#NoToBurnout

Working long hours, working overtime, even when they try to sell it to you as something “cool” and innovative, is neither. It is not agile and it is not transformation; it is the exact opposite of lean.

Burnout

is the physical, mental or emotional exhaustion caused by overexertion or stress. But it is more than being stressed or overworked. This phenomenon makes the things we once loved about our work or our life lose their meaning. It generally shows up as a feeling that there is no support, no help to get out of that situation.

Studies show that burnout can be almost as harmful to workers’ health as smoking or obesity. Its symptoms include feeling exhausted and cynical about work; you are no longer motivated by your job and you couldn’t care less what happens to it. Or in other cases you feel ineffective, unable to accomplish anything.

When you feel you are getting nothing done at work, or when your work negatively affects other aspects of your life, you are suffering from burnout. The bad part is that in extreme cases this can lead to depression and even suicide.

Causes of burnout

Research carried out at the University of California, Berkeley found six organizational risks that can produce burnout

:

1. Work overload: tasks that exceed the limits of a human being.
2. Lack of control: the inability to influence the decisions that affect your work.
3. Insufficient rewards: whether financial, institutional or social.
4. Breakdown of community: a work environment lacking in solidarity.
5. Absence of fairness: a lack of fairness in decision-making processes.
6. Conflicting values: a mismatch between the organization’s values and the individual’s values.

There is a talk by one of the researchers, Christina Maslach, which I leave here in case the subject interests you:

How can you detect it?

In their book “Accelerate”

, the authors explain that they measured the degree of burnout with the following questions:

• Do you feel fatigued or exhausted by your work?
• Do you feel indifferent or cynical about your work? Or do you feel you are not effective?
• Is your work having a negative effect on your life?

What to do about it?

Burnout can be prevented, and it is the leaders’ responsibility to keep it in check.

In IT, we can achieve this by fostering a work environment that supports employees. We must make sure the work is meaningful, and that those who carry it out understand how their job ties into meeting the organization’s strategic objectives.

The big problem with leadership is that it usually focuses on changing people while ignoring the work environment, when it is well known that a change in the environment produces vital, longer-lasting success.

To avoid burnout, according to

, we should focus on:

• Fostering a respectful, supportive work environment. An environment that emphasizes learning from mistakes rather than blame for them.
• Communicating a strong sense of purpose.
• Investing in employee development.
• Asking employees what is keeping them from achieving their goals and then fixing those things.
• Giving employees time, space and resources to experiment and learn.
• Finally, they must be given the authority to make decisions that affect their work and their role, particularly in areas where they are responsible for the outcomes.

What do you think? Is there burnout in your organization? What are you doing about it?

While I’m at it, I invite you to this Meetup where I’ll be talking about this subject and how DevOps can help avoid it: https://www.meetup.com/Santiago-Devops-and-Continuous-Delivery-Meetup/events/254322488/

NOTES:

Burnout translates literally into Spanish as “estar quemado” (being burned), but it refers to that state of total fatigue you experience with your job, that feeling that leads you to consider quitting, or simply telling it to go to hell.

“Early Predictors of Job Burnout and Engagement”, Leiter and Maslach, Journal of Applied Psychology 93.

“Accelerate. Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations.”, Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim.