Law Letter Hub Articles
Burnout Contributing Factors
1 December 2022
When the phone rings and you don’t want to answer it, a cold lingers for ages, you feel overwhelmed by demands on your time, you feel exhausted or you start to hate what you used to love doing, you may be experiencing burnout. I have visited the place known as ‘Burnout’. I walked straight in, sat myself down, washed myself out and took a long time to gather the energy to leave. It is not a place I recommend you go.
Burnout has become so prevalent that in 2019 it was recognised by the World Health Organisation a syndrome arising ‘from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.’ It is one of the reasons people leave legal positions to pursue other career options.
The 3 signs you may have burnout are when you feel:
- Exhausted or low in energy
- Resistance, cynicism or negativity towards your job
- As though you are not performing at your best professionally
Burnout comes to visit when you have been living without margins. You continue to cope as you stretch yourself thinner and thinner and have smaller and smaller margins for error. Slowly, burnout sneaks up and it may be only a small thing that finally sends you to the wall.
Burnout is caused by a combination of both your personality and the workplace you find yourself in. The biggest cause, according to the world leading expert, Christina Maslach, is the workplace. She uses the metaphor of taking a canary into a coal mine. If the canary suffers, we go about fixing the conditions in the mine. We don’t tell the canary to do a mindfulness course, become more resilient or take up meditation.
Christina has found the 6 main contributing factors to burnout in a workforce are:
Workload: Research by the University College London found that when people work more than 55 hours a week, they have a 13% higher risk of having a heart attack and a 33% higher risk of having a stroke compared with people who work 35 to 40 hours a week. It is unhealthy for us to work too many hours a week. Strategies to help are to stop false urgencies on low priority items, have more administrative help, stop micromanaging, encourage people to have better work life balance and to regularly check in on people’s workloads.
Perceived lack of control: Micromanaging is one of the top three reasons people resign. People perform better when they have some control over their job and their workload and when they feel comfortable to make mistakes and to offer ideas.
Lack of reward or recognition: Most people are not seeking pay rises, so much as they are seeking to feel appreciated and respected for what they contribute. People feel less burnout when they are acknowledged for jobs well done, receive gratitude and positive feedback.
Poor relationships: According to a recent Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends Survey, a sense of belonging has become one of the most important human capital issues for organisations. 79% of their respondents said that fostering a sense of belonging in the workplace was important to their organisation’s success in the short term and 93% said that a sense of belonging drives their organisational performance. Good relationships at work (with colleagues and clients) mean we perform better, don’t look for jobs elsewhere and take fewer sick days. It is the little things (the micro-aggressions or micro inclusions from individuals) that matter as much as the overall culture in an organisation.
Lack of fairness: Unfairness from bias, favouritism, mistreatment, unfair compensation, different opportunities or workplace policies contributes to burnout. To overcome this, our workplaces should be inclusive, transparent and open in the way opportunities and rewards are allocated.
Values mismatch: If you don’t value the things your employer values, you increase the risk of burnout and your motivation to work hard and persevere will drop.
Christina has also found that some of us are more at risk of burnout than others. Those most at risk are people that are neurotic, introverted (if you do not get enough alone time) and perfectionists. The most significant of these three is perfectionism and interestingly, the professions with the highest rates of burnout attract perfectionists. A perfectionist is someone who has very high standards and is pre-occupied with extreme self-critical evaluation (which leads to extreme self-critical evaluation and judgment of others). If this sounds like you, instead of aiming for perfection, aim for a job well done.
If you are an employer or manager of a team, you can start making things healthier for your staff by addressing the six work related aspects outlined above. Your aim is to create an environment in which your team can naturally thrive and perform at their best.
What can you do to minimise the risk of burnout for yourself? Monitor your workload and the impact it is having on your relationships and your health. Learn to leave space for the things that really matter in life … one of them is you.
Petris Lapis
Director Author Presenter
0419 334 204
ArtisanofChange.com
