Working in the fast-paced, busy world of HR can feel stressful. As a dedicated and hardworking HR professional, you may find yourself prioritising looking after everyone else in the organisation above your own wellbeing. But it’s so important you are able to take care of yourself too, so that the stress doesn’t reach the point of burnout. In this episode of HR Coffee Time, released during Stress Awareness Month, Dr Jo Burrell joins host, Fay Wallis, to share her advice on spotting signs of stress and how to take action to stop it in its tracks.

Key Points From This Episode

[00:00] Introduction and Importance of Discussing Stress and Burnout

[02:09] Introducing Dr Jo Burrell

[07:05] Worrying Results from the HR Mental Wellbeing Survey

[08:52] Understanding and Combating Burnout

[11:42] Personal Reflections on Stress and Work Habits

[22:11] Strategies to Prevent Burnout and Manage Stress

[29:21] An Example Case Study

[39:07] Book Recommendation

Useful Links

• Connect with Fay on LinkedIn
• Fay’s website: Bright Sky Career Coaching
• Connect with Jo on LinkedIn
• Jo’s website: Ultimate Resilience
• HSE (Health and Safety Executive) stress resources
• CIPD’s wellbeing helpline

Buy the Book Recommendation

(Disclosure: the book links are affiliate links which means that Fay will receive a small commission from Amazon if you make a purchase through them)

A Work In Progress: Unlocking Wellbeing to Create More Sustainable and Resilient Organisations, by Gethin Nadin

Other Relevant HR Coffee Time Episodes & Playlists

Build Resilience & Handle Stressful Situations Playlist

Looking For the Transcript?

You can find the transcript on this page of the Bright Sky Career Coaching website.

Rate and Review the Podcast

If you found this episode of HR Coffee Time helpful, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This video shows you how to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts (because it isn’t very intuitive). If you're kind enough to leave a review, let Fay know so she can say thank you. You can always reach her at: fay@brightskycareercoaching.co.uk.

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00:00 Fay Wallis:

Hello and welcome back to HR Coffee Time. It's wonderful to have you listening today. I'm your host, Fay Wallis, a career and executive coach with a background in HR, and I've made HR Coffee Time especially for you to help you have a successful and fulfilling HR or people career without working yourself into the ground.

I'm sitting here working on this episode for you during April two thousand and twenty four, and it is Stress Awareness Month, as it is in April every year. So, it feels like the perfect opportunity to be talking about stress with you again. Although I have talked about stress on the show before, it isn't something that's been covered for quite a long time.

So it feels like it's long overdue talking about it again, because it's such an important topic when stress affects so many people working in the HR space. And it certainly affected me when I was in my previous HR roles before I became a coach. It means I'm truly grateful to the fantastic Dr. Joe Burrell for agreeing to join us as a guest to talk about how to spot signs of stress in your space.

Self and the practical steps that you can take to stop yourself from ever reaching the point of burnout, because that is just such a horrible place to be. So whether you are listening to this episode for yourself because you've been feeling overwhelmed and starting to worry about your stress levels.

Or, you're listening because you have a colleague at work that you're feeling worried about. I really hope you're going to find it helpful. It's a little longer than most of the HR Coffee Time guest episodes tend to be nowadays, because I couldn't bring myself to cut anything out, as Jo shared so many important, interesting, and helpful concepts.

I kept asking her more questions, and she kept coming back with more brilliance. So I hope you managed to listen all the way to the end and that you're going to enjoy learning from her as much as I did. Let's go ahead and meet her now. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Jo. It would just be wonderful if you could start off by introducing yourself and tell us a little bit about your background and the work that you do.

00:02 Dr Jo Burrell:

Thank you, Fay. It's lovely to be here. So I am Dr. Jo Burrell. I am a clinical psychologist by background. So I trained in the early two thousands, and worked in the NHS, as a mental health professional and delivering therapy within the mental health services for around 20 years. And, uh, recently I've also become a coaching psychologist, which means I can now draw on all my mental health expertise and therapy expertise in designing and delivering coaching as well.

I'm co founder of Ultimate Resilience. We've been running for about 10 years now, and I run that company with Dr. Felicity Baker, who's also a clinical psychologist and coaching psychologist, and we deliver training and coaching to support well being in the workplace.

00:03 Fay Wallis:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for giving us that brilliant introduction.

And you've got me intrigued now because I know that you worked in the NHS for most of your career, but I don't know what it was that made you decide to set up your own business. So I can imagine everyone listening might be thinking the same thing. Would you be happy to share that with us?

00:03 Dr Jo Burrell:

Sure. So, um, I guess what we were finding in our NHS clinics is that we were seeing a huge number of people who were experiencing work related stress, anxiety, depression, so mental health difficulties that really had their origin in their experience at work.

And the kind of business model in the NHS is such that you can't really go into workplaces and work with people in that setting and, and tackle the source of the problem. That was the issue for us. I think was that we weren't really tackling the source of the problem. What we were receiving was someone at a very, at the end of a very, very long journey where they'd been experiencing work related pressures and stress and demands over a long period of time.

So we got interested in, you know, what can we do in the workplace that's going to support people and perhaps even prevent stress from happening rather than just tackling, you know, the outcome of stress. And we got interested in resilience because resilience is a concept which helps us to develop the skills and strategies needed to protect us against the worst effects of stress.

It's it, you know, it's a concept and set of skills that helps us auto also to deal with stress when it happens of, 'cause of course, we're never gonna get rid of stress completely. There's always gonna be times when we're facing challenge or adversity, but that's why we were interested in this. concept and idea, particularly.

And we got together, we looked at all the evidence in the research and we developed a skills based model of personal resilience, which is really the, forms the kind of backbone of the training that we deliver nowadays. And, and yeah, we created a training course. which is called Essential Resilience. And we now also do lead leadership resilience training.

And then more recently, over recent years, we started to deliver, uh, coaching as well to support individuals who are really struggling with stress and burnout.

00:05 Fay Wallis:

I love the fact that you saw there was this big issue and then thought, right, that's it. We're going to do something about it. So I didn't know that that was the very first part of your business journey, but I'd do know that when you were going into businesses to deliver this resilience training, you started to notice just how much stress HR teams were often under because they were often your first point of contact.

And then as a next step, you decided to take action to help them. Do you want to tell us what that action looks like?

00:05 Dr Jo Burrell:

Yeah, that's right. So, um, I guess HR professionals have traditionally been the people who come to us asking for support, you know, for the people in their organizations. And then suddenly in the post pandemic era, they started to come to us asking for help for themselves.

And I guess we thought this, these really marks a change and perhaps, you know, something quite concerning. And I was interested in, you know, what data is there out there about the mental wellbeing of HR professionals found. Actually, there's very little. And so we decided to design a survey. So we both researchers by background, we've done, you know, we have published research out there.

So we got the skills to be able to do that. And we designed a survey, which includes Uh, standardized measures of depression, anxiety, burnout, well being, and we also asked people about the support that they felt they were able to access for their mental well being. And we sent out this survey to our subscribers, our email subscribers, and also on LinkedIn.

And we also, at the same time, created a coaching program called the Burnout Clinic, which was really aimed at As I say, people who are really struggling at the tech, you know, who are, who are feeling really overwhelmed by chronic stress and burnout, particularly HR professionals, but also leaders.

00:07 Fay Wallis:

I've read the results of the HR Mental Wellbeing Survey and they make for really sobering reading.

Can you share with us what those results were?

00:07 Dr Jo Burrell:

Sure. So, uh, as you say, I mean, I, I thought we were going to, you know, highlight something quite serious, but actually I was surprised at how serious. the figures were, how, how stark they were. So what we found, you know, some of the highlights are, uh, one of the things we found was that, uh, our respondents were experiencing clinically significant levels of depression, a rate of three times higher than the general population.

They were displaying clinically significant levels of anxiety at about two and a half times the rate of the general population. We foufifty seven 57 percent of our respondents scored in the low range for well being and we found that 48 forty eight percent were experiencing at least one symptom of burnout.

00:08 Fay Wallis:

It's so worrying because I think it's fairly well discussed in the HR community about the fact that it can be such a pressurised role, and I know from my work how many people do get to the point where they're just feeling completely overwhelmed or completely stressed out, but there's something about actually having a piece of research showing you that it really is true.

It's not just anecdotal. There's so many things I could dive into you with the results from that. The one thing I would like us to really focus on is this idea of burnout. And it's been talked about so much. It's a term that I don't remember really hearing about 10 years ago, but now it's being used. All of the time and I think it can be really helpful to have a definition, especially if that's something that was flagged up in the results of your survey.

So just so that we're all clear on it, can you talk us through exactly what burnout is?

So

00:09 Dr Jo Burrell:

burnout is the outcome of chronic workplace stress and it arises as a result of a combination of two main factors. So an unhealthy workplace and an unhealthy approach to work. So when we're thinking about the unhealthy workplace, we're talking about the environmental factors, really.

We're talking about heavy workloads, uh, tight deadlines, might be having a tricky boss, those sorts of factors. Things that are happening in our workplace environment. And then when we're talking about an unhealthy approach to work, that's more about the stuff we bring as individuals, our tendencies, you know, our habits.

And that might be, you know, perfectionism, It might be a tendency never to say no to anything, not be assertive enough. You know, it might be that we're always taking on the most difficult jobs or tasks. It might be we set high standards for ourselves. So these are sort of habits and ways of thinking and ways of behaving that we bring.

So when we have a combination of those two factors, then we get a recipe for chronic stress. And what happens at the end of that, you know, process of chronic stress is burnout. So when you reach the point of burnout, what does that actually mean? So people experiencing burnout tend to be noticing that they feel extremely exhausted, both emotionally and physically.

They notice that they're feeling kind of disconnected from work often, and maybe disconnected from their friends. Maybe they've lost their passion for work. Maybe they're feeling quite low in mood. They're also noticing that their work performance is affected. So often the people that I see in my coaching clinics are feeling really bad because they're not performing at their best.

They know that they, they could do better. They know they have done better and they're kind of puzzled about why that might be. You know, why is it I've, I've been doing this for ages. I've been doing this job for ages. I've been able to achieve these things. Why can't I do it now? And there's often quite a lot of anxiety.

with that. Um, it's, it's, anxiety is not something that we necessarily always here in relation to burnout, but I see it quite a lot in, in my clinics, people feeling anxious about the fact that they're not achieving or performing in the way that they feel they expect themselves, but they, they feel also feel others expect them to.

00:11 Fay Wallis:

It's so interesting to hear you talk about it. All of it's interesting, but I think one bit that really leapt out at me there is when you were explaining about the unhealthy approach to work, that's something I can really identify with. I had a period of extreme anxiety where I had to take time off of work.

Luckily it was many, many years ago now. And I remember thinking, oh, it's just the situation and it's the conditions that I'm in at the time. And then towards the end of last year, I suddenly could feel the feelings coming back. And this is years and years and years later, and the conditions were completely different.

work for myself. Um, I, I'm the boss. So, you know, I, I can't talk about it being really down to anyone else. Not that I should say it had anything to do with my boss last time at all either. I was just extremely busy. And it's at that point that I had to question what's going on here. You know, I haven't got anyone else I can really attribute to Why I'm feeling like this, and I realized I was doing a very similar thing, I was behaving in a similar way, which is putting myself under huge amounts of pressure, and this perfectionism starting to really, really creep in.

So, overworking and doing things like obsessing about trying to make sure the podcast is as good as it could possibly be, because I don't want to let people down. And So then you find that you're, you know, working into the evenings because I spend too long on the, the editing or redoing parts of it or researching the title or thinking of the questions.

And it got to a point where I suddenly found myself crying over really small things. Luckily, it never crops up with any of my client facing work, because you know, that would have been absolutely awful. But I remember being out with friends and suddenly started crying when I was talking about the HR planner when that was coming out, because that again, was something I put myself under a lot of pressure about.

And it was really in that moment that I had to acknowledge the fact that this is down to me. This is this person. Pressure. I don't know why I was doing it, but it suddenly starts building and It was that's actually the reason that I decided to drop the podcast down from every single week to every other week Because there's no one out there saying fabe You absolutely have to release a podcast every single week without fail or you know, you're letting everyone down but I This is this really strange narrative that I had playing in my head.

And it was just such a massive relief when I did that because it's given me back so much time, but I'm still hopefully able to produce something that is valuable and helpful for people. But without putting myself under that pressure to the point where I could really see I was getting to the point where I was going to burn out.

00:14 Dr Jo Burrell:

I just wanted to highlight because you highlighted some really important things there that People who experience burnout or suffer from burnout are often the most conscientious, the people who care the most, the most driven, the people who want to do absolutely the best job. So these are people who have, like we said, very high standards and they're, you know, they've often, been achieving those standards for some time, but it's just not sustainable over the longer term.

So I just, I wanted to say that because you've, you know, that you've provided us with a perfect example and I'm really pleased to hear that you recognised it in yourself and you put some measures in place to stop you from getting to that point where you just fell flat on your face.

00:15 Fay Wallis:

Yes, well let's hope that now it's not going to happen again and I've put enough measures in place and can.

recognize when it's starting to happen. I think if I hadn't been through the experience before, there would have been a much greater risk that I would have just carried on going until I'd had to stop and actually take proper time out. So I'm so relieved that it didn't get to that point and it feels really quite vulnerable talking about it, but I hope that for anyone listening, it is helpful if you can.

They do feel that they're in a similar position or any of it rings true. And it's reassuring as well, Jo, to know that I'm not alone with this and that they're all common, common challenges that other people experience as well. So coming away from me for a minute, I didn't mean to turn that into talking about me.

If I can bring us back to another definition, because I'm just aware that we're talking about terms that I used a lot, but I don't think we've always got complete clarity on what they are. You've given us a really helpful definition of burnout, and as part of that you said that it's the outcome of chronic workplace stress.

So can I ask you to also define for us what stress is?

00:16 Dr Jo Burrell:

Sure. So stress is really a combination of thoughts, emotions, physiological sensations, and behaviors that arise in response to perceived threat. Okay. So some stress is good for us. It's useful. Okay. So if I step out into the road and there's a car hurtling towards me, the fight or flight response happens.

So my brain takes over. They make the amygdala takes over and forces me to jump back onto the curb. That's my fight flight response. And that's really useful. So what, what this example indicates is it's useful for my survival. You know, it helps me to survive. It's also useful when we get that shot of adrenaline, is that can be useful if we're facing a challenge, you know, maybe I'm running a race or I'm doing an exam or an interview, or I've got a tight deadline.

That shot of adrenaline is, helpful in, in terms of my cognitive abilities. It improves my cognitive abilities. It makes me more focused, uh, have better concentration. My, uh, my memory is improved and so on, but stress can also be a problem in all sorts of different ways. Firstly, it can be a problem when we perceive a greater threat than is really there.

So. If I open my computer in the morning and I've got two hundred emails and I say to myself, Oh my God, I can't cope. Okay. That's yes. You know, yes, I'm facing something that's challenging, but when I say to myself, I can't cope, that's probably an exaggeration of the situation. You know, I'm perceiving a threat that's greater than is really there.

And stress is also a problem when it goes on for too long without recovery. So, you know, we're not built as human beings to be under pressure, you know, high levels of stress and pressure 24 hours a day. It's okay if we have short periods of pressure and demand, but we need to have equivalent periods of rest and recovery, you know, really to be looking after our wellbeing and our, and our health.

If we're in chronic stress, high levels of stress all of the time, then actually, then we're exposing ourselves. to really significant health problems. You know, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, you know, these things are associated with longer term chronic stress. So yeah, so that's what, what, what, what we're talking about when we're talking about chronic stress.

00:18 Fay Wallis:

Gosh, it's really worrying when he just talks about the physical side effects as well. That's not something I've really thought about the stroke and heart attack and everything. I think from my own personal experience of stress. It's when I feel like Oh, actually, it's got to the point where I can't go on or I'm getting upset over little things that's, which is a horrible thing to be feeling, but that's really terrifying to think of actually the incredibly damaging impact it can have on our physical health as well.

I'm guessing that for lots of people, the way that stress shows up might present differently. So I'm just wondering for anyone listening right now, what advice would you give over how they might be able to tell that they are suffering from stress and at what point it's becoming a problem?

00:19 Dr Jo Burrell:

Absolutely, well you gave a great example just then, you said that you, you know you're stressed when you're starting to become maybe a bit more emotional than normal.

So we notice those powerful emotions. Sometimes it's irritability, sometimes we're tearful, sometimes it's anxiety. So we might be worrying more than normal. We might be just feeling that unsettled feeling that we have sometimes when we're anxious or we might be snappy at people, you know, these are all signs that we're experiencing threat emotions.

So that's a, that's, they're great signs. People often highlight poor sleep, you know, when we ask in our workshops, you know, what, what do you think some of the signs of stress are, you know, when you're struggling to get off to sleep or you're waking in the night and having, having difficulty getting back to sleep, you're not getting enough hours of sleep.

So when your sleep is just, just, just bad, disrupted when you find yourself perhaps withdrawing a bit, you know, maybe you're not connecting with people at work as much as you would do, or you're in your social world, you know, you're sort of becoming more withdrawn when you're overworking. Certainly that's a sign that we're stressed.

And it's often a sign that we're feeling like we need to be getting stuff done. And, uh, when we're maybe engaging in some more and helpful coping strategies, like drinking too much coffee. or alcohol, those sorts of things. You know, often we're doing that, or maybe we're overeating or we're grabbing for unhealthy foods.

That's quite a common behavior when we're stressed. We're not engaging in as many leisure activities as we normally would. And actually these are the first things that go, don't they? You know, that yoga class that you go to regularly or, you know, those meetups with friends that you normally do. They drop off the agenda very quickly when we're busy and we feel like we've got a lot of pressures and demands.

But actually, this is exactly the time when we should be doing those things. Because we know they bring all sorts of well being benefits. We might also notice you know, a kind of pattern of negative thinking, self doubt, self criticism, these sorts of things. Certainly we know when we're stressed, we experience a higher, you know, range and pattern of negative thoughts or overly negative thoughts.

00:21 Fay Wallis:

I can just imagine lots of people nodding along and being able to identify with some of the examples that you gave there. I'm hoping they'll be nodding along because they're thinking of experiences in the past when they felt like that rather than right now. But for anyone who is thinking, gosh, this sounds like me now, actually, I can really see that a lot of this is leaping out at me and maybe I'm under more stress than I realized, and it is starting to affect me.

What advice would you give to them to help them get to the point where it's not going to hit burnout?

00:22 Dr Jo Burrell:

Sure. So I would say the first thing is admitting it to yourself and, you know, your, your account really highlights that, you know, it was a point in which you said, I need to do something that, you know, action happened and you started to turn things around.

So, and actually what we know about burnout is that it's a common feature that people just don't realize until they've. literally hit a wall and they think I cannot go on. So noticing those sort of earlier warning signs, you know, like the poor sleep and those sorts of things and admitting, actually, this isn't me.

This isn't what I normally am like. This isn't the way I want to be. I'm not feeling at my best. Just recognizing, acknowledging, and admitting that is your first step. Listening to your loved ones. Cause I think when we're in denial, our loved ones are telling us. I'm concerned about you. You're working too hard.

You're not getting enough sleep. I noticed you were awake in the night. You know, you seem stressed. Other people are feeding it back to us and telling us we might be ignoring it. So don't ignore it. I would say in the workplace, speak to your manager if you feel comfortable to do so. If you feel you can let them know that you're struggling with stress.

There are all sorts of You know, resources available. Health and Safety Executive have lots of resources available. You can do a stress risk management. You can put a plan in place. You know, these things are available for managers. If your manager isn't aware of them, they're available on the HSE website.

So just that kind of review of my workload. Um, and you know, work demands, thinking about what are the main sources of stress within the workplace and putting a plan in place that's going to address those main sources of stress and monitoring that plan. So it's not enough just to put it in because if we don't revisit it, then of course we don't know if it's worked or had an impact.

So making sure we're monitoring it on a regular basis. And then for ourselves, you know, we need to, we need to be making some choices too, making sure we're taking regular breaks through the working day, even if it's two minutes, get up, you know, step away from the screen or whatever your main task is, have a stretch, go and make a cup of tea, have a chat with someone if you can, you know, these short breaks.

Even though they're tiny, there might be thirty seconds or a minute, are really important for, you know, just bringing us back down, addressing those stress levels, setting clear boundaries around work. This is one of the things that is a real problem. And actually we see it a lot in people who are burnt out.

They, you know, that, that, Boundary between work and home life is just gone. So they're answering emails in the middle of the night. They're not taking holidays. They're taking all their work on holiday with them. So just reassessing those boundaries so that you are making sure you have protected time away from work at the weekends, in the evenings.

taking holidays and so on. And I would also say talk to someone because we know social support is an incredibly, you know, important factor when it comes to our well being. It's really well established that our social networks protect us against stress. So once we talk to someone, we're opening up the opportunity to access support.

00:25 Fay Wallis:

And I suppose with that talking, it's not necessarily about someone else being able to tell us all the answers. I think just even being able to vocalise how we're feeling, just that simple act can make you feel so much better, can't it?

00:25 Dr Jo Burrell:

Absolutely. I mean, it doesn't have to be a professional. It can be a friend, a family member, a colleague, just, um, As you say, articulating, putting into words what it is we're experiencing helps us to understand it.

And understanding it takes us a step closer to a solution. So just having someone listen to us, I think we really undervalue the importance of listening and being listened to. But we can probably all think of times in our lives when someone else has just listened to us, when we've just needed to offload, whether we're upset or angry or whatever it is, Those moments when someone has taken the time to really listen to what we have to say and how valuable that's been, you know.

So just talking to someone and having someone listen can be incredibly useful.

00:26 Fay Wallis:

And as far as listening is concerned, what I was really pleased to see is that a little while ago now, the CIPD launched a free well being helpline for anyone who works in HR and is a member. So I'll make sure that I share a link to that in the show notes for anybody who wasn't aware of that before. And that's not just about being able to talk to anyone. That's about getting professional support, which of course is something that you offer as well. And you've, you've mentioned a little bit about it. Did you want to tell us a bit more about it?

00:27 Dr Jo Burrell:

Sure, absolutely. I mean, I would say if you think that you're suffering from burnout, then actually professional help is probably what you need. You know, the, the need for professional help increases the more you're, you are affected by stress and the more it's compromising you and your functioning and your wellbeing.

So our burnout clinic we launched a fairly recently, it is a coaching programme which starts with a burnout profiling session, which is really just about identifying your unique burnout indicators. So what are the things that are contributing to your burnout? The main sources of stress. and factors that are contributing to your burnout.

And then we spend a number of sessions focusing down on those factors and developing skills and strategies to address them. And alongside that, we also make available our online resilience course, because what we want is not just, just for people to recover from burnout, but also to develop resilient skills to protect them as they go forward in their lives.

So we want people to be kind of future proofed against stress. And we know that resilience skills really help with that. So you get a program of coaching and access to the course so that you get, you know, that resolution, but also ability to be able to grow and develop and rebound and become more resilient over the longer term.

00:28 Fay Wallis:

I think that's going to be so helpful for people to know whether that's around seeking support for themselves, or if they're listening to this episode because they're thinking about how they would like to address stress and burnout within their workplace. There's so much that you've shared with us that I think is really easy and Well, easy is the wrong word, simple, just because something's simple, it doesn't mean it's easy, but it's simple, that it's actionable, that people can take away and do for themselves right now.

I think what would be wonderful is if you're able to share with us a real life example of when you've helped someone in this situation. So perhaps where they have been suffering from stress or they're at the point of burnout or perhaps they, perhaps they have reached burnout, I think hearing about what that support looks like, how you spoke to them, the kind of things they did to be able to recover and not be in that situation anymore.

It would be wonderful if you're able to do that.

00:29 Dr Jo Burrell:

So for the purposes of confidentiality, what I've brought to talk about is a sort of amalgamation of some of the cases or, you know, people that I've worked with, because obviously I don't want to reveal too many personally identifying pieces of information.

So we'll call this person Rachel and, um, and she came. To me for coaching at a point at which, you know, she was experiencing all the classic signs and symptoms of burnout. She was an HR professional. She was in quite a senior position in her organization and she was feeling absolutely exhausted. She was feeling physically and emotionally exhausted.

In fact, she'd just come back from a break, uh, an Easter break, and she thought that that was going to be enough for her to feel better, but it just wasn't at all. I think that was a point at which she went, okay, I need to do something because she, she'd had a break. She'd gone on that break thinking of this will resolve things for me.

And actually she just felt a sense of dread about going back to work again. She was feeling very disconnected from work. She'd lost her kind of passion. She's someone who'd really, you know, who's quite high flying and quite driven, um, who'd achieved a lot in her career. She was really noticing that she was struggling with some of the more challenging and difficult aspects of her work.

Whereas previously she had a real sense of, uh, I don't know, of strength and achievement. She'd, she'd been someone who was known for being really good at, you know, some of the more challenging aspects of her role. And she was very anxious, as I said, you know, she was one of those people who was experiencing a huge amount of anxiety just about going into work, you know, that Friday night, sorry, Sunday night before going into work, you know, just lots of anxiety about all, all sorts of aspects of work.

And, and I think lots of concern about letting people down. You talked about that earlier, Fay, about that fear of letting people down. Um, and I actually when I first met her, I was extremely concerned about her and I was concerned that actually what she was experiencing was, you know, clinical levels of depression, I was ready to say to her, I think you probably going to need to take some significant amount of time off work.

But as we started talking, we started to kind of unpick things a bit. And actually she was able to work on some things and it was great to see. She didn't actually take any time off work. So it was an amazing, you know, she had an amazing turnaround through having just reached out for some help, really.

And what we did was we tried to identify, you know, what are the behaviors that are contributing to, you know, the burnout. So things like overwork, um, you know, working extremely long hours. excessively working, taking everything on. So she was one of those people who would just take it all on. She was one of those people who would always take on trickiest jobs.

She felt it was her, she had a kind of heightened sense of responsibility, I would say. She had this really strong, strong sense of feeling that she should do it, and that she should protect other people from doing some of the most difficult things. And she found it very difficult to say no. to things and and to be assertive around her own needs.

And, we explored, you know, what's contributing to this behavior. Cause actually this, that's the observable bit. That's a bit that we might be able to see that other people might be able to see at work, but what's going on underneath. And, you know, what we revealed was, of perfectionism of high standards and associated feelings of guilt.

You know, guilt was a very common feeling for her, no guilt about letting people down of concerns about not doing enough and about not achieving those, those expectations that she was placing on herself, thinking that other people had. those expectations without actually testing that out, you know, and, you know, really striving over a very long period of time to achieve targets that were probably unachievable.

And so in the end, you know, it felt like it was inevitable. She was going to reach a period of burnout. And so we worked together really just on. on recalibrating her way of thinking about work and herself on setting more realistic targets on really addressing some of those overly negative thoughts that she was having about herself and sometimes applying to other people.

You know, she was saying to herself, they think this about me, they expect this about me when we hadn't actually necessarily tested that out or asked. still found out. And sometimes what we're doing is we're experimenting. I'm sending people out there to go, well, why don't you ask? You think this person believes this or expects this of you?

Where's the evidence that that's the case? Why don't you go and ask? So actually I encouraged her to have a conversation with her manager. And, you know, sometimes with people that takes a bit of time and, you know, certainly not interested in pushing people to have conversations with people they don't feel comfortable to have conversations with.

I'm interested in finding where are the doors that are slightly open that we can push a bit. And I guess what I mean by that is who's there in the organization that has a bit of power and influence who can be your ally, who can help you. So it might not be your manager. It might be someone else. But in this case, she did go and speak to her manager and we talked through what will you say?

How will you set that meeting up? Because these are things that people find very difficult, particularly when, when they think that that person's going to judge them, you know? So it's kind of about addressing that, you know, helping someone to understand we might have that expectation, but it's not necessarily going to happen.

So there's a quite a bit of planning and thinking through. And some of it, as I said, was about testing out, does her manager really expect, have these expectations of her? And, and, and I guess what, what happened was that she had a really, was able to have a really honest and open conversation with her manager.

And her manager was able to talk to her about, you know, what aspects of your role are really causing you the most stress? What are you finding overwhelming? What's too much for you? Where can we start to, you know, put some boundaries in place, reduce some of the pressures. And actually her manager was able to say, I don't expect you to take on all the most difficult, you know, pieces of work.

I want you to actually, a manager was able to say, I want you to delegate a bit more. You know, I want you to identify some people who are going to take on some of these other things. And we put a plan in place. She put a plan in place with her manager. And she said, I want you She reviewed that plan, you know, regularly, and I guess working together meant that we were able to really address her approach to work, some of the factors that were impacting her stress levels that she was bringing to work.

And also we were able to address some of the factors in her work environment that were contributing to her high levels of stress. And, you know, just recognizing that her manager didn't have the expectations she thought they had. Was really important and recognizing that her manager was willing to support her and wanted to support her because, you know, people who, who are like this, who are driven, who care, they're real assets, you know, in a company, people want to keep them because they care, they want to do a good job.

They're valuable assets. So often people who come to me are surprised to discover that managers. want to do what they can to support them. And the other thing I would say is that, you know, as I said, our, in our burnout clinic, people who are accessing that service, have access to our resilience online course as well.

And so just being able to develop some skills to take forward things to be applying day to day was also really helpful in ensuring that Rachel wasn't, wasn't going to get to that point again. You know, protecting her from getting to that point of chronic stress and burnout, you know, recognizing it early, but just like I said, doing things day to day that about looking after herself, you know, prioritizing her own wellbeing, her self care and so on was really important in, in, you know, because I think what's important for me is, is making sure that the impact that I have in the work that I do with people is sustainable, that it's lasting because.

Much as I love the people that I work with, I don't want them to come back.

00:37 Fay Wallis:

Oh, well, thank you so much for sharing that example. I think if you've never sought out professional help for something like this, it can be a bit hard to envisage what it's going to be like and what you can expect from it because we'll all have seen stuff on TV or in the movies and, you know, that's obviously not necessarily going to be what it's actually like to do in real life.

So I hope that for anyone listening who hasn't sought out professional help before and is thinking it might be a good idea to That helps put their mind at rest about what it could actually be like to go through that and to experience it. And even for people who have sought professional help before and are thinking, Oh, maybe actually now is a good time to do it again.

It's just that helpful reminder when I had to have time off of work all those years ago, where I had horrible anxiety. I had professional help at the time, I had counselling, and as you were just talking, it was reminding me of that, and actually what it was like and why it was so helpful, and oh gosh, if only I'd accessed that earlier on, if only I'd been able to recognise those signs before it got to the point where I just couldn't take myself into work anymore.

So, thank you again. It's invaluable. And unfortunately, we're coming towards the end of our time together today, but I'm intrigued to know what your answer is going to be. We're at the point of the interview where I ask pretty much every guest who comes on the show if they'd be happy to share their nonfiction book recommendation or a confidence building tip.

So what would you like to recommend to us today?

00:39 Dr Jo Burrell:

So I'd like to recommend a book called Work in Progress, which is by Gethin Nadin. Some people might have heard of Gethin. So Gethin is also a psychologist, not, not the same type of psychologist as me. Um, but I think we're aligned in the sense that we see evidence based approaches is hugely important.

So, uh, you know, as someone who comes from an academic background and Gethin does too, you know, we place a lot of value in the evidence. What does this tell us about what's effective? And I think this book is an incredibly fascinating and impressive look at the evidence around workplace well being. You know, he really uses the evidence to argue the case.

for implementing, uh, interventions, program support and that, and that's going to be a range of different things because it's horses for courses and different needs and etc, etc. But he really uses the evidence base, the hard data to argue the case for supporting people's well being within the workplace.

And I think it's a really fantastic read and fascinating read. So I highly recommend it.

00:40 Fay Wallis:

Oh, you've sold it to me, Jo. I'm going to definitely have to go out and get that. It sounds so interesting. And you're just making me think with this whole conversation and the book recommendation, how overdue this episode is.

Because at the start of every single episode of HR Coffee Time, I say it's here to help you have a successful and fulfilling HR or people career without working yourself into the ground. And this part has always been really important to me, Because I know how much stress and pressure HR and people professionals often are under, and I don't want them to ever feel like they just have to keep on working or get to the point where they're going to burn out.

So I can't thank you enough really for sharing your expertise and ideas and book recommendation with us today. But for anyone listening who would like to get in touch with you, or they'd like to learn more about your work, what is the best way of them doing that?

00:41 Dr Jo Burrell:

So you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I am Dr. Jo Burrell. Please do. I'm talking a lot about wellbeing, mental health, and those sorts of things on, on LinkedIn. Our website is ultimateresilience. co. uk. And if you would like to download a copy of the report, the HR mental wellbeing report, you'll see that there's a link on our homepage in order to do that.

So please come along and have a look.

00:41 Fay Wallis:

And I've downloaded a copy of the report and what's lovely is that afterwards you get little quite regular tips via email to help you with building resilience and your well being. So that was a nice surprise I hadn't expected to get and hopefully it'll be a nice surprise for anyone else who signs up.

But all that leaves me to say now Jo is just a huge thank you. I think I've said thank you so many times haven't I? Hopefully that shows that it's heartfelt and I really do appreciate you coming and I'm looking forward to us catching up again soon.

00:42 Dr Jo Burrell:

Thank you so much Fay, it's been a real pleasure.

00:42 Fay Wallis:

That brings us to the end of this episode. I really hope it's been helpful and interesting. I've added all the links to the resources that Jo mentioned in the show notes for you, so you can easily find them. All the show notes are on my website, Bright Sky Career Coaching. All you have to do is go to the website, click on HR Coffee Time Podcast, scroll to episode one hundred and twenty three, and you'll find the show notes there, ready and waiting for you.

Now that there are more than one hundred and twenty episodes of HR Coffee Time, I know it can feel like a lot of episodes to look through to find the ones that are going to be most useful for you. So I've started creating podcast playlists and adding them to the website as well. You can find them by scrolling down to the bottom of the main HR Coffee Time podcast page on my website.

If you're listening to this episode very soon after it's first released, you'll see there are only a couple of playlists available at the moment, but I have lots more to come. I'm aiming to add one a week over the next few weeks for you because I have at least 14 playlist topics planned for you. I'll be adding today's episode to a playlist that I've called Build Resilience and Handle Stressful Situations.

If you haven't come across the idea of playlists before, they are just a collection of episodes that are all to do with one theme or topic. So in the Build Resilience and Handle Stressful Situations playlist that this episode is being added to, you'll also find things like episode 52, two ideas to help you bounce back from a tough day at work.

Episode ten, tackling stress and building resilience with Adele Stickland. Episode forty three, the one thing that will boost your resilience throughout your HR career, with Tom Cleary. And there are also episodes in the playlist that are designed to help you navigate your way through situations at work that may feel particularly difficult and stressful.

So they are episodes like episode twenty two, How to Handle Conflict at Work with Ginny Radmall, episode eighty six, How to Stop Other People Taking Credit for Your Ideas in Meetings. Something that I know can feel very difficult and frustrating and stressful. And episode forty one, Three Tips to Build a Better Relationship with a Difficult Person at Work.

I haven't run you through every single episode that is in that playlist, so that's the playlist called Build Resilience and Handle Stressful Situations. There are a few other episodes as well, so please do go ahead and take a look at the full playlist after you finish listening to this episode. I really hope that you're going to enjoy diving into it.

Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end today, especially as it's been a slightly longer episode than normal. I hope you have a great rest of your day, and I'm looking forward to being back again soon with a brand new episode for you.