Emily Bennett Email & Phone Number

🐝 Burnout has a buzzword problem Part of why organizations struggle to manage burnout is a pervasive misconception of what burnout means. It’s a term that has a specific definition but gets used broadly to mean a state of being stressed out. But if you want to understand what burnout is and how it’s affecting your workplace, you need to forget that definition for the time being.Quoting from the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11): “Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”**(Repeating for emphasis: burnout is caused by stressors at the workplace that haven’t been addressed properly.)That’s very different from our first definition! We’re not even talking about a person anymore. We’re talking about stressors impacting a workplace—a group of people.To continue: “Burnout is characterized by three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and reduced professional efficacy.”Now we’re getting towards a diagnosis of burnout. Employees in the affected workplace are likely to be exhausted, cynical, and feel like they aren’t effective at their job. But we’re still not diagnosing individuals, we’re diagnosing the workplace.This matters A LOT because when leaders see the effects of burnout—maybe hear the word being batted around—and try to help their employees, they use the first definition. They see a group of individuals who are stressed out. And the solutions they offer tend to be designed to help an individual care for themselves: a membership to a yoga studio, a recreation day with the team, a meditation app, a meal service. But while these solutions are nice, and can temporarily help people relax, they don’t address those chronic workplace stressors that are actually causing staff burnout.To add insult to injury, these solutions reinforce the idea that burnout is the employee’s responsibility—which increases feelings of stress. Yikes!If you are leader struggling with -🔹 an overwhelmed workforce🔹 high staff turnover 🔹 a negative workplace culture🔹 teams that struggle to achieve their goalsIt's time to take a strategic, long-term approach to staff wellbeing and become a burnout-proof organization.🔥 Sound intriguing? Drop me a DM, let's chat.