Factors of Burnout

January, 13,2013

BSHS 462

Week 3

Burnout

Burnout is referred to as a state of exhaustion, whether it is physical, mental, or emotional, which is cause by excessive and tedious stress (Lewis, Packard, & Lewis, 2007)." Burnout is a very common term amongst the human service field. It is something that often happens to most individuals that work in this field. It can sometimes be the style of the individuals work style, or it may lead directly to the way the organization run their services. Stress can be very high for some individuals as they may have a ton of responsibility and are working too many hours. Areas that are defined through burnout are individual, cultural, organization; supervisory, and social support factors that all affect the factors of burnout.

Causes of Burnout

Individual: the individual that is working for the organization and the actions they are taking during work and home can often determine Burnout. The employee may be having a hard time separating working from their home life. Unable to have this separation between work and home can cause extra stress.

Organizational: Burnout can sometimes be put on the job itself and the way that it is designed for employees that are working for them. The workload may be too high for the employee to complete the work in a normal forty hours a week. This can then result in the individual brining work home to complete. It can also be difficult if the employee is on call this can cause burnout as they are needed twenty-four hours a day. With most human service positions this can be the factor of the position of being on call.

Supervisory: The supervisor may be putting too much work on the individual that they are managing. This can be difficult too determine because some individuals can handle more than others.

Social Support: It can be difficult for human service workers to relay on the community for support or assistance with their needs. If the community is experiencing a higher volume of support can highly affect the rate of burnout.

Individual Role

Job role: Job role within an organization can highly affect if burnout is going to happen. The workload may be too high for most of the organization. It can be due to lack of funds, high volumes of new clients or just bad leadership. Having too much responsibility or not being able to know how to handle that responsibility can cause problems and lead to burnout.

Prevention

"many of us spend most of our waking hours on the job more hours, in fact, than we spend with our families and friends