Burn-out or burnout

Not so long ago, in our company, we conducted training for potential future managers, including inviting one of the top managers to “talk”.

At first, there was the usual corporate bullshit about career development, plans and strategies, choosing the next steps, and other garbage.
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But then the conversation came to a topic that I have been pondering over since then: burnout / burnout. According to my recollections, about ten years ago, they didn’t talk about it at all, considering it a fictitious problem (as, unfortunately, many still refer to mental diseases, confusing depression and bad mood) or talking about it as they say something shameful type of alcoholism with the implication "this can not happen to me."

And here we talked about this for the first time honestly. And suddenly it turned out that in a group of 30 people each had some kind of example, some of his colleagues, acquaintances and relatives found themselves in this situation.

In my department of 10 people for the last year, burnout happened in two. For those who think that this is just a strong fatigue from processing and a week-long vacation will solve the situation - this is just a very strong underestimation of the scale of the problem. One of her colleagues dropped out of her job for a year. The other is for eight months. Burnout - the strongest shake-up of all body systems. This is an automatic emergency shutdown and does not solve the issue here by a simple reboot.

From our general discussion, some conclusions were born, which to some extent disturbed me and wanted to bring them to the discussion of the social community:

- Burnout does not happen with the busiest employees, recycling is only part of the picture, but not the root cause. More often it happens to those who are most emotionally involved in the process. This may be less hours per day than other employees, but much closer to the heart. Here often happens a combination with a situation in a personal / family / non-working life. My colleague reworked in the project, which was his personal project, sold to the company, and at the same time suing his ex-wife for the custody of the child.

- Burnout is extremely difficult to identify in the early stages, it can happen suddenly and without warning from the "straw that broke the camel's back." My colleague was going to work as usual in the morning, when the telephone rang. On the screen it was determined the number of its project. Suddenly, she began to panic attack, she could no longer breathe, dizzy, my heart began to pound. She was in a stressful situation for the third month, there was a hot phase of the project, but so far she has been coping with the situation. The next time she came to the office six months later, she was taken by the therapy for two hours ...

- The most important part of therapy is sequential and gradual reintegration. One of the participants in the discussion told a story where management made a big mistake by hanging a large project on an employee who returned to the office after therapy. A month later - a relapse and a new round of illness.

In Germany, the so-called Hamburg reintegration model is mainly used: first, a person goes to the office for two hours a day, then four, then six, and only then for a full working day. Reintegration takes from six weeks to six months. And do not neglect this or try to speed things up - in a hurry, you can spoil everything and have to start over.

Another important point of rehabilitation is the identification of specific stress factors. They may be different in different people. Someone has constant calls, someone has too early / late meetings, someone has the very way to work already causes stress. They are not always able to identify. But if it was possible - they should be eliminated. Sometimes work from the office / private office / “reception hours” can already significantly reduce the level of stress.

Our guest, the top manager, told us about the burning situation that had happened to one of his subordinates, and that he himself also had to attend therapy to cope with the feeling of guilt, which is inevitable in this situation. Every adequate boss whose subordinate is facing burnout will wonder: what did I do wrong? How could I prevent this? ”

And the most important conclusion that we learned from this discussion for ourselves was that the rescue of drowning people was the work of the drowning people themselves. It is extremely important for yourself to try to prevent burnout. Someone helps family, someone sports, yoga, meditation, friends, travel, books, extreme. Whatever the most important is the need to disconnect from work. A good vacation is when you can’t remember your password to enter the system. So we must try to live and work so that every morning it is difficult to remember. You can’t rely on the authorities to notice something there and reduce the workload or transfer it to another project or solve the problem in some other way. Because they can either not notice or ignore. They may be trivial to spit. Or it is important to the welfare of employees, but not enough time to deal with them. Whatever the case, you should first of all count on yourself. And if the load begins to exceed the desired limits - you should start talking about it with the management and the team, and if you don’t hear - shout and take action - don’t wait until someone rescues.

Prevention is the best therapy and burnout is no exception to this rule.

And may all burnout pass us by!