Burnout is a response to chronic job stressors — high-frequency events embedded in workplace practices that have not been successfully managed. Over time, these stressors lead to an erosion of workers’ energy, involvement, and self-confidence to the point where they feel exhausted, cynical, and ineffective in their job and “burned out.” There are many well-intentioned efforts to solve burnout in the world of work, but frequently, they address the effects of the problem — not its source. Burnout is a management and organizational issue, not a physical or mental health issue, so promoting self-care won’t usually help employees recover. Think of burned out employees as canaries in the coal mine. When the canary keels over, we acknowledge that the environment is hazardous — we don’t tell the canary that it should take a long weekend.
To Curb Burnout, Design Jobs to Better Match Employees’ Needs
Burned out employees show that there are urgent problems to be addressed at the heart of any organization. But burnout is a management and organizational issue, not a physical or mental health issue, so promoting self-care won’t usually help employees recover. The chronic job stressors that cause burnout can emerge from several kinds of mismatches, which reflect a bad fit between the job and basic human needs such as competence, belonging, and psychological safety. Such mismatches can occur in six core areas, which apply to all people, regardless of their job: workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values. Improving matches — helping people find fulfillment within an area of work life — can nudge employees away from burnout. It is a leader’s job to run a collaborative process with employees to address the persistent mismatches that employees experience at work. This article covers five critical steps leaders should follow to design better job matches for their employees.
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