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Burnout

Job burnout is one of the top 10 health problems in today's workplace in the United States and is a persistent problem in other developed nations. Although definitions of burnout vary, generally it is a chronic and persistent feeling of emotional exhaustion related to stressful job conditions. The personal and organizational costs associated with burnout can be quite high. The factors related to the onset of burnout and to associated job and personal changes are discussed in this entry, as are ways to ameliorate burnout.

The Nature of Job Burnout

Use of the term burnout helps researchers describe a state of emotional exhaustion caused by overwork. Burnout can be seen as a negative outcome of excessive levels of perceived stress on the job. During the 1970s, researchers examined burnout in the context of early findings about its connection to decreased performance, particularly as identified in the helping professions (e.g., counseling). Recent research reports burnout in a broad array of jobs. Since the early 1990s, U.S. workers have reported a dramatic increase in their experiences of job stress, and the general public has embraced the term for those experiencing a high degree of stress or feeling frazzled, at their wit's end, and so on. The common thread is the feeling of emotional exhaustion.

Burnout as a Construct

Christina Maslach has been one of the major proponents of a three-pronged theory of burnout, in which the three prongs are emotional exhaustion, deperson-alization, and diminished personal accomplishment. Emotional exhaustion still remains the most fundamental component of burnout. Individuals experiencing depersonalization start to see and treat people as objects, and individuals experiencing a diminished sense of personal accomplishment are unable to take pride in what they do. Current research suggests that burnout should once again be viewed as a single concept highlighted by emotional exhaustion. Recently, some attempts to study job burnout focused on exhaustion. Some theories expand the concept of exhaustion to include physical, emotional, and cognitive aspects. Other recent studies focused on both exhaustion and disengagement from personal relationships as job burnout symptoms, dropping only the diminished sense of personal accomplishment from the three-pronged approach.

Precursors of Job Burnout

Research has identified a variety of factors that contribute to the development and severity of job burnout. These problems fall into two major areas: work factors and personality factors.

Work Factors Related to Burnout

The most common work responsibility factor is work overload: having too much to do over an extended period of time. It depletes an individual's physical, cognitive, and emotional resources and leads to exhaustion. A second major contributor to burnout is the loss of personal control in the job environment. The final set of problems relates to the roles established and maintained by individuals at work: role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload. Role difficulties often link closely to both work overload and control problems. These role-related difficulties lead to increased stress levels. Clearly, these are areas where organizations have the ability to change and thereby reduce the potential for burnout. However, such changes are in potential conflict with organizational trends like downsizing and cost-saving adjustments.

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