Are you aware of the early warning signs of burnout in yourself and your team?

In this week’s solo episode of the Happier at Work podcast, I delve into the pervasive issue of burnout in the workplace. With staggering statistics highlighting the financial impact of burnout on businesses globally, I explore its definition, dimensions, and the profound effects it has on both individuals and organisations. I share some personal insights and experiences to shed light on how burnout sneaks up and what we can do to prevent it. By understanding both internal and external drivers, this episode provides valuable strategies for individuals and leaders to manage and mitigate burnout effectively.

The main points include:

• Understanding the three dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy.
• Recognising the signs of burnout in yourself, like the desire to constantly take on more work, and its phases.
• Addressing the personal impacts, such as health deterioration and strained relationships.
• Examining how burnout affects organisations through turnover, absenteeism, and lowered productivity.
• Identifying internal drivers behind burnout, including the desire to perform and prove oneself.
• Learning external factors contributing to burnout, like high pressure and lack of psychological safety.
• Implementing strategies for individuals, such as setting boundaries and taking breaks.

Remember, burnout is not only costly but preventable, so I urge you to take a proactive approach to tackle burnout both for yourself and within your organisation.

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

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Previous Episodes:

72: Dealing with Work Burnout with Lindsay Recknell

117: How to Avoid Burnout by Working Smarter with Aoife O’Brien

174: The Role of Emotions in Workplace Dynamics with Dr. Lola Gershfeld

Recording in progress. Burnout costs UK companies £51,000,000,000 annually according to Deloitte. According to McKinsey, burnout is one of the leading causes of employee turnover. And globally, according to the WHO, globally, it costs organizations $1,000,000,000,000 every year. It's a pretty shocking statistic, in some ways, maybe not surprising, especially if you've kind of been listening to what's been going on in the world. It's not surprising that people are feeling that. In today's episode of the award winning Happy at Work podcast, which is the podcast for people first leaders all about career and culture. I'm going to share my own thoughts on burnout, what causes it, some of the solutions that we can have around it as well.

But first, I wanted to talk about a definition of burnout. What actually is it? So the academic definition has 3 dimensions. That's emotional exhaustion. So just feeling like you're emotionally exhausted, like you don't have anything else left to give, that you don't care that much for anything anymore. And that's the kind of, you know, full on stage of burnout. Then the next dimension around that is cynicism and detachment from work. So kind of having a negative attitude and not really caring that much about the work that you're doing before. Maybe it was something that lit you up previously, but now it's kind of a bit like not really that interested.

Things that you really got excited about before are no longer that exciting to you. Then the 3rd dimension is reduced professional efficacy. So this basically means that you're not showing up as product as productive as you were previously and that you're not delivering the same kinds of results. You're not getting the same kinds of of outcomes for the same kind of input that you're putting into the work that you're doing. So they're the 3 dimensions, emotional exhaustion, cynicism and detachment from work, and reduced professional efficacy. It's worth noting as well that sometimes people confuse burnout with stress. It's not just stress, it's prolonged and it has a negative impact on both our physical and our mental well-being. And I suppose my question to you listening today is do you know what the signs are? So I kind of was a bit confused about burnout for a while because when I could sense I was burning out, I felt like I wanted to do more, which is kind of against the grain of what most people think.

Like, I got really excited about things and kept saying yes, and I wanted to take on more and more work. And this is how I know that this is an early sign, an early warning sign for me of burnout. And when I did a bit of research into this, I found that there are actually 5 different phases. So that first phase is the honeymoon phase where you're really energetic and you say yes to things and you're quite excited about the work that you're doing. Then the onset of stress begins but you push on through anyway. You just keep going. Then the third phase is the chronic stress. So this is when the cracks begin to appear and your productivity starts to dip.

Number 4 then is burnout. It's when you get the sense of exhaustion when that really kicks in, when you just don't have the energy anymore. But if you don't get help, if you don't get support for this, that can turn into habitual burnout. So that's when you're just cruising along and but you have this underlying sense of exhaustion and waning productivity and you just don't care for yourself anymore, but you do need to seek out that help. Now I want you to talk about the impact because there are negative impacts on both individuals and organizations. So if you think about this from your own personal perspective, but also think about it from the perspective of those around you. So if you're leading a team, think about that from their perspective as well or how to support those people if they could be going through a burnout or if burnout could be something that that happens in the future. So the first is the personal impact, and that's focusing on work to the detriment of health and relationships.

And this is definitely something that I can relate to. When you work long hours, when you say no to things because you have too much work on, when you forget to exercise, I say forget when you opt not to exercise or or just get outside for a walk because you have too much work on or you're you're putting work at the heart of everything. So you're focusing much more on your work, and that is to the detriment of your own physical mental health, but also on relationships as well if you can't spend time with the people that you love. So from a mental health perspective then and a personal impact, it's the anxiety that it brings. It's the depression, but it's also that loss of drive. So things that previously you got quite excited about, especially from a work perspective, you're just a bit meh. You just don't really have that drive for those things. You don't have the interest for those things anymore.

And then from a physical health perspective, so if you're not prioritizing exercise and looking after yourself and you're probably not eating well either, then it's gonna have a knock on impact. It can cause sleep problems. It can cause fatigue and all sorts of other types of health problems as well. So that's the personal impact. On the organizational impact, I did say at the start of this episode the the numbers, like the numbers are pretty staggering. And maybe if you can think about what that means within your own organization or even within your own team from a productivity perspective, from a numbers perspective as well, what are the losses that you could be incurring because people are experiencing burnout? So the organizational impact, the big one here is turnover. So it being one of the leading causes of people leaving organizations, they're leaving because they feel like they have too much workload, they can't say no, they can't speak up, and they're leaving the organizations. So that's a a big one for organizations because estimates say it can cost an organization between 30% and 200% of a person's salary if they leave that organization.

So for the ease of numbers let's say someone's earning 50 grand then to replace them it could cost up to a 100 grand to actually replace that role in the organization. So it is a high cost. Absenteeism then. So absenteeism because people are feeling stressed because they're overworked or because they end up in hospital or being cared for by someone else because they have burnt out completely. And then overall lower productivity. So the people who are there are they can't take on all of the work or the people who are there but they're burning out. They just aren't delivering as much as they were previously. I wanted to also address where does this actually come from because this is not something that we really talk about.

I think we see burnout as this external thing that happens to other people or it happens because of something else. But I did want to address the internal things that might be driving us towards burnout as well. And so the first internal driver of this could be the desire to perform. So we don't want to let other people down. We really want to perform well. Okay. So we're taking on all of this additional work. We're not saying no.

And we want to be perceived as someone who has high performance. Another aspect of this might be that we want to prove ourselves. We want to prove our worth to other people so we say yes and we show people just how much work that we can do. And, slight side note, the more work you can do doesn't relate in any way to your worth or your value. And also it's oftentimes better to do a lower amount of work and a really high quality and say no to the things that you don't really need to do. Now back to this idea of the the internal drivers, we want to show other people that we're capable. So if we've taken on a new role, if we've taken on a new project, started working with a new client, if we have joined a new organization, we want to show other people that we're capable. So we're very reluctant to speak up.

And this is the last aspect is that we're so reluctant to ask for help because it might show other people that we're not capable, that we can't do the work. There's all a host of reasons, but there are all these internal reasons driving us towards burnout. And I just wanted to acknowledge that that it's not all the external factors, but there are external factors as well. And so some of those external factors might be pressure from clients or pressure from leaders to keep working and to deliver. And just this, you know, we have to meet this quarter's targets, whatever it might be. But there's a lot of pressure to get that work done. And so we take on more or we feel like we can't say no and it we end up burning out because there's all of this pressure. And then maybe there's genuinely not enough staff on the team.

So it could be that people are out because they've burned out. It could be that people have left the organization and haven't been replaced. Another side note, I have had that in a previous organization where a very deliberate decision was made not to replace someone in the team because it would increase our profitability for the global organization, and that was seen as a very positive thing. But, actually, the impact that it had on morale was really negative. So it was actually something really bad within the within the organization and people ended up leaving as a result. So have a think about that one as well. And then there's the lack of psychological safety. So as a leader, it's up to us to create that sense of psychological safety.

So can people speak up if they have too much work on? Can they speak up about what's going on for them, about how they're coping? Creating that environment is so, so important. And how do we actually cope with this or how do we make sure that burnout doesn't get to that stage it doesn't actually happen? And so from an individual perspective, it's all about having those boundaries. And this is something that I have struggled with over the years, is having having proper boundaries between work and not work, having boundaries between work and home life. And especially in this day and age of remote work and hybrid work, it's really hard if the laptop is close by just to open it to do one more thing and you end up doing 10 more things. But here is a piece of advice, a bit of news, maybe it's not news, but your work is never going to be done. There will always always be more work to do, and it's up to us to decide when that work finishes, what that finished work actually looks like, and when we're gonna pick stuff up again. Again, a personal anecdote for me, I have this inner drive and especially because I'm running my own business, it's like, oh, Saturday is a whole free day. There's no meetings I could do, catch up on all that work that I need to do.

And then I don't do it on Saturday. And then I think, oh, well, Sunday is a it's a whole day. You know, there's no meetings on Sunday. I had I would have a whole run of of work that I could get done on Sunday. And guess what? I don't do it on Sunday. And then I think Monday, I usually keep Mondays free to do deep work. And so I get to Monday, and I think now I have a full day, and I've had rest over the weekend as well. So there is that temptation, I think, to pick stuff up at the weekend and out of office out of hours, but creating those boundaries between work and home life is so so important.

Another really important thing is taking breaks. So whether that is micro break during the day, so just taking 5 minutes before the next call, close your eyes, breathe, maybe do a short meditation, a break to get outside and walk around the block for 10 minutes. It doesn't have to be a long time, but just building in those breaks throughout your day can really help to improve your brain health by just getting outside, getting some fresh air, or just taking a break from thinking about work all the time. Breaks in the context then of actually having a holiday, having a proper holiday, and not just maybe a day here and there, but taking a proper, proper break. I know for me, I had 3 well, more than 3 weeks off over the Christmas holidays, and it did me the world of good. It did take me a little bit of time to get back in to get those cogs moving again. But actually, for me, it did me the world of good to have that break from work and not even really think about it. So have a think about when you're having those longer breaks throughout the year as well.

And then the third aspect of getting, individual from, you know, getting individual support is actually asking for that support and feeling safe enough to say, listen, I I can't really handle the workload right now or is there something that we can do about these priorities? Is there something we can do about these deadlines, whether you need to speak with your client, whether you need to speak with your leader, whatever it might be, or having that sense of autonomy that I I can decide what I do and what I don't do, and therefore I have the opportunity to cut out some of the work that I'm doing. It doesn't need to be done at all, or I can delegate it to someone else, whatever that might look like. Now thinking about it from the organizational perspective and as a leader, it's about creating psychological safety. We have talked about psychological safety so many times on this podcast. I'm not going to kind of beat around, you know, all of the different aspects that we've talked about in relation to that. It is one of the core fundamental parts of my happier at work framework. It is about creating an environment where people think it's okay to speak up. They can speak 1 on 1 with the manager about what's going on for them.

They can speak up with the team to share what's going on with them as well. And as a leader, you've created an environment where people are not going to feel embarrassed. They're not going to feel like they're going to be ridiculed or jeered by their teammates just by speaking up about what's the reality for them or what's actually going on for them. The second aspect, and again this is a a core fundamental part of the Happier at Work framework, is all about autonomy and giving people the autonomy to decide how their work actually gets done without necessarily micromanaging them or dictating or telling them, setting clear expectations about what the outcome should be but letting them then take the reins and figure out how that work can best be done knowing that you are there for support if they need it as well. And then the 3rd aspect from an organizational or leader perspective is having regular check ins. So actually asking people how are you getting on and you don't necessarily have to listen to the first answer. So if someone says in Ireland we say often grand, you might say I'm fine. But actually digging a bit deeper into that to find out well what's going on behind that, what's really going on here, and having those genuine curious conversations.

So all of that to say that burnout is costly and it is preventable. And if you're listening to this podcast today, I would encourage you to take responsibility for yourself. If you notice the warning signs in yourself of burnout and notice in the team, are people getting energized about stuff and then they're starting to dip a little bit? Their energy is starting to wane. So just keep an eye on those things and step in and address those issues when they arise. I really hope you enjoyed today's episode. It's a topic that I'm particularly interested in because I can see that it's such a chronic issue at the moment. And do let me know what you thought. I always post about the podcast on LinkedIn.

If we're not connected there, definitely connect with me there and let me know what you thought in the comments. Recording stopped.