ARE YOU BURNING OUT
ARE YOU BURNING OUT
VALUABLE HUMAN RESOURCES?
Stop the Madness
Jo Ellen Moore, Ph.D.
Department of Computer Management & Information Systems
School of Business
Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville
Campus Box 1106
Edwardsville, IL 62026-1106
Phone: (618) 650-5816
Fax: (618) 650-3979
Email: joemoor@siue.edu
ARE YOU BURNING OUT
VALUABLE HUMAN RESOURCES?
Stop the Madness
Dear Ann Landers: My husband and I both work for a huge conglomerate. We are carrying workloads that used to be handled by three or four employees. We come home exhausted after putting in 12-hour days, drag ourselves behind lawn mowers and vacuum cleaners at 9:00 at night, miss our children's soccer games and school plays, and barely see each other... Please, Ann, tell Corporate America that the stress is killing us. -- Burned Out
This letter and five others on the same theme appeared in the December 11, 1994, Ann Landers column. Budget cuts and downsizing have made scenarios such as the one described in this letter commonplace. In addition, advances in technology have made cellular phones and home access to electronic mail and faxes common so that "home is becoming a pit stop for data gathering before heading back to the office" (Newsweek, March 6, 1995). As a result, many workers have no downtime -- no escape -- from work. Dr. Mark Moskowitz of Boston University's Medical Center refers to this collection of factors as "a formula for first-class exhaustion" (Newsweek, March 6, 1995).
What Is Work Exhaustion?
Working a ton of hours does not equal work exhaustion. Indeed, if asked to recall a favorite work experience, most of us would probably describe a highly demanding project or effort that involved many overtime hours. In putting in those hours, however, we were reaping rewards, most likely in the form of feelings of satisfaction, achievement, contribution, and pride. This is a description of a positive work situation, not a work-exhaustive one.
By definition, work exhaustion (or burnout) results from long-term involvement in demanding situations. Whereas a worker is able to stay in a demanding situation when he or she feels valued and appreciated and is receiving other positives from the experience, most people will burn out when their work life imposes much more stress than support. Simply stated, burnout results from having too many negative and too few positive features in one's environment -- that is, too many pressures, conflicts, and demands combined with too few rewards, acknowledgments, and successes.
More specifically, research indicates that the "negatives" contributing to work exhaustion include work overload, conflicting demands, unclear objectives, and interpersonal conflict. When these are combined with too few "positives" a worker can succumb to burnout. The persistence of this type of unbalanced work environment is generally considered a strong situation -- i.e., a situation in which environmental factors will overpower person characteristics. It is likely, therefore, that any individual in this type of situation will eventually burn out. Hardly anyone is immune to work exhaustion.
The Negative Effects Of Work Exhaustion
Practitioners and researchers agree that work exhaustion is a negative experience for the employee. The exhausted worker tends to report lower satisfaction with the job, lower commitment to the organization, and a higher intention to leave the job. In some cases, the employee also will experience reduced self-esteem and a decline in feelings of competence and achievement, and may adopt a detached or negative response to clients.
What does this mean to organizations? It means that firms must be careful in placing excessive demands on employees for prolonged periods of time to avoid facing undesirable consequences, such as the loss of valued employees. For some organizations, the loss of employees through voluntary turnover will be in accordance with their human resource strategy. However, for firms building the knowledge and skills of workers with the intent to retain that expertise within the organization, the association between work exhaustion and turnover can be a serious concern. Furthermore, research suggests that highly motivated individuals who feel a strong commitment to their work are the ones most susceptible to burnout. So it may be an organization's "best people" that the firm stands to lose to exhaustion.
In today's environment of increasing customer demands, dogged pursuit of efficiency, and constantly changing technology, managers have a natural tendency to assign critical projects to top employees. These top employees often have strong self-management skills (i.e., they need little supervision and can be counted on to see what needs to be done and do it). As such, top employees can easily find themselves in exhaustive situations as projects pick up steam and efforts become more realistically defined. Without proper involvement from the manager, the valued employee can become trapped in a prolonged situation of high pressure and demands with no one aware of all they are dealing with and no one there to provide acknowledgment, support, or additional resources where needed.
In such a situation, valued employees are likely to burn out. If this happens, they can be expected to experience lower job satisfaction and lower commitment to the organization and, accordingly, a higher propensity to leave the job and the company. These are often the very employees the organization does not want to lose.
Minimizing The Occurrence Of Work Exhaustion
First, managers need to be aware of the issue. They need to understand what work exhaustion is, what causes it, the negative ramifications for the employee and the organization, and how vulnerable top employees can be. All of these topics are discussed in this article, so a significant step in educating managers about work exhaustion may be as simple as routing the article to them.
Second, managers need to stay on top of the workloads and sentiments of individual workers, particularly those workers highly valued by the organization. In fact, a manager might want to consciously consider who the "franchise players" are in his or her area (to coin a term from professional sports). Who are the key individuals whose loss would be most devastating to the company and who would be very difficult to replace? The organization will want to encourage, enable, and empower managers to prevent "franchise players" from burning out and possibly leaving the company.
Toward this end, managers will need to allocate time for effective communication with individual employees. The written monthly status report submitted by a worker to his or her manager is not going to be sufficient. Rather, a richer two-way communication medium is called for -- namely, face-to-face communication.
To gain a realistic understanding of an employee's workload and current sentiments regarding the job, managers are encouraged to physically go to the worker. Stop by and ask a general "how's it going?" and tell the worker you're not just being polite, you really want to know. Or, if the worker prefers scheduled interactions, schedule short meetings on a periodic basis (e.g., a 15-minute meeting every two weeks) to be held at the worker's desk and let the worker drive the discussion -- talk about whatever he or she wants to talk about. As researchers know, frequent sampling tends to provide the most accurate assessment of what's really going on. Frequent interaction can also help the worker feel more comfortable talking with the manager and this should enhance the manager's understanding of the situation.
Third, managers need to make a conscious effort to provide acknowledgment and show appreciation to workers who are doing a good job. Remember that such positives help to outweigh the negatives in the work situation (and there will always be some negatives). As always, it is important to distribute rewards fairly to employees as an unfair allocation of rewards could simply add to the negatives. Staying on top of individual workloads and contributions should enable the manager to distribute rewards in a manner that valued employees will perceive as fair.
Finally, managers and HR professionals may need to consider the design of some jobs. Rapid incorporation of communication and other technologies, coupled with movements toward downsizing and self-management, may be creating "no-win jobs" in organizations. That is, jobs may be emerging that were not deliberately designed but, instead, have dynamically evolved and taken on such dimensions that any human being would burn out in the position. Hence, managers and HR professionals need to be aware that this can occur so they can recognize and redesign "no-win jobs," prior to the occurrence of work exhaustion and other consequences that would be detrimental to the worker and the organization.
Managing An Exhausted Employee
As a manager, if an employee says "I'm burned out" or "I need out of this job" or other words to this effect, by all means take it seriously! If this is an employee that you don't want to lose, you need to act. If this worker is in a miserably exhaustive situation and you have not acknowledged cries for help, he or she may conclude that the only way to alleviate the exhaustion is to leave the job.
Therefore, the first step is to communicate with the employee and investigate the situation to determine whether this is a work exhaustion problem. If it is, the only way to alleviate the exhaustion is to accurately identify the cause and make some changes. Work exhaustion being the negative experience that it is, an exhausted worker will naturally attempt to determine what is causing the exhaustion. Research in human behavior tells us that an individual's attribution of the cause for a negative experience (like work exhaustion) forms the basis for decisions about how to bring about the discontinuance of it. Simply stated, how a worker attributes the "blame" for his or her exhaustion will strongly influence the actions he or she believes should be taken to alleviate it.
It is important to note, however, that there may be a difference between the perceived cause (what the employee thinks is the problem) and the actual cause (what is truly going to have to change to alleviate the exhaustion). For example, a worker might feel that the exhaustion is due to a personal weakness or deficiency. But, in actuality, the employee may be carrying a workload that is humanly impossible and no single person would be able to meet the expectations.
In general, workers may blame themselves or may blame others in the organization for the exhaustion that is taking place. Results from a study recently conducted (with support from the SHRM Foundation) confirmed this dichotomous grouping of blame for work exhaustion. The survey was administered to information systems / information technology (IS/IT) professionals (i.e., managers, programmers, and systems designers) through a random sampling of the membership of the Association for Information Technology Professionals (AITP, formerly known as DPMA). Of the 270 participants in the study, 48 were classified as work-exhausted based on their responses to the survey. Because participation in this study was voluntary, it is likely that a number of IS/IT professionals actually experiencing exhaustion did not find time to complete the two-part survey and, hence, are not included in the sample. Therefore, the 18% exhaustion rate that was found may well be a low estimate of the true prevalence of work exhaustion in the IS/IT environment.
Data collected from the exhausted IS/IT professionals elucidate two types of attribution for the cause of exhaustion. The first type, labeled during the data analysis as their-fault, reflects an external cause perceived to be controllable by others in the organization and not controllable by oneself. An example of a their-fault attribution for work exhaustion provided by a respondent in this sample is "too many major projects with extremely aggressive completion dates." The second type of attribution, my-fault, reflects an internal cause perceived to be controllable by oneself and not controllable by others in the organization. An example of a my-fault attribution for work exhaustion from this sample is "my desire for perfection."
Of the 48 exhausted IS/IT professionals, 38 indicated a their-fault attribution and nine indicated a my-fault attribution (and one was not classified due to missing data values). Hence, in this general sample of exhausted IS/IT professionals, 81% of the workers tended to attribute their exhaustion to external factors that were controllable by others in the organization. Further examples of their-fault causes in the words of the study participants include:
"Given more to do than possible. 'No' not being acceptable answer, the more you accomplish the more you are given to do."
"Upper management places unrealistic and arbitrary goals on us, then refuses to hire anyone to help out."
"... all user requests come through me. Workload is unrealistically high."
"Too much to do, no resources to do it, constant change in management, no clear process or objectives."
"The executive director makes commitments without considering realistic timeframes for such projects. Things that take 30 days he promises completion in 7 days..."
When an exhausted employee perceives the cause of exhaustion to be controlled by others in the organization (as did the vast majority of IS/IT professionals in this study), the worker is likely to feel that changes are needed in the work environment to alleviate the exhaustion. If the worker believes that such changes are unlikely, he or she may conclude that the only way out of the exhaustive situation is to leave the job. Therefore, when a valued employee is experiencing exhaustion, communication is crucial -- the manager must realize it is happening and work with the employee to address the cause.
The manager can play a key role in helping the employee to identify the true cause of the exhaustion. For example, the manager's experience in managing the workloads of others, insights the manager can gain from fellow managers regarding workload expectations, and the manager's knowledge of the employee's strengths and weaknesses and general tendencies can help pinpoint the true cause. If the cause is within the control of the organization, the manager can take the lead in developing an action plan that will constructively target the cause. The plan might involve improving processes and practices, clarifying or adjusting expectations and/or target dates, adding resources, or acquiring needed training for the employee. Finally, the plan should include periodic evaluation points so that the manager and employee can determine whether the actions are indeed alleviating the exhaustion.
In Conclusion
To combat work exhaustion, HR professionals need to:
1. Be aware of the potential for work exhaustion in valued employees and learn how to effectively address it.
2. Provide training and advisement to managers and other workers on matters related to exhaustion.
3. Assist in developing methods to accurately determine the cause of an employee's exhaustion.
4. Identify or develop methods to constructively address common causes of work exhaustion in various work environments.
5. Work closely with managers to recognize and redesign "no-win jobs" that may have developed within the organization and are burning out employees.
In today's labor market, the retention of valued workers has become a crucial issue for many organizations, particularly where technology workers are concerned. If we overload our valued employees and subject them to a work environment in which the negatives overpower the positives for a prolonged period of time, we are in effect shooting ourselves in the foot. We are forcing valued human resources to look for a way out of a miserable situation. And if we are not attentive to these workers, they may well conclude that the only way out is to exit the company.
Organizations would likely agree that burning out your most valued employees and causing them to leave and go to work for a competitor is not a desirable HR management practice. Some might even call it ludicrous. Therefore, firms are encouraged to reflect upon their management of "franchise players" and determine whether this is occurring (however unintentionally) within their own organization. If work exhaustion appears to be behind the loss of valued employees, then it may be time to acknowledge the situation, take control of it, and stop the madness.
References
Leatz, C.A., and Stolar, M.W. (1993). Career Success/Personal Stress: How to Stay Healthy in a High-Stress Environment. NY: McGraw-Hill.
Maslach, C., and Jackson, S. E. (1984). Burnout in organizational settings. In S. Oskamp (Ed.), Applied Social Psychology Annual: Applications in Organizational Settings, Vol. 5: 133-135. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Moore, J. E. (1998). Job attitudes and perceptions of exhausted IS/IT professionals: Are we burning out valuable human resources? Proceedings of the 1998 ACM SIGCPR Conference, Boston, Mass., March 1998.
Pines, A., and Aronson, E. (1988). Career Burnout: Causes and Cures. New York, NY: The Free Press.
Schaufeli, W. B., Maslach, C. and Marek, T. (Eds.) (1993). Professional Burnout: Recent Developments in Theory and Research. Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Francis.
Thomas, K. M., and Williams, K. L. (1995). The role of burnout on organizational attachment and career mobility. Paper presented at Work, Stress and Health '95: Creating Healthier Workplaces, Washington, D.C., September 1995.
Brief Biography of the Author
Jo Ellen Moore is Assistant Professor of Computer Management and Information Systems at Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville. She holds a Ph.D. from the Indiana University School of Business and a master's degree in psychology from Illinois State University. In the corporate environment, she has served as an IS/IT manager, project leader, and programmer/analyst. Her research interests include the management of information systems professionals and technology.
Acknowledgments
This study was funded by grants from the SHRM Foundation and Indiana University.
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