burnout is about the workplace itself

​Did you know that stress and burnout are on the rise? Of course you know that. Who doesn't?

After a year of living through a world turned upside down - pandemic, financial distress, societal reckoning with systemic racism, and political divisions - we are all feeling stressed and burned out. And, we all know it.

Consider some recent stats, uncovered in a recent survey conducted by Jennifer Moss, author of forthcoming book "The Burnout Epidemic," Christina Maslach of the University of California, Berkeley, Susan E. Jackson of Rutgers, and Michael Leiter of Deakin University:
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• 89% of respondents said their work life was getting worse.
• 56% said their job demands had increased.
• 55% of all respondents didn’t feel that they had been able to balance their home and work life — with 53% specifically citing homeschooling.
• 85% said their well-being had declined.
• 57% of employees felt that the pandemic had a “large effect on” or “completely dominated” their work.

So, who's the biggest culprit when it comes to our failure to adequately address this rising epidemic? 

It's actually the workplace itself.

Sure, there's been lots written about employee burnout, but the solutions are usually directed toward the individual employee. Employees are told - largely through wellness programs - here's what YOU should be doing differently: more yoga, more mindfulness, more subsidized gym memberships. And, while lots of companies say that they care about the issue, they are failing to address the key drivers of employee burnout. They fail to fully reckon with the fact that burnout is less about the individual and more about the workplace itself. 

Here are the top drivers of employee stress and burnout, according to Maslach, Jackson and Leiter:

1. Unsustainable workload
2. Perceived lack of control
3. Insufficient rewards for effort
4. Lack of a supportive community
5. Lack of fairness
6. Mismatched values and skills

So, how can your company step up to meet the moment to address these root causes?

First, develop policies that start to address these key drivers of stress. Do you have policies in place like paid family leave and are you taking measures to address unsustainable workload levels?

Second, empower your managers to become Multipliers of Well-Being. Give each the encouragement and the tools so that they can carve out an oasis of well-being within their team, through regular practices and rituals such as walking meetings and weekly check-ins with each team member.

Third, stop blaming the individual for "being stressed" and start applying a more systems-based approach toward promoting health and well-being. Just this reality check can serve as a huge relief to every employee.

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We've broken it down into 4 levels of influencers:
The World We Live in, The Places We Go,
The People We Know & Me At My Best.
Our programs are designed to tackle each of these 4 levels.

READ ON TO LEARN HOW WE DO IT

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laura putnam

Laura Putnam is a leading catalyst for well-being at work, an international public speaker, and author of Workplace Wellness That Works. As CEO of Motion Infusion and creator of the leadership training program Managers on the Move, she infuses well-being into the workplace to help employees, teams and organizations thrive. You can follow her on Twitter @MotionInfusion.