your team, you will also be affected soon. If your peers face similar problems their results will be equally poor. This way burnout starts climbing the structures of the organization, killing the high-performing teams and leaving your customers disappointed.
Is it a business issue or a manager’s issue?
Who should handle this problem – and why?
Company leaders face a true dilemma here. On one hand, they try to protect their employees and provide all necessary support by investing time, energy, and money.
On the other hand, they need to make sure that the annual targets are delivered.
Till now we witnessed a “delegation” of the task of managing employees’ well-being or burnout to middle-level management who, in most cases, are not trained or equipped to act with confidence.
My small survey on LinkedIn has shown that 67% of managers would start researching ways of helping their colleagues when they see the signs of burnout in their team.
It is unfortunate, but their chances of removing the “stressors” from their teams’ are next to none. They are not empowered to lift the overwhelming pressures of massive global projects or increase their headcount, which is often the root cause of the unreasonable pressure in the firm. All they can do is offer empathy, a day off, or re-distribute the workload within their own team. No matter how well they do it, and how much true empathy they invest in it, this will still be treating the symptoms, not the root cause.
The solution needs to be embraced by the top leaders, who still are not alarmed and tend to look at the data through an optimistic lens “(…) We see an average 22 percent gap between employer and employee perceptions—with employers consistently rating workplace dimensions associated with mental health and well-being more favorably than employees(…)” – McKinsey Insights
Optimism is great, but it is high time for a sober look at the burnout problem and the implementation of systemic changes.
Conclusion
Growing numbers of burnout cases confirm that the once high-performing workforce is getting weak and less engaged. Managers are quietly enduring their hardships, quietly quitting or leaving their jobs. The efficiency of weakened teams is negatively affecting the quality of services and products for the customers. Costs of absenteeism and medical care are very high.
In spite of all this, burnout does not seem to be recognized or addressed by employers as a big business issue.
So I wonder, how hard must burnout hit the bottom line of the company to make it to the C-suite agenda as a business issue?
No comment