The Big Burnout Misunderstanding
5 Things I Had Wrong About Burnout and What I Learned to Combat it
So I don't know if you've noticed, but it seems like there is a lot of turn around happening. And yes, that was a little sarcastic, because it's impossible not to notice. All across LinkedIn I can see announcements of new positions, good-byes to old positions, and more We're Hiring posts in the last few months than I've seen in the last few years combined.
This sudden exodus, dubbed the Turnover Tsunami, was predicted to take place as a result of the pandemic coming to an "end". Those that put off changing jobs for all of 2020 suddenly found themselves burned out with an open job market bursting at the seams with opportunity. According to Melissa Jezior, president and CEO of Eagle Hill Consulting, "Leaving is often viewed as the best option for employees to address burnout. And when the economy and labor markets get healthier, some employees may feel they have no other choice." With research showing that 76% of U.S. employees reported burnout, I am not surprised at all with the volume of change happening.
The thing is, this pandemic doesn't seem to really be coming to an end. We are about to enter the colder fall and winter seasons masked up and the normal we all hoped for still far in the distance. So what does this mean for us and burnout? If our situation is not changing anytime soon, how can we support our employees so this unstable environment doesn't contribute to more people running for the hills? How do you tell the difference between the team members that are going strong, and the ones that are drowning? Do we have the right formula for keeping employees engaged? Or do we maybe have it a little backwards?
When we see company engagement is down, we may assume that culture events are the answer. We need people in the office. We need more happy hours and games. But according to Natalie Baumgartner, chief workforce scientist at Achievers, employee engagement is not just affected by culture activities: "Through the pandemic, some companies have lost mainstays of employee engagement such as focusing on work/life balance, enacting change following employee feedback, driving recognition, and fostering company culture."
While culture activities are surely part of the mix, it is the other three that are often forgotten because burnout as a concept is highly misunderstood. If we want to combat this from happening on our teams and in our company, we need to first better understand it before we can start looking for the signs and making changes. If you feel like you or your team is edging toward burnout, take a few minutes to do a wellness check and make sure you understand what you’re dealing with. These are 5 misunderstandings that I had about burnout and the corresponding tips I learned that will keep you and your team loving the work that you do.
Misunderstanding 1: Burnout is an individual problem
For the last ten years or so in my career, anytime I heard the word "burnout" it would be in association with an individual person: that person was burned out. With this mindset, it is easy to assume that the responsibility to avoid burnout rests with the individual. As of 2019, however, the World Health Organization officially reclassified burnout as an organizational phenomenon and shouldn't be used to describe stress in other areas of life. It is no longer considered an individual problem but rather a company problem and therefore organizations need to address it. Not only do they need to address it, but it needs to be addressed separately from individual "healthy-living" encouragement like gym memberships or professional development workshops that focus on the importance of work-life balance or meditating. Those are both really good things that can help everyone thrive in life and work. Experts in burnout are not saying those things aren't important, but rather that burnout still needs to be addressed separately from those types of activities.
Tip: Take it seriously
Leading expert Christina Maslack explains it best by comparing it to a canary in a coal mine. Can you image if a canary came out of a coal mine sick and we tried to fix the problem by giving it a 3 day weekend, encourage it to meditate or giving it a speech about grit? Of course we wouldn't do that! We would know that the problem is in the mine, just like the problem of burnout rests with the company. So take it seriously and don't expect to solve the issue right away. As Elizabeth Grace Sanders said in her article 6 Causes of Burnout and How to Avoid them, “Burnout isn’t simply about being tired. It’s a multifaceted problem that calls for a multifaceted solution."
Misunderstanding 2: Burnout is caused by big problems
When we think of burning out, we might wrongfully assume that the cause was some big unavoidable problem. However, research has shown that it's often the little things that lead to the greatest trouble. According to Frederick Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory (and Jennifer Moss's Harvard Business Review that summarizes it), employees need both motivation and "hygiene" to love their job. Motivating factors include challenging work, recognition for one's achievements, responsibility, etc., while Hygiene factors include salary, work conditions, company policy, status and security, etc. These two factors of "job happiness" act independently from one another and therefore managers need to address both to make sure their employees still love what they do.
Tip: Ask your team this question - What's the single biggest frustration you are experiencing right now?
According to Jennifer Moss, the Hygiene factor is often affected by "seemingly innocuous issues, like having coffee in the break room one day and no more coffee the next day. People feel it. Burnout happens when these presupposed features in our day-to-day work lives are missing or taken away." If we want to prevent those things from happening, then we need to establish a routine where we are checking in with our people and asking what is frustrating them. Maybe make it a part of your routine questions for your one-on-one with your direct reports. More often than not, the fix is not expensive or time-consuming to implement, but will be a big deal to the people impacted. It's the little things that go a long way.
Misunderstanding 3: Getting rid of the “extra” will help people focus and avoid burnout
When your schedule is jam-packed with must-dos the first thing we usually cut are the want-to-dos. They aren't needed. They aren't essential. They are just on there because we enjoy them. We think that if we clear our schedule then we'll be able to get more of the must-dos done. Unfortunately, it's those want-to-dos that make us who we are. They are the things that bring us joy, make us laugh, and fill us up. It is what we call extra that allows us to bring our full selves to everything else.
Many companies will include some of this extra. They know they need a good culture and professional development to help their employees succeed. And yet, when the deadline comes, it's the busy employees that stop showing up to these things or taking time for them. I have even seen people be prideful of their busyness, assuming that those that have time for such things must not have as much work as them. Maybe that's true. Or maybe those that attend just know that you can't cut out the culture and expect the real work to be just as good. That's the type of thing that leads to burn out.
Tip: Protect your time for the parts of the job you enjoy the most, even if they aren't the most urgent
The next time you get busy and you are tempted to skip that fun event, cut out your focus-time, or just jump to the next thing on the must-do list, try to remember how important all that other stuff is. And if you just laughed when you read focus-time then maybe it's time you found some. Block off your calendar. Attend that mixer. Go all in for the company-wide Corn Hole Tournament. All that stuff isn't extra. It's what makes you, you, and you need to prioritize it.
Misunderstanding 4: Less work leads to less burnout
While high workload came up as one of the causes of burnout in nearly every study I looked at, I also appreciated Alice Boyes' comments in her article How To Get Through an Extremely Busy Time at Work. It is easy to sit back and tell anyone that they just need to assign less work or take on less work. It is easy, and not practical. There will always be times when that just isn't possible or even desired by the person affected. Last month, for example, I had been working some extra-long hours. Our team had a deadline and I wanted us to reach it. Fortunately, for myself, I was not being told I had to do it. There were no expectations that I get back online after dinner and my manager even checked in on me several times to make sure I was not getting burned out. In those weeks, I didn't need my manager to take anything off my plate because I wanted everything that was there. I just needed to know he had my back. As Boyes' says, “[in these times] advice on the importance of maintaining work life balance, reducing stress and getting enough sleep can feel like a slap in the face. You don't need to be scolded to work less, you need practical tips for surviving and thriving when you need to be fully committed."
Tip: Practice Active Recovery
In athletics, there is something known as active recovery. This is when, for example, a runner will slow down to a jog or a walk while they catch their breath, rather than stopping completely. For the runner that wants to improve their speed and has a desire to work hard, the active recovery is the best way for them to do that. Stopping and resting would actually be counterproductive. Boyes suggests the same thing for managing a heavy workload. Schedule your day like you would interval training. Start with an easy task like 25 minutes of checking email. Then switch to a more cognitively demanding task. As a reward for completing it, try a mentally easier task like running an errand. With this strategy, you can still be productive while allowing your mind to recover a bit.
Misunderstanding 5: If people care about what they do, they won’t get burned out
David Whiteside, who holds a PHD in organizational health and led a study with over 3,000 employees across 12 organizations, observed that employees who are driven by purpose reported feeling more stressed than their non-purpose-driven-peers and scored lower for well-being, resilience and self-efficacy. According to Jennifer Moss, who discussed this study in her article Rethinking Burnout, studies like this have shown that people who love and feel passionate about what they do are more at risk for burnout: "Mission driven executives, nonprofit employees, teachers, principals, nurses and physicians are some of the people most at risk of burnout…Anyone passionate about what they do are at high risk of burnout, especially high performers."
Tip: Protect your high performers
With passionate high performers being most at risk of burnout, and probably the least-likely to want less work, I found Matt Plummer's tips for protecting high performers to be particularly helpful. My favorite of the three that he provided in his article How Are You Protecting Your High Performers, was the suggestions to create high performing pairs. These employees are often asked to do the most difficult work, while mentoring and picking up the slack of weaker team members. While mentoring and helping those around them is something they tend to love, if managers never address weak links then this can sometimes lead to resentment. Or even if resentment never occurs, it can still leave a high performer feeling alone, uninspired and lacking in growth. By creating high performing pairs, they will be able to be inspired and energized by one another.
Sources and Further Reading
Turnover ‘Tsunami’ Expected Once Pandemic Ends (wecruitr.io)
Post-Pandemic Burnout Spurs The "Great Resignation" Among Workers (ampproject.org)
Burnout is an official medical diagnosis, World Health Organization says | CNN
Rethinking Burnout: When Self Care Is Not the Cure - Jennifer Moss, 2020 (sagepub.com)
How Are You Protecting Your High Performers from Burnout? (hbr.org)
How To Prevent The “Turnover Tsunami” In Your Organization (forbes.com)
(PDF) Six areas of worklife: A model of the organizational context of burnout (researchgate.net)
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