We Need to Change the Conversation on Burnout
We need to have a serious conversation about burnout. The last few years have put us all through the wringer in one way or another. Continued unchecked police abuse on Black communities, white supremacist insurrections at the U.S. and state capitols, COVID-19, attacks on medication abortion access, record level job losses (particularly among people of color), out of control wildfires on the West Coast, forced sterilizations at an ICE detention center — the list goes on and on. (And that was on top of the earlier years of the racist and xenophobic Trump administration.) People are exhausted, stressed, anxious, and lonely.
In response, (good) employers have been promoting messages of self-care and sending employees wellness resources that include tips like turning off the news, taking a soothing bath, meditating, and connecting with friends and family virtually.
So what’s wrong with that? Everything.
Repeat after me: employers — not employees — are responsible for preventing burnout.
Even repro-focused, social justice-oriented employers. Even cash-strapped non-profit employers. All employers need to take responsibility and ownership of staff burnout.
This is not to say that employees can’t do anything. Everyone is responsible for identifying their own unique stress levels and determining if they may be suffering from burnout. But it is unfair to put the onus of burnout prevention and management on employees. Wellness resources that focus on individual action do nothing to change organizational culture that exacerbates burnout.
Organizational leadership is responsible for creating organizational culture, developing and enforcing HR policies, and managing employees. In the same way that managers are responsible for ensuring that staff have the resources and tools they need to succeed in their jobs, prevent harassment in the workplace, and ensure that policies do not discriminate against employees, it is management — not staff — who owns the primary responsibility for preventing and managing employee burnout.
So what can managers actually do to address burnout? Here are five ideas.
Recognize what burnout looks like so you can determine if your staff are burning out. Burnout is the result of too much stress over a sustained period of time. When facing stressful situations, our bodies react in the same way they do when faced with fear: they fight, flee, freeze, and/or fawn. But what does this look like in an office environment?
Fight. A person with a fight response will become more confrontational. They may exhibit more signs of cynicism, anger, and irritability, or they may yell, argue, or try to undermine others more than usual.
Flee. A person with a flee response will distract themselves with less stressful work or excuse themselves from work entirely. (They are literally trying to flee the current stressor.) They may appear to have become flakey or to have lost focus because they are unable to accomplish their tasks.
Freeze. A person with a freeze response will stop in their tracks. They may appear overwhelmed and stuck, and may fail to move work forward or be unable to make decisions.
Fawn. A person with a fawn response will continue to say yes to work in hopes of getting approval and shielding themselves from future stress. People who fawn tend to be workaholics or high-performers (people who are more likely to have a codependent relationship with work). When experiencing burnout, they may continue to ignore their own feelings of burnout until their physical or mental health suffers significantly.
Dive into the data to determine if there are disparities in burnout. If employees who identify as a minority within your organization are burning out and leaving the organization at higher rates than their non-minority counterparts, that is a sign of deeper systemic issues in workplace culture. Likewise, see how many staff people have an excess of PTO/vacation time — is there a pattern about who takes time off and who doesn’t? Do employees who identify as a minority utilize wellness resources as much as their counterparts? Is there a pattern about who gets promotions, personal development resources, or other training opportunities to learn new skills and grow professionally? Management can take the lead on collecting and analyzing this data to see if and where a disparity may exist.
Prioritizing diversity and inclusion in your workplace requires a more equitable viewpoint of burnout prevention as well. If a disparity exists, hire an outside consultant who specializes in equity, diversity, and inclusion to interrogate the organization’s work culture, policies, and practices. If you can’t afford that, do some real, honest digging into why the disparity may exist. Importantly, while management should solicit employee input during this process, the responsibility to implement and shift culture cannot and should not rest on employees. Likewise, hiring a consultant does not itself create change — it is on management to implement and enforce the action items identified by the consultant.
(I use the term minority to be all-inclusive of various subgroups: BIPOC, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, parents or other caregivers, etc.) This is not to understate that different people face different circumstances and may experience burnout differently. BIPOC individuals may be experiencing race-based traumatic stress and/or may be experiencing burnout from well-intended but exhausting calls for diversity and inclusion efforts alongside typical workplace stress. Parents may be facing all-consuming 24/7 demands during this unique time, which can cause them to burnout at home and at work. LGBTQ+ individuals have historically faced widespread discrimination in the workforce, and people with disabilities may forgo the accommodations they need out of fear that their employers will consider the accommodations too costly and put disabled employees at the top of the list for future layoffs. Not to mention that some people have intersectional identities and may be facing multiple layers of microaggressions and trauma, all of which can exacerbate burnout.)
Block off regular times for staff to unplug and recharge. Blocking off time is more essential than ever as people continue to work from home, provide caregiving without outside help, have fewer boundaries between work and home life, and deal with the oppression of blatant white supremacy and injustice while in isolation. Consider having a meeting-free block every day and encourage staff to use that time to take a break, take care of personal tasks, or do what they need to recharge. (A two-hour break around lunch time, for example.) Alternatively, have a meeting-free day once a week (and understand that staff will not be spending the entire day working). Does your organization require being “on” 24/7, such as having to respond to political events or having to provide patient care? Create a rotating schedule so that people can regularly cycle off and have time to recharge.
Give staff sufficient time off to manage burnout — and model good behavior in taking time off yourself. Employees should know that they can use sick time for mental health days, therapy appointments, and other health care they need to manage their wellbeing. PTO and vacation days should be used regularly to unplug and unwind. Importantly, if you are a boss who frequently says you are taking time off but then responds to emails and attends meetings, you are effectively telling employees that you don’t respect time off. Plus, you are putting yourself at risk of burnout.
Do not penalize staff who take time to manage burnout. In the event a staff person has to take off substantial time to manage burnout, make sure you do not purposefully or inadvertently penalize them for taking the time off. For example, if you considered promoting someone before their burnout occurred, continue to provide that path to the employee when they return to work. In fact, a change in job responsibilities or additional reward for their work may help stave off burnout in the future! (This should also be done for people returning from other forms of leave, including parental leave and medical leave.)
Employers need to take burnout seriously and do more than encourage employees to take bubble baths and meditate. Let’s take the rest of 2021 to get on the right path and actually take care of ourselves and each other.
Davida Silverman
Davida Silverman is the former Associate Director of Public Policy at Planned Parenthood Federation of America and alumna of the If/When/How Reproductive Justice Legal Fellowship Program and Georgetown Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program. She has managed employees and interns in the nonprofit space and has worked at nonprofits of varying size (25-500+ people). A recovering workaholic who experienced burnout herself, she now prioritizes time for activities outside of work, which include parenting her 3-year old daughter, having long phone calls to catch up with friends scattered across the world, and volunteering as a board member and advisory committee member of two nonprofits that aim to address the stark racial disparities in maternal health care and advance health equity for low-income people of color.