Six early predictors of burnout in the workplace

A consistent theme throughout the research literature on organizational risk factors for employee burnout is the problematic relationship individuals and their environment. Research performed by Michael Leiter and Christina Maslach (Maslach and Leiter 2008) shows there are 6 key domains which may help predict employee burnout in a workplace setting: Workload, Control, Reward, Community, Fairness, and Values.

Workload

When work demands more from you than what you are able to achieve as an individual, this will lead to an increase in stress and exhaustion from lack of recovery. Occasional periods of high workload (such as when racing to meet a critical deadline, or responding to an immediate crisis) need not lead to burnout. It becomes a problem however when the demand placed on you exceeds your capacity for an extended period of time, where you are unable to get enough downtime in between for rest and recovery.

A commonly discussed source of burnout is overload: job demands exceeding human limits. Increased workload has a consistent relationship with burnout, especially with the exhaustion dimension (Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Maslach et al., 2001; Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998)

A sustainable workload, in contrast, provides opportunities to use and refine existing skills as well as to become effective in new areas of activity (Landsbergis, 1988).

Control

People typically want to feel in control and have autonomy over their work. We don’t enjoy being micromanaged and we like to feel that we have a say in decisions that affect our work and the environment we operate in.

The demand– control theory of job stress (Karasek & Theorell, 1990) has identified the importance of personal control in the workplace. A major control problem occurs when people experience role conflict, and many burnout studies have found a strong relationship between role conflict and the exhaustion dimension of burnout (Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Maslach et al., 1996). Role ambiguity (the absence of direction in work) is also associated with greater burnout, but not as consistently as that of role conflict;

Reward

In order for work to be motivating rather than draining, there needs to be a reward in doing that work. This can be monetary (salary), but receiving recognition from colleagues and managers is another big factor. Seeing how the work you do benefits and helps others is another example.

The results of various studies have shown that insufficient reward (whether financial, institutional, or social) increases people’s vulnerability to burnout (e.g., Chappell & Novak, 1992; Glicken, 1983; Maslanka, 1996; Siefert, Jayaratne, & Chess, 1991). Lack of recognition from service recipients, colleagues, managers, and external stakeholders devalues both the work and the workers and is closely associated with feelings of inefficacy (Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Maslach et al., 1996).

Community

The more you feel as if you’re part of a team where everyone helps each other out, the more supported you’ll feel and the less likely you’ll be to get burned out. Support from your direct manager plays an especially important role here.

Community is the overall quality of social interaction at work, including issues of conflict, mutual support, closeness, and the capacity to work as a team. Burnout research has focused primarily on social support from supervisors, coworkers, and family members (Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Greenglass, Fiksenbaum, & Burke, 1994; Greenglass, Pantony, & Burke, 1988; Maslach et al., 1996). Distinct patterns have been found for informal coworker support and supervisor support (Jackson, Schwab, & Schuler, 1986; Leiter & Maslach, 1988). Supervisor support has been more consistently associated with exhaustion, reflecting the supervisors’ impact on staff members’ workload.

Fairness

We all want to be treated fairly. Fairness does not necessarily imply everyone needs to be treated precisely equal, but interactions and the social dynamics between groups and individuals should be fair and just.

Fairness is the extent to which decisions at work are perceived as being fair and equitable. Relevant research on procedural justice (e.g., Lawler, 1968; Tyler, 1990) has shown that people are more concerned with the fairness of the process than with the favorableness of the outcome.

Research based on these theoretical frameworks has found that a lack of reciprocity, or imbalanced social exchange processes, is predictive of burnout (e.g., Bakker, Schaufeli, Sixma, Bosveld, & vanDierendonck, 2000; Schaufeli, van Dierendonck, & van Gorp, 1996). Fairness has also emerged as a critical factor in administrative leadership (e.g., Laschinger & Leiter, 2006; White, 1987). Employees who perceive their supervisors as being both fair and supportive are less susceptible to burnout and are more accepting of major organizational change (Leiter & Harvie, 1997, 1998)

Values

Lastly, alignment of people’s own personal values against those of the organization they work for can have an impact on engagement and burnout. When organizational values don’t align with your personal values, there’s a greater chance you’ll be doing work that you don’t enjoy or even actively disagree with, which is a drain on your mental well-being.

Recent research has found that a conflict in values is related to all three dimensions of burnout (Leiter & Harvie, 1997), and a structural model of burnout suggests that values may play a key role in predicting levels of burnout and engagement (Leiter & Maslach, 2005). On the positive side, consistent organizational and personal values on knowledge sharing are associated with greater professional efficacy (Leiter, Day, Harvie, & Shaughnessy, 2007).

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