You can take steps towards preventing burnout in yourself and your team. It is also important to be able to recognise if you are on the burnout spectrum so that you can take steps to alleviate the situation.
Prevention
There are organisational, interactional and personal factors that provide protection against burnout occurring. How an individual perceives their workload has a stronger influence on burnout than hours worked. In addition, self-care (across the sectors of Complete Wellbeing) helps to boost energy and resilience to protect against burnout and/or facilitate the problem solving required for decisions regarding factors causing burnout.
We also have the capacity to positively or negatively influence whether a team member develops burnout. For more details see the Protective Factors Fact sheet. Also see the Connections section.
Early detection
Whilst the features of burnout often come on gradually, being aware of the clustering of the following may help to detect it early. This then allows for action to be taken to address the underlying factors in a proactive way before burnout becomes full-blown.
- Sense of fatigue, particularly when at work, despite getting good sleep and being medically well.
- Not having enough energy left at the end of the workday to allocate to your personal life.
- Diminished interest in, or engagement with, work and work-related activities.
- Feeling annoyed or angry more often at work.
- Apathy and not caring about the quality of work completed.
