BURNOUT: FATIGUE OR FRUSTRATION

Job burnout has emerged as an important concept since the 1970s until today, and it captured something very critical about people’s experience with work.  In the occupational medical setting of some European countries with elaborated social security system, notably Sweden and The Netherlands, burnout is an established medical diagnosis.  There, physicians and other health professionals are trained in assessing and treating burnout.

Burnout, as a metaphor for the draining of energy, refers to the smothering of a fire or the extinguishing of a candle.  It implies that the fire cannot continue burning brightly unless there are sufficient resources that keep being replenished.  Burnout which refers to the draining of energy and resources is considered a work-related indicator of psychological health.  Job stress and burnout problems lead directly to health issues: physical (headaches, stomach problems, and even heart attacks), and mental (job dissatisfaction, anxiety, depression).

Burnout basically represents a mismatch between what a person wants to do and what that person must do.  It arises when there is significant disharmony between the nature of a person’s job and the characteristics of the person doing the job.  Burnout may also result from mismatch between the employee and the job environment in terms of workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values.  Role conflict will occurs when role demands are inconsistent with the person’s goals, abilities, values, or beliefs.

Burnout is characterized by:

• physical depletion
• feelings of helplessness and hopelessness
• emotional drain
• the development of negative self-concept and negative attitudes toward work, life, and other people
• a variety of negative personal outcomes, including psychological problems such as depression, irritability, helplessness, and anxiety

Burnout has no redeeming features.  It occurs in all aspects of life.  Burnout robs individuals of the will to achieve, and it contributes to the development of a lowered sense of self-esteem, decrements in work performance, cynicism, apathy, and emotional ennui.  Burnout is viewed as a syndrome of exhaustion, cynicism and decreases in professional efficacy.

Over time, employees experiencing burnout may lose the capacity to provide the intense contributions that make an impact.  The result is more like smouldering – uneventful and inconsequential.  From the employees own perspective or that of others, they accomplish less.  The 3 dimensions of burnout are:

1.         Feelings of exhaustion: relates to feelings of being overly tired and to the exhaustion of people’s emotional and physical resources;

2.         Increased cynicism with respect to one’s job: relates to a negative, indifferent attitude or to an excessively detached response to different aspects of one’s job; and

3.         A negative perception of one’s own professional efficacy: relates to feelings of incompetence and a lack of performance and productivity at work.

There are 2 distinct contributors to the experience of work life explain burnout:

1.         Persistent imbalance of demands over resources

The insufficient personnel, equipment, supplies, or space to meet the demand.

2.         Concerns motives rather than energy

Employees may have personal values that differ from the organizations.  For example, a retail salesperson may be more interested in the quality of customer service than meeting sales targets.  Or the salesperson may only want to value maximizing personal sales commissions or even developing an ongoing relationship with customers.

“Burnout” is defined as an end-stage.  The definition of “burnout” varies with its context and the intentions of those using the term.  Professionals with a psychological background see that burnout is a form of chronic distress that results from a highly stressful and frustrating work environment. The 3 levels of stress-related disorders:

1.         Distress (i.e. relatively mild symptoms that lead to only partly impaired occupational functioning);

2.         Nervous breakdown (i.e. serious distress symptoms and temporal loss of occupational role); and

3.         Burnout (i.e. work-related neurasthenia and long-term loss of the occupational role).

Emotional exhaustion is often considered to be the most significant component of burnout.  Job standardization reduces employees’ emotional exhaustion because it deals with more neutral or routine clients’ issues.  But too much standardization may lead to high lack of autonomy, lack of creativity, and lack of variety.  When employees were restricted by job standardization policies, they might perceive a loss of task control and suffer from limited job scope, resulting in boredom, and thus reducing morale, leading to lower work satisfaction and higher burnout tendencies.  Employees will feel emotionally drained by their work and lack the energy to maintain their work effort.

Another way to look at burnout is as form of withdrawal from a stressful job, where people feel detached from work (emotional exhaustion and a negative sense of accomplishment), and they also depersonalize co-workers and clients.  The source of burnout varies.  Therefore there may be a need to look beyond the work setting to get a more comprehensive understanding of burnout.  But research has only primarily focused on organisational and job factors.  Variables outside the work environment can also contribute to burnout.

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