According to Statistics Canada, the Canadian unemployment rate dropped to 6.8% in November 2016.
Given that there are so many people looking for jobs, it’s also ironic that a large percentage of Canadian workers want nothing more than to quit. Effective organizational policies that address mental health problems at work are key in addressing burnout.
“Burnout syndrome” — that is, the fatigue, cynicism, and professional inefficacy that comes with work-related stress — may play a significant role in this trend.
Some level of stress is an inevitable part of every work experience. But at what point do those stressors become overbearing? What combination of factors makes one individual quit and another endure?
New research from PLOS one, suggests that there are at least three different subtypes of burnout, and they each relate to specific detrimental coping strategies. By administering a survey to 429 university workers of various occupations, researchers were able to gather data on the subtypes of burnout and correlate those with employees’ coping strategies.
Overall, the results indicated that overload burnout — the frenetic employee who works toward success until exhaustion — is most closely related to emotional venting. These individuals might try to cope with their stress by complaining about the organizational hierarchy at work, feeling as though it imposes limits on their goals and ambitions. That coping strategy, unsurprisingly, seems to lead to a stress overload and a tendency to throw in the towel.
Burnout that stems from boredom and lack of personal development, on the other hand, is most closely associated with an avoidance coping strategy. These under-challenged workers tend to manage stress by distancing themselves from work, a strategy that leads to depersonalization and cynicism — a harbinger for burning out and packing up shop.
The final type of burnout — the worn-out subtype — seems to stem from a coping strategy based on giving up in the face of stress. Even though these individuals want to achieve a certain goal, they lack the motivation to plow through barriers to get to it.
Because it’s possible to identify the ineffective coping strategies associated with each type of burnout, it may also be possible to develop targeted and preventative therapies.
In order to avoid burnout at work, here are some quick tips:
1. Take frequent breaks throughout the day.
2. Get out of the office at lunch time – take a quick stroll and get some fresh air.
3. Take your annual vacation leave every year – don’t roll it over to the next year thinking youll just take it another time.
4. If you have too much on your plate – discuss your workload with your boss. Have a frank discussion about lightening your workload. If you’ve been working massive amounts of overtime then its obvious that you may have too much to deal with.
5. Lastly, accept help from your colleagues whenever anyone offers. Sure you want to be in control of your files – but if there are just too many things on your place accepting help from co-workers will make things a bit easier.
Have you been experiencing burnout at work. Let us know.