If you’re feeling exhausted at your workplace, it’s not just you. Experts say the American workforce is undergoing a “Great Exhaustion.”
The term, coined in a Dec. 2023 New Yorker article, is how West Virginia University Chair and Professor of Behavioral Medicine and Psychology James Berry describes the phenomenon resulting in 60% or more of the U.S. workforce saying they are “moderately burnt out” or more.
Dr. Berry points out, the seeds of a great exhaustion start with the COVID pandemic, the shift to working from home and the uncertainty over when and how to return to the office, usually on a “hybrid” plan.
“There is a lot of, not only stress at work, of course, a lot of people also realize ‘geez, I’m spending more time at home than I ever did before, but I’m still just as exhausted,’” said Berry. “I’m still just as exhausted, just as anxious or just as depressed as I was spending time at work.”
Berry said this reaction is a result of larger social factors, things like political polarization and an “epidemic of loneliness.” He first noticed signs of general exhaustion in the medical field, as more and more colleagues left the profession.
COVID was an accelerant, said Berry, who is speaking at the Jump Simulation Center at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 1.
“It wasn’t just the health care professionals, but the people coming in for treatment,” he said. “Such as teachers and administrators of various types. You know, lawyers, bankers who were describing a lot of the same things that our doctors and nurses were describing.”
As Berry points out, stress and burnout are linked to negative health outcomes in employees. But, there are noticeable impacts on the organizations themselves as well.
Two of the most significant are losing a trained workforce and seeing more frequent mistakes.
“If a system is able to try, is able to effectively address burnout and well-being, then they’re going to have a much safer company, industry,” Berry said. “But they’re also going to have a better quality of their product, and again, people will be engaged.”
But how are companies trying to handle the issue of burnout?
Berry says, in the past, these efforts have been largely focused on the individual.
“The initial reaction years ago was, well, we need to figure out what we can do to help people be more resilient,” he said.
That took the form of pizza days, yoga sessions, small in-office and out of office rewards and incentives to try and keep employees engaged and excited.
“Now that is considered really not that effective,” Berry said. “And really it is a failure to recognize that much of the burnout that folks are experiencing in the workplace is because of occupational hazard. It’s the way the system is set up and structured.”
On a system level, Berry says a rule he practices in his own workplace is to cut out the “stupid stuff.”
“What are the things that our employees are doing that they just don’t need to do and that they could do [something] else?” Berry said. “Because people find meaning and purpose in the stuff they really enjoy and that they’re good at. And we all have to do a certain degree of stupid stuff, but how do we minimize that degree of stupid stuff and let others do that?”
Another rule is: communication, communication, communication. Berry says a major driver of burnout is feeling unheard or unappreciated. Workers may be discouraged if changes are made without explanation, making them feel like they’re “just a cog in a wheel.”
“Another thing that systems are recognizing is the importance of recognizing individuals,” Berry said. “Celebrating their accomplishments, figuring out one size does not fit all, and so really coming to understand your employee and what it is that drives him or her.”
Of course, there still is an individual component to burn out. Berry says failing to take care of yourself can mean migraine headaches, gastrointestinal distress, fatigue and even risk for cardiac events.
The key, he says, is managing stress along a spectrum.
“A degree of stress is good, but then there is a sort of precipice that one can go over where there’s too much stress on the person in the environment and then that can lead to burnout,” Berry said.
Recognize your limits, don’t skip meals, maintain a balanced diet and get plenty of sleep, Berry says. While the systems are working slowly to change and address the things that cause burnout in the first place, those are just a few ways to manage stress on your own.
