Burnout Paper
Having a good job and supporting your family is one if the best things in life. Nowadays jobs are so demanding and they require a lot of time apart from your loves ones. Many of us love the fact that we can provide for our families, but there are times when the job life can become overwhelming and stressful causing the individual to burnout. The following paper will address issues and preventions methods of “burnout” and what precautions one should take. Also I will discuss the identifiable phrases that can be adapted in order to deal with burnout. Burnout has the same characteristics as depression and it can be easily misinterpreted.
Burnout is actually exhaustion of work related stresses caused over time that can affect the personal goals related to their job. Although we may not necessary notice it right away it can creep up on you and you may not know. Other factors can contribute to burnout can come from the outside such as personal life, other responsibilities at home with families and even stressful events. Many of us experience bad days at work, feeling unappreciated, disconnected ourselves from co-workers and family members, and even lost focus on our goals. These are factors to burnout that should be addressed immediately.
Individual factors that can cause burnout are fairly significant and naked to the eye. Burnout is not always displayed right away and it could take some time to be noticed by you or someone else. A person’s life style plays a role because the person may have little balance and lots of work. A person who works all week pulling in more work hours may not have down time for themselves. Individuals should continue with their regular hobbies and devote some time to exercising and their personal life. Burnout can affect everyone on the job, even cultural workers.
It can be very hard for someone of culture because we may expect too much from them, or even it may difficult for them to keep up with work. Cultural workers may be absent more often at work to avoid stress issues from other co-workers that can factor burnout. Sometimes burnout has an organizational cause. In today’s organizations, everyone is doing more work in less time, and then the pressure starts to build up. Low value work, flawed work processes, or excessive performance expectations also contribute to negative stress, which, if unresolved, can lead to burnout.
Some of the common organizational causes of burnout includes the fast pace of work in general (if your work has a global component), increased demand for information and communication, driven by technologies such as e-mail, instant messaging, and PDAs an downsizing, restructuring, or change in priorities that calls for extra demands on the employees. A work environment that changes frequently also can causes the supervisors to burn out, factors such as frequent changes in policies and procedures , changes in the organizations vision, and changes in staff are all contributions to burnout.
Communication can help the individuals to cope with burnout as it is linked to social support. Social support is better because it gives you less burnout and it tends to make individual feels that they are loved and cared for. There are six categories of social support (technical support, emotional support, emotional challenge, listening, technical challenge and sharing social reality) in which they all help to identify some sort of communication and mutual obligation (Cruikshank, 2011). Burnout can come from many different factors and in order to prevent it, you must look at all the concerns associated around it.
A way that individuals can cope with burnout is to ask for help and support from your supervisor. Communicating your issues and problems will make your job less stressful, which can prevent burnout. Another way is re-vamp the work flow or processes the department uses. For example, if you have more work and less people, you may have to change how the work is distributed. Maybe temporary help can be an option to handle the workload. Setting boundaries is always helpful. When approached by a difficult task or situation, don’t give in to it, review the importance of the situation then take time to make the necessary decisions.
This can prevent mistakes in the long run that can potentially lead to burnout. If you are a person that fairly gets along with everyone as I am, I would prefer management-training programs that may help with specific needs. If the concerns are more related to behavior problems, then this could cause changes or pressures in the organization. Some ways that can reduce stress is to seek programs that focus on building personal effectiveness, such as time management, delegation, dealing with difficult employees, or adjusting to corporate change. Another way to reduce the effects of burnout is to seek employee assistance.
Many organizations have employee assistance programs (EAP) that can provide stress-management resources (Scott, 2001). As a human service manager you must be able to handle difficult situations at any given time. To assist staff with staff burnout many tools can be put into place to help overcome this barrier. One is prevention. Help staff to prevent burnout by distributing the work evenly, in case of an absence, use a back-up worker instead of waiting on that person’s return. Another prevention method is to provide classes and educational materials on a quarterly basis.
In conclusion, it is much easier on the staff and supervisors when you have support in the organization. Taking advantage of all related work programs and classes will become handy in the long run. The focus is to balance your needs against those in the organization and make the necessary changes when those issues of burnout arise. The more you manage stress in your daily life, including work and personal, the less chance you will have to burnout. The more positive you are with your goals in life, you can become more productive and motivated by what you do, not only in the workplace but in your personal life as well.
