Assessing Workplace Burnout: Is It About More Than Workload?

Burnout is one of the greatest problems facing businesses today, especially the nonprofit sector. On the topic of workplace burnout, I am a big fan of the work of two academics from Stanford, Maslach and Leiter (Full Article) who co-authored the attached study about workplace burnout. This study concluded that workload is but one out of six factors that causes workplace burnout.

The other five factors are: control, community, fairness, reward, and values. Maslach and Leiter developed an instrument that can be used in the workplace to identify the cause(s) of  burnout (a tool I have and can implement for you). They recommend that once the assessment has been completed, both the individual staff members and the organizational leaders identify steps they might take to resolve the burnout.

Burnout is a disease of your most precious asset: your human resources. Resentment builds, productivity wanes, turnover increases.  Workplace burnout invariably undermines leadership and effects the organization’s ability to impact its mission. This is a problem individuals and organizations cannot afford not to address. In the end, it is far too costly to the individuals and the organization.

If you want help in addressing this problem in your workplace, contact me and we’ll get started. 

If you have a question or a suggestion for a topic to be addressed in Coach’s Corner, please contact me.