Random notes on "burnout"
Tomasz Tunguz’s recent article inspired me to research “burnout” this week. Tom points out that managing employee burnout is one of the critical topics in board rooms today. Recent shifts to remote work and increased social isolation make this subject more important than ever before. While I’ve always been interested in the concept of burnout, now seems to be a good time to dive deeper. If you’re interested in exploring what burnout is and how to protect yourself from it, check out these notes from around the web.
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My notes
Burn-out an "occupational phenomenon": International Classification of Diseases (May 2019)
The World Health Organization (WHO) has included an updated definition of “burn-out” in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as an occupational phenomenon. (It is not classified as a medical condition.)
Burn-out is defined in ICD-11 as follows:
“Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:
feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and
reduced professional efficacy.
Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”
Why the WHO’s Decision to Redefine Burnout Is Important
Until now, burnout has been called a stress syndrome. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently updated its definition => This change in definition may help remove the stigma that surrounds burnout
According to Elaine Cheung, PhD, a burnout researcher and assistant professor of social sciences at Northwestern University, the new definition should make it easier to study burnout and the impact it has on others:
“The measurement and definition of burnout in the literature has been problematic and lacked clarity, which made it challenging to evaluate and classify it.” - Dr. Elaine Cheung
Burnout became an issue of interest in psychology over 45 years ago when two people, a practitioner (Herbert Freudenberger) and a researcher (Christina Maslach), began to write about it independently.
Burnout research has been devalued within academia as “pop psychology” or as “old wine in new bottles” (i.e. another term for exhaustion)
In 1981, Christina Maslach and Susan Jackson developed MBI (Maslach Burnout Inventory), which is now the primary measurement framework for burnout in the field.
It has evolved to include the three core dimensions of burnout:
Exhaustion
Cynicism
Inefficacy
As Maslach and Jackson refined their framework, they began to see people’s psychological relationship to their job as a continuum between the negative experience of burnout and the positive experience of engagement
(Burnout) <———————————> (Engagement)
Engagement = the opposite of burnout. When treating burnout, engagement is the desired goal.
The three core dimensions of engagement are:
Energy
Involvement
Efficacy
In 2004, Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter developed the Areas of Worklife Scale (AWS) to assess the full continuum of job-person fit to misfit within six areas:
Work overload
Lack of control
Insufficient reward
Breakdown of community
Absence of fairness
Value conflict.
According to AWS, positive alignment in one of these areas encourages engagement, whereas negative alignment in one of these areas aggravates burnout.
Reversing Burnout: How to rekindle your passion for your work (2005)
Burnout is a chronic problem ⇒ Burned-out people often feel exhausted and overwhelmed, self-doubting and anxious, and bitter and cynical.
Burnout reflects an uneasy relationship between people and their work ⇒ Like relationship problems between two people, burnout is a relationship problem between people and their work.
Burnout indicates a bad fit between a person and a job ⇒ not necessarily a bad person or a bad organization
Reversing burnout requires focusing on both individuals and their jobs to bring them back into sync with each other ⇒ Addressing burnout includes both:
Reducing the number of negatives, and
Increasing the number of positives (this is often most effective)
Increasing the number of positives results in increased engagement ⇒ and increased engagement reduces the likelihood of burnout.
According to Christina Maslach’s and Michael Leiter’s surveys and interviews of more than 10,000 people ⇒ Person-job mismatches fall into six categories:
Workload (too much work, not enough resources);
Control (micromanagement, lack of influence, accountability without power);
Reward (not enough pay, acknowledgment, or satisfaction);
Community (isolation, conflict, disrespect);
Fairness (discrimination, favoritism); and
Values (ethical conflicts, meaningless tasks).
The six-area framework has now been incorporated into assessment programs for both organizations and for individuals ⇒ To fix burnout, individuals and organizations must first identify the areas in which their mismatches lie, and then tailor solutions to improve the fit within each area.
There are two paths to reducing burnout:
the individual path ⇒ the worker first identifies the mismatches leading to their burnout, and then enlists their colleagues and organization in addressing those mismatches.
the organizational path ⇒ this starts with the organization’s management team first identifying mismatches that are commonly shared, and then connecting with individuals to narrow the gaps.
Here’s a diagnostic tool an individual can use to assess areas of potential job misfit:
Source: Tomasz Tunguz
Random interesting note on nonprofits ⇒ Workers in the nonprofit sector are distinctly vulnerable to work overload for two reasons:
Nonprofits often have fewer resources than for profit sectors ⇒ this leaves workers with too little time and too few tools with which to handle their workload.
Nonprofit employees have high expectations and are attempting to solve truly monumental problems ⇒ their idealism can lead them to overextend themselves and take on too much.
There are personal costs to burnout ⇒ poorer health and strained private lives.
And there are organizational costs to burnout ⇒ poorer team member performance and reduced loyalty.
“A good understanding of burnout is essential to keeping the flame of compassion and dedication burning brightly.”
Burnout: 35 years of research and practice (2008)
Job burnout emerged as an important concept in the 1970s
~6,000 books, chapters, dissertations, and journal articles have been published on burnout
The nature of burnout is best understood as a metaphor for the draining of energy ⇒ like a fire that is burning but that cannot continue unless there are sufficient resources that need to be replenished ⇒ When workers experience burnout, they lose the capacity to continue to make contributions that make an impact ⇒ “Burnout is the exhaustion of employees’ capacity to maintain an intense involvement that has a meaningful impact at work.”
Originally the study of burnout focused on workers in the human services areas ⇒ Since then, it has expanded to any work requiring creativity, problem solving, or mentoring.
The roots of burnout can be traced back to the following broad social, economic, and cultural developments of the 1960s in the USA:
A vision of public service and expanded idealism ⇒ JFK said “ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country” and President LBJ launched the “War on Poverty” ⇒ This lead to “frustrated idealism” when people who bought in later learned of the systematic factors perpetuating the status quo. This led to reduced enthusiasm for their work (which can lead to burnout).
The professionalization and systemization of human services ⇒ Post-1950, small-scale, traditional agencies where work was considered a calling, transformed into large-scale modern organizations with formalized job descriptions ⇒ Monasteries and religious care centers were replaced with bureaucracies ⇒ This turned “callings” into “occupations” which often resulted in a value mismatch (which can lead to burnout).
The weakening of the professional authority of doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, and police officers combined with more empowered consumers ⇒ The traditional prestige of these professionals was no longer evident after the 1960s while consumers expected more than ever before ⇒ These two trends increased the technical and emotional demands of professional work considerably ⇒ This causes a discrepancy to grow between professionals’ efforts and the rewards they received in recognition and gratitude ⇒ And lack of fairness or “reciprocity” (which can lead to burnout).
Traditional social communities and networks such as the church, the neighborhood, and the family have gradually eroded ⇒ As a result, individualism has prospered ⇒ Shared definitions of right, wrong, and good have been replaced by individual definitions ⇒ This has led to social fragmentation and reduced feelings of community (which can lead to burnout)
The transformation from an industrial society into a service economy ⇒ This is an overarching trend that accelerates the effects of 1-4 above ⇒ This has led massive changes in our social relationships.
There are two persistent contributors to work life than make burnout a continual problem today:
Imbalance of demands over resources at work ⇒ Increased demand almost always outweighs existing resources.
Conflict between organizational values and personal values ⇒ This can happen due to conflict between the worker’s values and the organization's values OR conflict between the organization’s stated values and how the organization actually acts.
Globally, the definition and use of the term “burnout” varies from country to country. (See paper for detailed examples.)
Burnout is starting to be rephrased as the “erosion of engagement” ⇒ think of a continuum of employee well-being with work engagement on one end and work burnout on the other end.
(Work Burnout)<——————>(Work Engagement)