Burnout Case

Burnout

Burnout can affect people in many ways and all types of careers. Burnout is an abundance of stressors building until an individual becomes overwhelmed with his or her career. The feelings of worker burnout can cause organizations to experience a high turnover rate. This essay will explore some causes of burnout and methods that can help avoid burnout in human service organizations. This paper will also contain personal observations regarding burnout.

Definition of Burnout

The defanition of burnout is a breakdown of the emotional well-being of an individual because of stress in the workplace. According to Johnson and Stone , burnout "refers to a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion resulting from involvement with people in emotionally demanding situations"(Lewis, Packard, & Lewis, 2007, p. 132) Burnout makes a worker think he or she is inadequate and leaves him or her less motivated. It affects the employee's attitude with clients, coworkers, and his or her productivity. Not only does burnout affect the worker but also the organization's own level of competence suffers.

Causes of Burnout

Burnout has many causes. These causes can be individual, organizational, supervisory, or cultural. Individual causes are unrealistically high career goals or expectations may cause individuals to burnout. Aspects of the culture at large, including a declining feeling of community, frustrated expectations for the self-actualizing potential of work, and pervasive competition, create a climate conducive to burnout. (Lewis et al., 2007, p. 133) A supervisory cause of employee burnout occurs when an employee does not receive the support of his or her supervisors. Organizational causes of burnout are routine management rather than flexible management, lack of feedback, a competitive work environment, large amounts of conflict, and low openness and trust can contribute to burnout.

Methods to Prevent Burnout

Supervisors must be aware of the possibility of employees' stress and that burnout can result from that stress. Some job role strategies to prevent burnout are staying connected with the staff. Managers who connect with their staff can assist employees by looking at the delegation or distribution of work tasks given to employees; is one employee given too much work but others have little work to complete. Managers who are aware of those employees who take on more work and never seem to take time off can remind them to recharge their batteries by taking a day off or taking vacation.

Another option for helping to prevent burnout is developing a reward system for employees. A reward system helps employees to feel appreciated. The main consideration here is that managers and supervisors need to be vigilant of their employees and be there to