In our last blog we covered how to identify burnout risks, and how to protect yourself at the recruitment stage by spotting which organisations or job roles might pose a high risk to individuals.
In this blog, we will cover some of the steps that individuals can take to lower their burnout risk and protect their mental health at work when they find themselves in a job role or organisation that may present a higher risk.
Perhaps the best thing an individual can do to avoid burn-out is to work for an organisation that has a robust Psychosocial Risk Management plan in place to support positive workplace mental health outcomes and protect their workers from chronic stress.
But how can you choose the right job? And what other practical steps can individuals take to protect themselves from burnout and feel good at work?
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.’
How can we tell the difference, why does it matter, and what can we do about it?
Some of the greatest scientific discoveries have come about entirely by accident.
Penicillin was born when Sir Alexander Fleming took a two week holiday and returned to his lab to find that a mould had grown over elements of his research, and that the unexpected mould deterred the growth of bacteria.
It took another 12 years and the work of two chemists, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to isolate, test and turn the compound that Fleming had discovered into a useable product, and the urgency of the World War 2 effort to stimulate mass production. Penicillin saved many lives and changed the course of medicine globally.
Fleming, Florey and Chain were each awarded the Nobel prize in 1945 in Physiology or Medicine. From their efforts, we have antibiotics, and also a recipe for turning data into a useable, scaleable positive intervention.
How can we apply this to mental health in the workplace by way of Psychosocial Risk Management?
Psychosocial Risk Management and the Cane Toads of Australia are both what we call ‘Wicked Problems'.’ That is, a problem which is difficult to solve because of complex and changing requirements that interact with each other, to the point that there is no single solution.
Think about your Psychosocial Risk Management process (or any other process that has been implemented by your organisation as a way to solve a problem). Did it solve the problem? Or did it create other problems?
What does a shared hatred of bad parking have to do with Psychosocial Risk Management within a world-renowned aeronautical engineering company?
Recently, a friend told me about the staff communications channel within their new job role. The channel includes a multitude of totally non-work related employee group chats, on topics ranging from a love of cats to photos and commentary of terrible parking in their neighbourhoods.
Why would an organisation - especially one with a very serious image - encourage what some might consider frivolous oversharing of personal trivia during company time?
The answer - (in part, at least): Psychosocial Risk Management.
