Burnout 101: The Anatomy of Burnout
Burnout 101: The Anatomy of Burnout
Huey P. Jr. Allen | 2015
Abstract
Throughout their adult working lives people spend a significant – debatably the majority – of available time on work-related activities. In contemporary business, these work-related activities form the basis for projects and programs, evolving as temporary social systems or work systems engaged by organizational teams to accomplish particular tasks within specific time constraints. In many cases, these work-related activities begin to compete with personal, family, and spiritual commitments. Within this Petri dish of conflicting demands bound by limited personal as well as organizational resources, burnout is born and flourishes. A person’s job or focused activity is of central importance not only for positive personal identity, but also substantively contributes to a sense of positive self-worth. Consequently, it should not be surprising that a work task and its environment personifies the potential to seriously improve, or seriously impair, a person’s well-being, self-worth, and sense of organizational value. While employed in just such a highly stressful, personally demanding, and resource-limited work environment, I began to realize and understand the full effects that burnout, punctuated by stress, anxiety, and anger, could perpetuate upon an individual and the workforce in general. Extensive research on burnout and its devastating and compounding effects led to this culminating doctoral project. This final project captures and documents a work force oriented burnout workshop, along with an associated workbook, and is intended to substantiate the continuing training needs to support and sustain an organization’s primary resources – itshuman resources. In a time of increased work demands upon the employee, and decreased availability of work resources, there continues to be an alarming trend in reporting of burnout indicators. This trend is quantified and substantiated by increased sick time, employee turnover, decreased productivity, and diminished employee morale. Without senior management consideration and understanding of the personal and individualistically harmful effects of burnout, this toxin will continue to extract a toll upon organizations, and may be the final arbiter of an organization’s ultimate success or failure. My desire for this project is to inform management and train the workforce to the causes, impacts, effects, and recovery options of workforce burnout and all its implications, such that both future generations and future organizations will reap the benefits of an improved work-life balance. Indeed, this balance provides the foundation for a living, growing, evolving organization, with its successful future defined by the very lives of its organizational human resources. Indeed, no greater organizational resource exists than its human resources – its people. Absent its people, an organization is simply non-existent.