Understanding Job Burnout - Dr. Christina Maslach

(via Warren)

Dr. Christina Maslach discussing her many decades of research showing that job burnout is a response to chronic workplace stress that results in feelings of exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy:

in various ways there’s more destructive competition. I cannot tell you how many people talk about the socially toxic workplace where you don’t trust anybody because they’re going to try and throw you under the bus and get rid of you as competition. You don’t dare ever say “I’m tired,” or “I don’t know the answer to this problem,” or “I wish I had some advice,” or “I’m feeling depressed” because you’d be showing your weak side.

What was previously a short-term operating model has now become the norm:

the “burnout shop” was really a start-up, and it was a bit was like a sprint, you know, it was a short-term kind of thing, maybe a couple of years. It was basically “We own you. You don’t have a life. When we call you come, and you’re going to work and work until you have nothing left to give.” But then you’ll have stock options, or some other thing, and “you’ll get a lot of money, and you’ll be fine.” So that was the trade-off. Interestingly, I think we’re seeing more and more is that as a business model.

There is often an assumption that people who burnout did so because they are fundamentally no good:

I’ve talked to managers and CEOs who say burnout is wonderful, and I say why do you think that? And they say “because when people burnout, it means they weren’t so good, they’re not working well now, and they’re quitting saving me the job of having to fire them. It’s very good. It cleans the house and I don’t have to spend much time on it”

However, Dr. Maslach’s research demonstrates that while resilience plays a role, it’s important to address workplace factors, and improve the fit between employees and their jobs such as increasing control, reward, and community.

In one example, an organisation addressed issues like fairness which led to positive changes in burnout levels over time.