Burnout - Signs that will let you know that something is not right

If suddenly your productivity drops, you feel dissatisfied, nothing fills you, nothing catches your attention, including those tasks you liked before, everything bothers you, you can't concentrate and you feel exhausted... you may experience Occupational Burnout, also known as burn syndrome, burnout syndrome, emotional overload syndrome, and fatigue syndrome at work.

Burnout was incorporated in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and it will enter validity in 2022. It will be described as "a syndrome resulting from chronic stress at work that was not managed successfully ". Being chronic it is emphasized that its onset is not sudden, it has a slow onset that prolongs and worsens. Thus, organizations will have to show what they have done about it.

What causes it?

To analyze the causes I will use the metaphor of a well-known literary work such as "Romero y Julieta".

The auditions open and you decide to do them. Since you are an excellent actor, you win the leading role of Romeo. You get very excited and you start working immediately. You are given the script, but, no one tells you what is expected of the character on stage. You give your best on stage, but the directors don't give you any feedback either. The theater policy states that, as soon as you finish your scene, you must return to the dressing room. This will avoid hearing the applauses and knowing if the play was received well. You also do not have access to the comments of the critics because they are handled only by the producers of the play. An actor will become demotivated and develop emotional exhaustion without feedback from their directors, the public, and the critics. This is a scenario known as Role Ambiguity.

You know what to do, but there is a range of possibilities of how to do it, being imperative a clear guide so as not to lose focus.

The same happens at work, people enter with a high level of expectations. They receive the job description, but are not given an induction of how things are done in the organization, nor do they give them feedback until the end of the year, when the famous annual sit-in for the Performance Evaluation arrives that in many companies has been reduced to a simple impersonal form.

Now let's imagine that you were not only given the role of Romeo, but also the role of Romeo's father. You think it's an opportunity to show how multifaceted you are, so you accept the proposals. But there comes a time when Romeo and his father must share the stage. This is impossible. The same happens at work with women who have had to play the role of workers, housewives, and teachers, creating a conflict of the role.

A clash of roles that makes it impossible to fulfill all things at once and not being able to do so, generates dissatisfaction, and physical and emotional exhaustion.

Role conflict also occurs when a conflict of interests and values is generated at work. They ask you to do something you don't want to do because it goes against your principles, but you agree for fear of fearing being out of a job. Guilt eats away at you and little by little the emotional exhaustion is given.

Now let's think that the screenwriter resigns and, since you are so collaborative, you used to help him. Thus, you know what he used to do and it was not a problem to take over. A few days later, the musicians also resigns. The director knows that you know how to play the piano, he also assigns that task for you. Suddenly, you realize you have so many things to do and that time is insufficient to finish. You end up burned out. This case also happens inside organizations. The one who is good at their work is assigned more things to do but ends up burned out. The one who is bad at his work ends up with less because he does it mediocrely. As we grow as an organization, we put more pressure on people without analyzing what has to be changed. Are the processes not working, is it the systematized, or is more personnel required? These aspects create an overload of the role.

Demanda de varias cosas por hacer al mismo instante, sin el tiempo suficiente para hacerlas, generando un trabajo mediocre que aumenta los reclamos y como consecuencia, genera insatisfacción y cansancio.

Additionally, special attention must be paid to the selection processes, because not all people have the same capacity.

If I put to compete, a Honda Civic that has a gas tank capacity of 50 liters of fuel, a Mazda 6 that has a gas tank with a capacity of 70 liters of fuel, and an Expedition Suv with a tank with a capacity of 120 liters of gasoline. The moment of competition will be left on the road according to that capacity.

Likewise, at work. Some people find it easier to analyze problems and make decisions while others find it easier to speak publicly. Some people overcome high emotional burdens and are under pressure easily. Yet, some people cannot tolerate working under pressure. They get frustrated and get sick. If a person does not have the hard or soft qualities to play a certain role, he will end up making an extra effort. Just like the Honda Civic, we continue to press the clutch without having fuel and we will melt the engine.

A person not in the right position will need to inject extra effort to get the job done. Yet, despite the effort, they will never stand out in the long run. Eventually, your frustration and discomfort with the role will increase. We want to climb mountains with a two-by-two instead of a four-by-four.

Rest is also key to Avoiding Burnout

After the race, the cars must go into maintenance. The gasoline, oil, water, engine conditions, and tires, among others, must be checked. The same thing happens with people. After a day of work, workers have to rest and organizations must learn how to respect that time. They must be careful especially with rotating jobs, night shifts, and the famous overtime. This last aspect has been affected by teleworking, where bosses consider that, because employees are at home, they will be available 24/7.

Finally, we cannot fail to consider organizational culture and the work environment.

If we have a plant and we put it in the sun, the plant will grow, it will have a beautiful color and will give us many flowers. If we put the same floor in the basement, it will most likely die. There are organizations that are toxic, with an authoritarian and controlling leadership style, the interrelations with the team with zero courtesy and zero empathy, bureaucracy predominates over agile, there is insufficient instrumental to do the work, no reward, lack of participation, little or no possibility of growth, labor mobbing, among others. Factors that in sum end up burning the worker.

¿Cómo identificar el Burnout? ¿Cuáles son sus síntomas en las diferentes etapas?

1. Physical and mental exhaustion

After a day's work, we need to rest to recover. When we have difficulty falling asleep, we are subtracting the recovery time and so, we will return to work physically tired. If no action is taken, over time we will affect the quality of sleep.

When we sleep, we fall into a series of phases or stages that allow us to go from an ON-active mode to an OFF-passive mode. If we over-stimulate our nervous system, it is difficult to change state and we will fluctuate intermittently from a passive state to an active one, we return to a passive and an active one. The restorative effect is lost. We returned to work tired, not only physically, but mentally. We will have difficulty concentrating, paying attention, remembering, and memorizing. If no action has been taken either and this persists, we will damage the quality of sleep. We will stay in an ON-active state, despite being asleep. When we wake up, we will feel our brain heavy, we will hear the voices of other people in the distance without establishing contact as if we were hostages of our mind, dizzy and irritable. At this stage, we can lose consciousness and wake up in a cold room of a hospital. Unfortunately, sleep will no longer be enough because we are burned.

2. Loss of interest in work with signs of cynicism and depersonalization

This sign is common among teaching staff, medical staff, customer service, and social service.

For example, a nurse who works in the oncology area of a hospital is exposed to a large emotional burden. Every day, she sees heartbreaking pictures when the doctor informs the patient has cancer and gives him a prognosis of life. Every day, she sees the people with whom she has developed bonds die during the treatment process. An emotional discharge affects her, so she rejects it by assuming a defense mechanism called depersonalization. She forgets about the person. She replaces her patients' names with room numbers. In this way, the nurse avoids suffering. She will enter to supply medicines, without making eye contact, interacting, talking, or asking how they feel, even worse to grieve from the suffering of this person because she has eliminated them from her mind. That is why in the eyes of third parties, she becomes a cynical person and it is common to think why would she become a nurse if she does not have a vocation for service. With time, the collaborator is unrecognizable, we have supplanted her with an ogre, irritable and aggressive. A person hardened affectively because they are burned.

3. Loss of effectiveness. With everything that has happened, it is normal for performance and productivity to fall, increasing customer complaints and absenteeism. The person will wander around like a zombie, with nothing filling them, nothing motivating them. They live claiming and they are not happy. In advanced stages, they can end up with deep depression linked even to suicidal ideation.

Main actions that organizations must start.

1. Measurement and monitoring of all factors analyzed. Establish action plans in the face of the novelties found and review the effectiveness of the measures taken. Eye, it is not about looking for culprits, because that attitude does not help, it only worsens the problem.

2. Educate and train people through talks with specialists. They will learn to identify symptoms from an early stage before they progress and reach a state that is difficult to manage.

3. Encourage transparent communication. Employees will learn to say how they feel to their immediate bosses without fear of reprisals.

4. Finally, check the organizational culture and climate, not for commercial purposes

We say that employees are one of the most important assets of the company. Remember to take care of them. The life of humans is in their hands

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Mariela Paredes

Dr. in Industrial Psychology, Master in Business Administration, Specialist in Human Factors and Crisis Management.

25 years of experience in the field of Human Resources. About 10,000 hours of training in which more than 20,000 people have been trained.