Burnout: the imagery in that word is evocative, and perhaps one reason why the term has become popular. Why? Because the picture that burnout conjures is so very much like the experience of it.
Burned out individuals keep going, like flames across a landscape, until they run out of fuel entirely and have absolutely nothing left to give. Not one spark remains. They are quite literally ‘burned out.’
By contrast, stress can apply in degrees - more like a bush fire warning billboard. A moderate amount of stress can be both manageable and healthy.
Our stress levels can be anywhere from mild, moderate, to high, severe or catastrophic. Just as weather conditions can impact the likelihood of a fire getting out of control, so our external environments can fan the flames of our stress levels.
Stress and Burnout: What are the Signs?
According to researcher and burnout expert Christina Maslach, PhD, burnout is characterised by three signs. All three dimensions need to be present to diagnose burnout.
By contrast, a person can feel stress without experiencing each of these symptoms. Exhaustion alone, even when severe, does not characterise burnout.
The three dimensions of burnout
Emotional exhaustion - this is not simply feeling tired, but feeling completely exhausted, totally drained and wiped out, all of the time.
Depersonalisation - when people become distant from the value of their work. Their work becomes impersonal and they no longer find meaning in their work.
Personal accomplishment - when people become forgetful and/or lose their sharpness at work; when they feel like they aren’t performing as well as they should.
Image Credit: Constant Bagel Therapy
Burnout is the end result of unmanageable stressors that arise over time until the adverse response to stress becomes chronic. So what starts as stress can end in burnout.
What is workplace stress?
The World Health Organisation defines work-related stress as is “the response people may have when presented with work demands and pressures that are not matched to their knowledge and abilities and which challenge their ability to cope.”
HSE (UK): “The adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure of work or other types of demands placed on them”.
In other words work-related stress arises when the demands of our work exceed our capacity to do the work.
It is the reaction to the work, not the work itself, that defines stress.
Artist credit: James Chapman for Toggl
It is not the person, but the mismatch between the work and the person, and a lack of support systems, that results in stressors.
Imagine trying to pour a litre of water into a 500ml cup. That’s work stress.
What work-related stress looks like (the signs)
Changes in behaviour
Coming to work late or taking more time off than usual
Mood swings, irritability, an increase in arguments in teams
Reduced performance - e.g not meeting deadlines or KPIs
Changes in appearance
Signs of increased unhelpful coping mechanisms such as alcohol use
Fatigue: can manifest as pallor, twitchiness, nervousness or appearing tired
Visible loss of motivation and poor mood e.g quietness, low enthusiasm for new ideas
Artist credit: The Awkward Yeti
Changes in physical and mental health
Musculoskeletal disorders
Sickness absence - colds and flu, or more serious illness such as cardiac events, stroke
Increase in anxiety
Throwing someone into the ‘deep-end’ in a role that does not match their abilities, and not providing support systems such as training or mentorship, would be likely to cause work-related stress.
Other causes of stress can include increasing workload beyond an individual’s or a team's capacity, reducing support systems, and poor change management.
Artist credit: Work Chronicles
How can we tell the difference?
A good question to ask oneself or others when assessing whether someone is stressed or burned-out is how they feel about their work. Does work matter to them anymore? Do they enjoy the company of their workmates and being at work?
This should be assessed against how they responded to these questions before the onset of stress.
Not everyone takes meaning from their work or feels a connection with their workmates. Some of us go to work purely to pay our bills and that’s okay.
It’s when our thoughts and feelings about work turn from meaningful to cynical that we have a warning sign of burnout. If we were cynical to begin with then cynicism is not necessarily a sign of burnout!
Artist credit: Lazy Bear Comics
If an employee is perpetually late from the get-go, that’s not (necessarily) stress. It’s a change in behaviour that may be significant.
How can we be sure? Get help from a professional. Glia use the MBI (Maslach’s Burnout Inventory) in conjunction with other research-backed psychological tools to assess burnout.
Why does understanding the difference matter?
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” said Juliet to Romeo, when explaining her indifference to the surname Montague.
Names may not matter in Shakespearean tragedies, but in describing workplace hazards, they do.
Burnout and stress are not the same thing.
Approaches to recovery and prevention are different. Mixing the two up risks minimising the impact of both, and also increases the likelihood of getting our approach wrong.
Why should employers care about preventing work-related stress and burnout?
It is the law
WorkSafe NZ is clear in their definition of work-related stress as being a workplace health and safety issue rather than a response to challenge.
In other words, work-related stress is a workplace health and safety hazard that we can assess and control for, not a way to describe response to work that is challenging, complex, demanding or exciting.
If leaders find themselves asking whether an employee can ‘handle the jandal’ then this is a sign that we should take a second look at the role design of the position in question, not the person in the job.
Artist credit: Work Chronicles
Can the duties be spread? Can more time be allocated for tasks? Can more training be provided - is the role recruitment at the right level? Can more support be provided, or more down-time from challenging tasks?
Identify the stressors associated with the job, identify the supports in place and check the support is sufficient. It can be helpful to think in engineering terms - a bridge may be able to handle a certain amount of weight, if the pylons that hold it up are strong enough.
It is the employers responsibility to design work in ways that minimises work-related stress, to provide support systems to alleviate stress and to conduct a root cause analysis to understand when and why stress is occurring.
It is financially beneficial
Burnout and stress are expensive.
Data gathered by the American Institute of Stress indicates that depression and anxiety costs the global economy $1trillion US Dollars in lost productivity annually. An estimated 5 office hours of office work are lost due to presenteeism per week.
According to the AXA Mind Health Study 2022, conducted in conjunction with the CEBR (Centre for Economics and Business Research) mental ill-health costs UK employers £28 billion per year.
NZ’s Workplace Wellness Report, 2021, showed that in 2020, NZ lost about 7.3 million working days to absence. The fourth most common cause of absence was reported to be mental ill-health.
Factoring in the costs of healthcare resulting from the physical manifestations of stress (such as increased musculoskeletal problems, cardiac events, stroke and increased colds, flu and other illness) and recruitment and training costs to replace staff recovering from stress and burnout, we can see that the cost of work-related stress and burnout is enormous - both to employers directly and to the economy overall.
It is the right thing to do
DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years) is a statistical measure that WorkSafe NZ uses to calculate years of lost life and years of lost quality of life.
WorkSafe NZ estimates that work-related mental ill-health accounts for 17% of DALY’s lost to kiwis as a result of work-related illness and injury.
By contrast, acute workplace injury accounts for 11%.
Stress at work is shortening our lives and reducing the quality of our lives.
Artist credit: Dinosaur Couch, formerly Dinos and Comics
Preventing harm to our people by controlling and managing workplace stress is the right thing to do.
Our employees may not recognise or self-report stress (for good reason)
An NZ report published in 2020 by the Health Promotion Agency found that over one-third of people currently experiencing high mental distress, and almost one-fifth of people who had experienced mental distress in their lifetime, also reported being discriminated against because of their mental distress.
Mental distress-related discrimination was most commonly experienced in the workplace.
Statistics NZ, 2019, cited by WorkSafe NZ indicates that 1 in 5 Kiwis reported always or often feeling stressed by work.
Research conducted by Professor Jarrod Haar - NZ’s own burnout specialist - found that 35% of the survey population were found to be severely burned out according to the survey criteria, whereas only 4% of the respondents identified themselves as burned out.
“How do you cope under pressure?” is such a common interview-question trope, it has become a meme.
Instead of asking ‘can you work under pressure?’ ask ‘how can we make this job less pressurised?’
What can we take from all this? Kiwis are stressed, but they may not report that stress to their employers, either because they don’t recognise the severity of their stress, or because they are concerned they may experience discrimination.
Being able to “handle the jandal” is often viewed as an essential character trait in the modern workplace and demonstrating resilience to stress can be a pathway to promotion. This is a viewpoint we all need to work on resigning to the dust pile, so that people are more likely to recognise and report stress for what it is - a workplace health and safety hazard, not a character flaw.
Artist credit: K.C Green for the comic strip Gunshow
Rather, let’s focus on matching the right people to the right jobs, designing work that minimises stressors and ensuring adequate supports are in place to aid stress recovery.
Need help assessing, preventing, and supporting for stress and burnout in your workplace?
Glia is here for you.
We are a team of highly experienced registered Psychologists who are experts in the world of work.
Contact us for Psychosocial Risk Assessments, Burnout Recovery Coaching, and virtual or in-house workshops to support mental health in the workplace and reduce the impact of stress and other psychosocial hazards at work.
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