Posted on 19 March 2018
by Issa Coultas

Introducing our blog series: Organizations Against Burnout

Burnout is a severe problem affecting many professions. It is the topic of new articles and research studies appearing every day to discuss assessment, prevention, and remediation. There are so many personal stories and resources available - it can get overwhelming!

As a company that offers products and services directly dealing with addressing burnout, we have decided to create a new blog series called Organizations Against Burnout. The aim of this series is to share stories of how organizations have tackled burnout and improved the well-being of employees, as well as share resources for successful organizational solutions to burnout.

Follow and contribute to the conversation on Twitter by using #OrgsAgainstBurnout
 

What is Burnout and Why Should I Care?

Burnout is defined as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization (or cynicism), and low personal accomplishment (or low professional efficacy). Burnout can be assessed for severity and cause, and remedied by individual intervention and sophisticated organizational change programs.

Burnout has many consequences for the individual including physical illness, increased feelings of hopelessness, irritability, impatience, and poor interpersonal relationships with family, coworkers, and others. In severe cases, burnout can cause diminished executive functioning, attention, and memory.

Burnout also has many organizational consequences including absenteeism, increased turnover, and decreased job performance. These consequences have a direct negative effect on satisfaction and quality of work.
 

Burnout prevention and remediation begins and ends with organizational change.

A lot of burnout blogs and stories in the media advise changing personal behaviors to prevent or remedy burnout. Some examples of common advice include managing exercise and sleep habits, and learning new coping strategies such as yoga and meditation. While changes to personal habits and routines can certainly help individuals become more resilient against burnout, they do nothing to address the actual areas of work that are causing stress in the first place.

Burnout has roots in worklife - solutions rest in deliberate organizational change. If the work environment continues to be overwhelming or toxic, no amount of exercise, sleep, yoga, or meditation wil alleviate burnout for good. Be an organization against burnout - create meaningful change now!
 

Get Involved with Organizations Against Burnout

1. Become a contributor to Organizations Against Burnout and share your story. We love hearing stories about teams creating better organizational environments to prevent and remedy occupational burnout. Submit your burnout story and share the why and how behind your prevention and remediation of burnout to info@mindgarden.com. We may publish your story on our website, blog, and social media pages.

2. Share your successes and frustrations with organizational solutions to burnout on social media using the hashtag #OrgsAgainstBurnout. We hope to create a community willing to converse about which burnout solutions work and why. You can also share articles, blogs, and other resources associated with organizational solutions to burnout. We hope the hashtag will help organize these resources and conversations so the community can easily access and digest important information and news about burnout.

Be sure to follow the hashtag #OrgsAgainstBurnout on Twitter and connect with Mind Garden on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to stay updated.

Ready to assess burnout in your organization?

We proudly publish the leading measure of burnout, the Maslach Burnout Inventory™, which is validated by more than 35 years of research. In combination with the Areas of Worklife Survey, this tool will assess burnout among your employees and identify key areas of strength and weakness in your organizational setting that may be causing burnout. Click here to learn more about this powerful tool.