Institute for PR
Overcoming Burnout: Effective Strategies to Elevate Your Mental Health
Workplace burnout is a growing problem in many professions, including the communications industry. In this IPR Center-led webinar, Patrick Thelen, Ph.D., APR and Laura Lemon, Ph.D. discuss effective strategies to help employees and leaders combat burnout and stay motivated in their career.
Speakers:
Patrick Thelen, Ph.D., APR, Assistant Professor of Public Relations, San Diego State University
Laura Lemon, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Alabama
Founded in 1956, the Institute for Public Relations is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation dedicated to fostering greater use of research and research-based knowledge in public relations and corporate communication practice.
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all right thank you all for joining us um here today um oops sorry so thank you all for joining us uh for this ipr webinar um on how you can employ effective communication strategies to elevate your mental health and combat burnout my name is brittany higginbotham and i am the communications associate for the institute for public relations um again before we begin we encourage you to ask questions in the q a box and we'll allot time at the very end to answer a few questions you are welcome to use the chat box at any time to leave comments share resources please note that an ipr staff member will be moderating the questions through the q a only if you have any logistical or technic technical difficulties just message an ipr staff member and we will help you and then this webinar will be recorded and available for playback on our website and youtube channel we'll also link any resource resources shared today all right now let's get to it i'd like to introduce our panelists before we dive in our first speaker is dr laura lemon she's an assistant professor and scholar at the university of alabama's department of advertising and public relations she primarily researches internal communication and employee engagement with specialization in qualitative methods our next speaker is dr patrick fallon an assistant professor in the school of journalism and media studies at san diego state university he is also the chief research editor at the institute for public relations organizational communication research center now our third speaker emily uh graham is ha was having unfortunately some weather issues in texas and she will not be able to join us um but that's okay and we you know we hope nothing but the best for emily um and safety in her travels so to kick off um we're going i'm going to be introducing a few different questions that laura and patrick are going to answer and kind of just in a very conversational and formal way um either of you laura patrick feel free to jump in um and you know you don't have to answer every question just wherever you feel um you know you have the best um best answer so my first question will be in each of your roles how do you define burnout and how does it show up and what you do well i'll go ahead and jump in here thank you brittany for the introduction uh welcome everybody to the webinar today really grateful for the opportunity um to discuss my research and things that i'm passionate about and something that's meaningful for all of us i think we're all here because we're either burned out or know people who are burned out and they're either on our team or our partners or colleagues and so hopefully you walk away today with some resources some tips and tools that can help you navigate the coming months coming year and then the next thing that that we encounter um in our in our world so burnout um is a the concept that initially came from the human resources literature and which is important to note because i'm going to transition later on today and talk about what public relations can do in terms of extending how we understand burnout employee engagement which is really awesome opportunity for both scholars and practitioners to reconceptualize the way in which we understand burnout and so human resources um literature and scholars initially conceptualized it as the opposite of engagement and so they utilized a model using the job demands versus resources and so this model demonstrates that the two processes that lead to job burnout would include high demands of a job and a lack of job resources and so in this way high levels of burnout are frequently found when the demands of the job are high and the available resources are low as i mentioned it's the opposite of engagement so i think it's important too to talk about what do we mean by employee engagement and this is oftentimes defined as the harnessing of the organizational member selves to their work and so what we see here is that we better understand how employees employ themselves in their roles both physically cognitively as well as emotionally and the research has shown that there are certain factors that would lead into how engaged an employee would be in their particular role so that would be things such as meaningfulness like a meaningfulness of the job safety so psychological safety how safe someone feels to express themselves in their role um without the opportunities or chances of negative repercussions and then last which would be availability so um you know the availability of resources and so this ties really nicely into how burnout shows up in my world right so i'm an academic in higher education brittany mentioned i worked at the university of alabama and i think we um as academics lived for through a very precarious time over the last two years because if you talk about psychological safety well often times a lot of our institutions couldn't even guarantee physical safety so in in getting to that engaged employee and and then therefore burnout there was this interesting um sort of connection between all of that because employees of higher ed institutions were feeling you know at risk having to go into the workplace um and so you know couldn't even get to the fact of like how how psychological safe do i feel to share myself in the workplace um so we're we i work you know in a field where we don't have unlimited resources to be able to dedicate to ensure um that those the employees have the things that they need and that even stems into the student life too so i think over the last two years we've seen um you know students burned out faculty burned out and a lot of that stems from the lack of resources that were available anecdotally i'll just share you know here at the university of alabama we don't even have enough resources um for mental health for students so if they want to go get an appointment at the health center it takes oftentimes two to three weeks to get in which is just not ideal so um we're in a unfortunately not a great time in terms of of navigating this new space and hopefully over the coming year i think we're going to see some positive changes but how it manifested for us as academics i think um you know we were fine by the seat of our pants and oftentimes feeling really overwhelmed um because the demands of the job were high and the resources were low yeah i um completely agree with with what laura has been has been saying i don't know what i can add to that but i think um you know one of i think what's really important to understand regarding burnout is that it isn't something that just happens overnight right um so you know just because my last three days of work have been stressful doesn't necessarily mean i'm burnt out right um burnout um is is you know typically defined as a syndrome um you know that occurs because of prolonged uh chronic job stress that hasn't been managed right um so um burnout um you know the the way i like to understand it is is you know just a result of poor workplace practices for workplace policies um and just kind of a systemic societal um problems that occur um and that have been left unchanged um christina maslak uh she's uh you know a social psychologist who's one of the pioneers of research on job burnout and she has suggested that burnout has three different dimensions um the first one is exhaustion right um you know exhaustion refers to individual stress so it's that feeling you have of you know just not being able to to to take it anymore um uh you know i want to go home but there's more to do right so that's one component of burnout right this exhaustion and second component is cynicism um and cynicism uh to me is at the heart of burnout um it's you saying you know take this job and shove it right um and you know when you're feeling this way um you know you begin to feel negative and hostile and cynical and as a result you know your performance just takes a hit um and then that third component of burnout is um professional inefficacy um and and when you're feeling this way you're you know you're self-evaluating it's self-evaluating yourself negatively um and you also begin to doubt yourself uh so it's it's you saying things like um you know maybe i'm just not good at this or maybe i shouldn't be here or maybe i don't belong or i'm stuck right and a lot of times people will describe this feeling as an erosion of their soul now um in terms of my experience working at a university um you know we're seeing very high levels of stress among academics and students just like laura was saying um you know from from the student perspective um you know you just google and you'll just find hundreds of studies showing you know that you know their levels of stress anxiety depression and just you know overall unhealthy unhealthy coping mechanisms have increased right um during the pandemic um students are dealing with a lot and as a result we're seeing a huge impact on their mental health um the same is true with faculty uh you know and um you know burnout has been around for a very long time right um but um you know all these studies now are kind of comparing burnout pre-pandemic versus post-pandemic and what they're showing is um you know there's a substantial change in just kind of in a university setting on how faculty members are feeling um you know pre-pandemic 30 of them said they were stressed post pandemic 70 of them said they were stressed pre-pandemic 10 of them said they were angry post pandemic 35 percent of them said they were angry um you know and and in and you know all of these feelings of stress and anger impact people's behaviors um and you know the surveys have also found that um you know faculty members about half of them during the pandemic said that they were seriously considering changing their career um or retiring early right now as communicators we all know there's a huge gap between what people say and what they do um but regardless 50 is an extremely high number uh so to sum it up you know burnout is a major issue uh today uh within universities thank you um and we you sort of touched on this as far as pre-pandemic and post-pandemic or you know during pandemic but could you elaborate also on just how burnout has evolved um over the past few years and um what are the signs and causes um in comparison has have the signs and causes of burnout um of course the obvious with the pandemic but how is that all played um played in together um in light of the causes of burnout well i'll just speak a little bit on how some of the research has changed in terms of the way public relations scholars look at this um phenomenon because i think it's really important to um to assess how we've we've as and when i say we need public relations scholars have moved um the field forward right so from a human resources perspective employees are assets that need to be managed right we're numbers on a balance sheet um and i think when public relations jumps in um we can apply and some scholars have called for this um applying what we call the co-creational approach and so this this transitions the way in which we see employees and so i think um given the state of the world this is a shift that's going to need to it's starting to happen is going to continue to that's going to need to continue to happen and so when we see this co-creational approach we start to see all organizational members as having intrinsic value and they become partners in the meaning making process and so it's no longer about management's initiatives or what management's perspective is um and then hoping that employees carry it out so much of the employee engagement scholarship in the beginning was surveys or interviews with management asking their perceptions about how their employees were experiencing burnout or engagement but no one ever went and talked to employees which is just ironic right and so now we're starting to spend some time really capturing that employee that employee experience which is really where my research centers around um and i'm i'm just a big proponent of the public relations field being offering being able to offer this new meaning making lens because when you do that stakeholders become valuable and bound together across all you know across the entire organization and then we start to be more prepared to handle crises such as the coven 19 pandemic right if you know if a pandemic or a crisis is going to exacerbate you know given the numbers that patrick just shared is going to exacerbate how burnout is manifesting for employees but we need to address it and hopefully deal with it on the front end and this will help organizations become more fluid more nimble and be able to adapt to change that they probably wouldn't have been able to do so um without sort of acknowledging what's what's been going on so um for me you know in the research that i do is finding ways for this co-creational approach to be to be applied especially for organizations navigating a crisis um because we know that disengaged employees are more likely to speak negative about their employer to external audiences and this is going to be incredibly detrimental for an organization navigating a crisis um and so you know let's let's deal with this this on the front end and so you know some of my research even advocates for burnout assessment um during the pre-crisis planning phase because that i think it can't be an afterthought and unfortunately i think for some industries and organizations it becomes an afterthought when it's become too big of a deal yeah absolutely um and just kind of to add to that um uh you know i i in going back a little bit to what i was saying previously um you know i think that one of the things um that a lot of people and organizations um you know what they need to start becoming aware of is that um you know burnout doesn't just mean employees feel stressed um it it has a huge impact on their health and can unfortunately sometimes even lead to their death and it's not me that's saying this i mean you know the world health organization they have conducted studies just showing how long work hours led to um you know about 750 000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016 uh which was almost a 30 increase since the year 2000 right um other studies um have found that people working 55 hours or more per week were 33 more likely to suffer a stroke compared to those working you know 35 40 hours um so people are literally working themselves to death um and while you know the notion of burnout uh leading to death is a relatively you know novel concept in western countries um it is important uh to realize that the concept of you know dying for a paycheck is so common in countries like you know japan and china uh that they have a name for it um it's called you know kiroshi in japan and will lousy in china um you know i i remember back in in the 90s uh when we first started hearing these stories about um you know middle-aged businessmen in japan working so many hours that they would just drop dead um you know from a bodily failure um or or just opt to end their lives at you know committing suicide in a subway station rather than return to the office um and and i i i remember having these conversations with you know people in the 90s and early 2000s where we were all commenting on you know how surreal that was um and we saw this as a you know curiosity as a kind of weird regional phenomenon that was only occurring in asia uh but today we get it um when we hear about uh you know china's 996 work culture uh right working from 9 a.m to 9 00 p.m six days a week we still see it as you know kind of brutal but it also kind of feels that this is the type of culture taking place right here right now um and you know people are working longer hours uh and we're starting to realize that it's a risk um uh that you know you might die because of engaging in this behavior um and and you know when we're seeing this happen in alarmingly high rates in the us um you know again taking this back to studies um you know studies have found that you know the workplace environment in the us could be responsible for 120 000 excess deaths per year right which you know if if you follow that number would mean that workplace is kind of the fifth leading cause of death um so you know um going back to your question about you know how has burnout evolved um i'd say that more people are feeling uh are feeling this way um and that they're also starting to become aware of um you know the harmful impact that it has on their lives thank you um when we discuss ways to now what can we do about it um let's first talk about what organizations can do to support employees suffering from burnout and and then in that hand how can they how can organizations prevent burnout in their employees i can jump in here i'd love to hear patrick's feedback because he's the yeah um expert because i think communication plays a huge role in that but i do think that uh culture is the first place to start so um an organizational culture that is facilitating burnout just you know some you know with some of the examples that patrick was just sharing is the number one route and so this has to start with management right so if you are going to say hey we offer these great benefits and um you know but there's going to be a unspoken repercussion if you take your vacation time or you're going to be made to feel guilty because you take your vacation time well then employees are never going to take their vacation time so it has to be an organization that really is about drawing some boundaries and i think some organizations do this really well um you know even something is um you know like i have a friend right now she works at salesforce and she just went on six months of paid maternity leave that's incredible now not every organization has the resources to be able to you know provide that to somebody but um you know something as small as not emailing people in the middle of the night or on the weekends because that's going to instill the need for that particular employee to respond so i think having management lead by example in terms of um making sure that employees cultivate this sort of um you know not balance or just seeking the opportunity to to decompress right and and to find ways to check in with themselves so that they know that they're experiencing burnout i think often times too um you know as patrick mentioned it is something that happens over time and i don't even think we know that we're experiencing it and so one of the other things i think that an organization could do is to offer check-in surveys over time so maybe every quarter five questions um offering questions that maybe you hadn't even thought about um to help people sort of assess their own burnout um a friend of mine just expressed her [Music] her experience with burnout over the last year she had some uh deaths in the family had to navigate that plus a really um you know strenuous job that was having her work 80 hours a week and it wasn't until she went on vacation over winter holiday did she say wow i'm really burnt out it required her to back away from the work to take a pause to take a break um and then she started to make some changes in her life and so i think the organizations could really um you know be a proponent of that and making sure that their organizational cultures um champions um rest play the the ability to find the leisure time but one thing i want to say about this when it comes to what organizations role is in um you know in helping employees navigate burnout or eliminating burnout it cannot be done to make employees more productive so sometimes we think this sounds like a really great initiative because then we're going to have more productive employees well you're going to end up in the same place that you started and it has to be bigger than that so i believe the organizations should really be striving to develop these programs to ensure that all employees have valuable work experiences because it's the ethical thing to do um so that people aren't risking their health or even their lives um for their job so we it does come down to being an ethical initiative for organizations and making sure their policies and their procedures um reflect that as well yeah i i agree with laura i mean ethics is is critical um and i also agree with the factor that it kind of you know starts with management um you know if organizations really want to prevent burnout um you know the first thing they need to realize is uh and recognize is that the root causes of burnout uh do not really lie with the individual they lie with the organization um you know some some time ago i i was watching uh a video on youtube um in which christina maslak uh you know the the burnout research pioneer i was talking about previously um was talking about burnout and in that video um you know she was asking the audience to picture uh canaries uh in a coal mine um and before entering the coal mine uh you know they were healthy birds and you know that were you know just singing away um however after being exposed um you know to to to to all of that situation you know the the carbon monoxide uh during their time in the coal mines they left the coal mine sick right and they were no longer singing um none of us would assume that uh you know the canaries got sick because they didn't take enough you know mindfulness courses right or or didn't download the latest meditation app um you know the same is true with people uh we need to stop thinking that we can prevent employees from burning out by offering more yoga classes right or teaching them how to develop grit um you know don't get me wrong these are great tools for improving well-being um but they are not the cure to burnout uh you know it's it's wonderful that some organizations um are offering these perks um but if they truly want to solve the problem you know their efforts need to go beyond that um so you know many organizations um you know uh try to help their employees by you know offering them mechanisms uh to help them you know increase their resilience and strength um and the problem with this approach um is that it shows that organizations are simply trying to fit people to the job right and they're ignoring um you know the systemic and institutional factors that are the real causes of burnout um you know uh to fix burnout um we need to understand that burnout is about the organization not the people um right um so um you know all of these yoga classes wellness technologies meditation apps vacation times that they're good and they can definitely help people feel healthier um but suggesting that they are the cure to burn out um is problematic and even dangerous um so um you know instead of fitting people to the job and simply asking them to engage in self-care um organizations um kind of need to you know focus on the causes of burnout um so um you know uh taking us back uh do do i have time brittany or should i should i stop speaking right because i can keep on going forever all right um so so taking us kind of back to you know maslak's definition of burnout um you know and the tool she uses to measure burnout um you know it's important to understand that someone who's dealing with burnout um has negative scores on exhaustion negative scores on cynicism and negative scores on professional efficacy right you need to be scoring highly on all of these uh three dimensions right if we follow mass maslak's understanding of uh burnout right um so people who are only scoring high on exhaustion um they're not described as being burned out they're described as being overextended um right um or people who are only scoring um you know highly high negative scores on professional efficacy they're categorized as you know feeling ineffective right um those who are only scoring high on cynicism they're described as being disengaged um so you know uh according to again maslak um your own you're only feeling burnout true burnout um if you're scoring high on all of these three dimensions and this is really important for organizations to understand because it underscores that there's no one-size-fits-all solution um so you know people who are over extended they have one key problem and that's workload right um they're dealing with you know high demands and low resources um uh or um you know people who are disengaged right or ineffective they're dealing with other problems right maybe they're dealing with problems of fairness in the workplace um or maybe they're dealing with problems of you know not receiving enough you know social rewards or recognition for the work they do um so it's really important to understand um that there's no one-size-fits-all solution and there's even no kind of one-size-fits-all kind of foreign organization every unit within an organization is dealing with different realities um so it's it's really important to kind of um not come up with this broad plan for everyone uh because everyone in an organization doesn't deal with the same problems um so i think kind of it's important to start with with that understanding and that distinction can i ask a follow-up question sure so i'm curious then with with those three components how does one or how does an organization help an employee recognize that they are having those three experiences simultaneously and therefore are burn out yeah so um kind of this this maslak inventory uh that was created kind of in the 80s and it has evolved over the decades um you know she she just kind of has this questionnaire where you know all these different questions are being answered um by employees um and um organizations can kind of collect this data and understand how each employee is dealing with things differently um and therefore kind of jump in and kind of you know um you know try to find some solutions to the problems but um it's not just like you know handing out a survey and seeing how people are feeling i mean that's one thing right and then you'll find okay this is how people are actually feeling but um you know to truly to truly solve the problem um you need to kind of go back to the beginning which is you know what are the causes of burnout um and kind of the causes are you know one of them is you know the one we always think about which is workload right that's that's the first one that usually comes to mind and you know it's obviously an important one um right um you know uh study after stat study shows that um you know um people are citing excessive workload workloads and tight deadlines as their biggest concerns um and um you know things have just gotten worse since the pandemic i mean the number of hours people that were working after you know working from home increased substantially um to what they were doing before the pandemic um and um you know that's so that's one cause right um another cause can be just kind of lack of control um you know one of the reasons top reasons people leave jobs um is because uh they lack a sense of autonomy um or sometimes they're just feeling micromanaged um right um and you know i i i remember coming across this study uh um that was surveying people in sweden um and um they found that you know people who had um you know higher levels of influence uh and task control had lower levels of you know illness symptoms were absent less frequently and experienced less depression um so giving people the tools to feel that they have the power to make decisions and to influence others within the organization that's important um third cause of burnout is lack of rewards or recognitions um right um you know the the phrase um what is it i'm i'm overworked and underpaid right it's it's it's way too common um and people often joke about it um the problem is that it's a major cause of burnout um and you know uh you know to be fair with organizations uh you know a lot of them do pay a lot of attention to paying people appropriately um however um we also have to understand that money isn't everything um organizations often forget about you know just the impact of social rewards like recognition and feedback um you know when when people work hard they want to be acknowledged um and and you know we need to understand that and you know um we're talking about communication then okay let's find ways to acknowledge people to reward people in a way that they find meaningful not that we think they might find meaningful um poor relationships is another key cause of burnout and that's something we as communicators play a really really big role right um just kind of improving relationships within the organization building a sense of community among employees is just so important uh because it drives belonging and belonging is you know one of the most important human capital issues um and you know we're around the world not just in the us you know we're living in very polarizing times and our respect for each other's differences is eroding um so you know we have you know hundreds of tools out there to keep us connected um but at the same time it just seems like we're growing further apart um so you know poor relationships is a major threat to healthy cultures um and the overall business goals of of organizations um and then the kind of the fifth cause is uh lack of fairness um that's super super super important um uh when people feel that there's no organizational justice um you know the they they'll get angry they'll get upset um and will probably kind of you know uh leave the workplace and if they don't leave maybe they'll take a higher number of sick days right um because they just don't want to come back um and then finally i just add um it's also really important to think about values right is there a kind of if there's a values mismatch between you know me and my organization that's going to be a problem that can also lead to to burnout um laura i think that was a really long answer to you no it was great i was just yeah and i can't help but think you know just in the amount of exhaustion that people felt over the last two years just exacerbated everything that you that you talked about um because our our there was a blurred line between work and home and even our home life you know that is often you know that's a job too right but there isn't um a reward for that there's no additional financial um uh bonuses you know for doing the dishes or putting the kids to bed or um you know getting on a zoom call teaching a zoom class and then taking care of your own children um so it's a lot of this you could see how it manifested exponentially over the last two years um because what you would experience in burnout in the workplace could very easily um happen at home as well um so and i so i think that's you know where we are today and i think somebody asked in the chat i think we're already to the point of people feeling burnt out so what do what do we do yeah i i agree um you know this whole idea of um uh you know burnout um you know has just the conversation of it has you know exploded uh post pandemic because now we're just not only dealing with our realities of the workplace it's also um you know just dealing with the reality of the world um and that just becomes you know a huge burden and people you know everyone deals with different things in life right um but then if you add um you know now i have to take care of you know some family member who's dealing with something and now i have to i can't see my friends because we can't go out and talk to the world you're just adding a bunch of different layers uh to a situation that was already critical before um and now it just kind of compounded and people are you know feeling like they like please help me address this problem absolutely um and then before we get into our q a um i just wanted to see if you had any suggestions on actions that individuals can take to help themselves um you know help themselves when they feel burnt out you know maybe before they decide to quit their job or however they may otherwise respond um i think it's really important that organization organizations that individuals despite the resources that the organization may or may not have but find some ways to draw uh boundaries and i think that that's going to tap into making sure that you're not demanded you know have a higher demands for your job but also as i mentioned earlier just being able to recognize that you are feeling burnt out or you are feeling exhausted um sometimes we are operating on autopilot that we don't even know what's happening um and so i i just know that somebody dropped it in the chat but my most recent blog for ocrc was about mindfulness and i think that that's a really important tool for all of us to use as a way to cultivate what's going on in our current experience and so it's not um you know a tool to assess whether something is negative or positive but just a way to tune into that present moment um and so for me you know i've utilized this in my own research um i use it when i'm you know for teaching and then also feeling incredibly uh stressed out because it gives me the the ability to pause and to see okay um get my mind get my mind in order um but mindfulness is defined as being aware of the present moment and exercising um you know a non-judgment of that present moment and it allows us to have sort of this openness this curiosity of what's going on and not sort of judging what's happening but just accepting for what it is and maybe being able to then identify places that could potentially be um you know like places in your life that could be potentially um dealt with and so we can do that through practices like breath work or meditation um or yoga but again you know it's not a one-size-fits-all approach but this could be a tool for somebody to find a way to hit pause as i mentioned you know my friend that she didn't even know she was experiencing burnout until she was able to step away and i think meditation gives us the ability to do that for five or ten minutes um but the key component is is to follow that up with a journaling activity so you can start to see maybe how you have habitualized thought processes that are maybe impacting your current um experience and how you could adjust those over time and so this may then have you say okay i've i've recognized that i'm feeling right now and now i need to go to my supervisor and say i need to draw some boundaries or i need to take that vacation i've said that i was going to take over the last year and so there is if you know a part of this has to be agency from the employee going and hopefully having that relationship with somebody in their organization that they can go to and seek for help um or going to their organization's resources to say you know i don't think my i'm dealing with this current state very well and utilizing those resources but i do understand that all of that comes from um having that psychological safety so tying back to what we were talking about in the beginning that if your organization hasn't provided you that or your leadership hasn't provided you that um you know back to what patrick said about a values um you know congruency then it's it's gonna potentially um impact your ability to feel open and that should be a message right if you if you can't go to your supervisor and say hey i need some help um you know i'm feeling burnt out and need more resources or you need more recognition um then maybe it's time to reflect on the place in which you work um because there obviously is not sort of this um this value alignment between you and the people in which you work with and um i will tie that back to like um you know if organizations are one thing i want to mention too is you know if they're out there doing you know surveys assessing where fact where their employees are and for me it's faculty and staff um and they're gathering data but then to actually do something with that data i think a lot of times organizations say okay we want to help these individuals we're going to assess where they are how engaged do they feel how disengaged are they feeling burnt out and they gather the data but then we don't ever hear anything after that and so um you know making sure that organizations are you know sort of again leading from the front and saying this is um the information that we gathered and here are the changes that we're going to make and then maybe that will empower individuals to follow as well yeah i i love that last comment you made about um you know following up on the research right so like a lot of times we do research and then do nothing about it um but you know and at the same time i'm thinking about like the people doing the research right like maybe they didn't do anything about it because they're also like burnt out and you know they have so much work to do and like now we're gonna have to implement this and that and at the end of the day um you know it's it's about the organization making this a priority um and making sure that whoever's in charge of this like this is your priority this is your responsibility we're not going to ask you to do a b c d e and f as well and then in addition to you like now handle uh burnout right um so yeah like it needs to be given you know some type of priority within organizations um at the same time it's it's also hard for organizations to make that decision i mean you know we live in a competitive world where um you know organizations are competing with each other and like telling an organization oh yeah you know you got to be a little bit more relaxed with your employees um you know sometimes may not come across um the right way um uh now um you know brittany you were asking about you know what can individuals do right because we can tell organizations do a bunch of things and you know maybe some of them will do things and others won't um but at the end of the day you know it kind of also um you know before i was saying you know like burnout is about you the organization um but at the same time um you know we as individuals can do a lot uh you know and and uh you know like i always think about pr practitioners and communicators we're always you know kind of guiding our organizations when it comes to you know this this is your mission statement this is your vision statement these are your values you need to make sure that everything you do is aligned with that um i think that we should do the same as individuals right we should define our own personal mission statement right it's it's really good to ask ourselves um you know what what's our purpose in life um and understanding our purpose can really help us uh you know just guide the decisions we make um you know also you know create that personal vision statement where do you see yourself in five years um you know and and and you you need to spend time uh you know defining what your values are um you know your your personal values need to play a big role in influencing the decisions that you make in your own life um you know we will be a lot happier with ourselves and our lives if the choices we make regarding how we spend our time are aligned with our own personal personal mission right and our own personal values um and you know i also think it's a really good idea to revisit your personal mission and your values once in a while right just like companies completely reinvent themselves you know we can do that as well um and um you know in terms of concrete actions um you know one of the first things that you know individuals uh you know uh what we should do to you know to take the time is to kind of you know just take the time to find the source of our burnout right um it's a lot of times where i'm burned out but like why are you burned out well i don't know and it's like okay well think about that um you know uh well as soon as you realize you know the sources of your burnout you can start to solve the problem you can start to find ways you know to lighten your your your load right away um and you know i also say if if you can try not to go through burnout alone um you know just having you know some type of trusted friend uh loved one uh you know help you through this process um you know can can be so important um you know and and can uh you know potentially help you brainstorm you know possible solutions to the problem a lot of times you know when we're dealing with our own problems we can't see things clearly um on the other hand you know when we ask our friends our loved ones you know they they care for us but they're also um you know they're not attached to us they see what we're going through and they see things differently and they can be a little bit kind of more objective um regarding the decisions you know we should make obviously at the end of the day it's our own personal decision but we should also kind of you know see what other people um you know might think um and and and i think just the last thing i'll say is i i also feel that it's important um to to not forget to be grateful um you know when we're dealing with a lot of stress uh we often forget that we have so much to be grateful about um and you know and if you can um you know tell others that you're grateful for that right for having them in your life just i i always feel that you know just spreading happiness spreading joy um you know it's just not it's not only good for us it's it's good for everyone um and it also kind of just you know lifts some weight the weight that we're carrying and it just makes us you know feel better about everything so just not forget to be grateful and to think you know every day okay what am i grateful about what do i have that i'm happy for um i think that sometimes you know could go a long ways [Music] thank you that was so well said um we definitely need to um would love to get to some questions from our audience um there's some great questions lined up um there is sarah i don't know i can t do you want me to take this yeah do you want to read the ones in the q a first yeah sure we'll start with the ones that are in the q a box from john morley he asked um are employees who are who already show evidence of imposter syndrome doubly susceptible to burnout what would you guys say about that i don't have a s specific answer to that i i don't know from my own research if i could speak specifically but i think that sometimes when people are struggling with imposter syndrome it leads to striving for perfectionism because they're trying to potentially overcompensate for what they think that they are lacking and i think that that in fact can easily lend itself to um experiencing burnout and so i there is probably potentially a connection there um because when you're trying to to prove something to somebody because you don't believe it in yourself unfortunately i think that that can be detrimental because you might end up working more or you know overworking when it may not necessarily always be the case right thank you um here's a we have a couple scenario-based questions um one is an employee says that they need more resources to do their job better and their manager says well you need to improve with what you have and then we can talk about more resources for you so then the employee is left facing increasing workload about the necessary resources um and then they work hard to make improvements and when they ask again for more resources and their manager now says well you are you are making work with what you have or yes sorry um so no additional resources are needed this catch-22 dynamic leads to worker burnout how can this kind of scenario be handled better by managers and employees let me know if you want me to repeat anything about you know that question yeah um that's such a such a good question i mean and it's a difficult one um i i'd say you know if if you find yourself continuously asking for more resources um and you're never getting them it's it's probably time to start questioning whether you want to continue working in that organization um you know it's important uh to ask it's important to see if you know um you know the people around you are willing to help um you know if you see that they can't help um maybe this place isn't the right place for you um but i'll also add um we will not you cannot find meaningful change within an organization if you're not seeing people at the top um kind of really show that this is important right if maybe your supervisor is saying no i can't you know you're going to have to deal with that because that person's manager is selling them the same things and then the same situation goes on as you keep on going above and above um and that's just kind of that company culture um and you know if we don't start at the top if we don't make changes from the top you'll never see those changes in being implemented down the road uh in an organization so you know it's it's it's uh you know that it reminds me of you know one of the things i always kind of tell my students when they're always looking for that first job is like please please please do the research before you accept that job right like you feel waiting maybe two months three months might be an eternity but it really isn't um it'll feel you'll feel so much worse accepting a job that you got immediately um then waiting for that right job three four five months down the road um that really fit who you were um and you know what you want to be as an individual at the end of the day it all comes down to what matters to you um uh and those are the decisions you need to make um you know you can ask the organization to make all the changes in the world um but some of them might but you know you very you're very likely to find that a lot of them won't um so then it comes up to you what are you gonna do about it right we ask organizations you know to be accountable we should also also ask ourselves to be accountable for the decisions we make i feel that's you know really really important thank you christine asked laura mentioned the importance of leader buy-in for programs behavior and culture that combats burnout at various points in my career however i've worked with leaders who seem committed to culture change along these lines but lack the self-awareness to recognize how they're undermining their own efforts for example an advocate of flexible work and non-traditional schedules who frequently asks where is everybody or where are you at the beginning of conference cost how do you recommend that communication professionals help hold that mirror up to affect behavior change among the leaders how best to help leaders see that they may be unconsciously driving burnout culture yeah i think this is a really tough um question that i think that we see all too often i don't know what the old adage is but it says you know people leave that people don't leave bad companies they leave bad bosses um and so i think that this definitely is an example of that but how can communication professionals um hold up the mirror well that means that uh that person or whoever the professionals are they're gonna have to have um in some ways the guts to go up to that person and oftentimes in organizational hierarchy might be even higher than them and and call to attention that hey you know we're seeing these these repercussions or here is some employee feedback and do it in a way that potentially can then can cultivate some change but i think it's i sometimes have a hard question have a hard time answering questions like this because i think we can't put too much on the communication professionals to cultivate the change um because i think ultimately it has to be up to that leader to to do so um you know in my in my own one of the committees i serve on in my own institution they were um we're doing this work about agility and continuous improvement and we have these agility teams across the university in each one of our different departments um and in our different colleges and they are asking us to coach our deans on how to put people first um and i just i'm not sure if that's really my job quite frankly and so it's kind of putting me in sort of an uncomfortable position and so i think um there needs to be to make sure that whoever the communication professional is that they already have a seat at the table so that they can feel comfortable having that conversation um and always you know utilizing examples i think is key as well um but it is very difficult to um to have a leader who may not recognize the impact that they're having on their organizational culture or on their employees because they're unconsciously driving this and i for my own research i can't tell you how many times i've sat with employees that commented about their managers and then i go and speak with them about how they how their employees may be experiencing engagement or burnout and unfortunately um there is a complete disconnect between the lived experience of employees and what management assumes is going on and so um i do think the communication professionals can help that but i do think that to be successful there is going to need to be um a seat at the table and and some of that power discrepancy um lessened so that that person would be open to hearing what they had to say yeah i i agree with what laura has been saying um and you know it's not just entirely the communication practitioners responsibility i mean sure they'll play a role an important one but um it has to be an organizational uh responsibility and and um know one of the things we can do is just kind of you know show what's going on right maybe our role here is like telling this these are some case studies this is what some other organizations are doing this is what they've been doing correctly and these are some others that have been doing things incorrectly right so like one of the things we're always talking about now is you know maybe we should have a four day week right um and some organizations are doing this effectively and some organizations aren't right so maybe our job as pr practitioners one of our roles is okay let's research what's going on let's go out and listen and see talk to employees that have been dealing with this in some organizations some organizations have been extremely successful with four-day work policies and others have completely failed right um the ones that fail why are they failing okay they're failing because yes they're working mondays through thursdays but you know fridays they're supposedly not working but here we are like having some meetings on fridays anyways because you know we have to do a b and c and if my boss is in that meeting maybe i should be at that meeting there as well because what does that say about me if i'm not there so it's not my obligation but you know so then we can learn we can learn from what others are doing and see which are the ones that are doing things effectively and which ones aren't and maybe we can take an approach that works thank you i think we want to get in one more question um we have a question from the chat many managers are tired of hearing about burnout and are already are ready for everyone to get back to normal they're fine everyone else should be fine suggestions for how to handle this situation what's normal i think this is a new normal um [Music] i do one comment i just have to make is that it we have to understand and i think patrick touched on this that everybody's experience is individual and so we can't necessarily lump everybody together because there were a lot of people who worked throughout the pandemic that were more productive than they had ever been in their entire lives because they worked from home they didn't have a commute and it really benefited them and maybe they felt really successful and from some of the research that i did this was true for um you know faculty and administrators and staff that work at higher ed institutions and um i recently uh had a paper under review and one of the reviewers said well i wasn't burned out i was more productive than i've ever been in my my entire career um so it's it's it's definitely not a one-size-all um approach and so unfortunately what that person has to understand is that yeah there should be some there are potentially some employees that are not experiencing burnout but they're a lot that are and so i think that you have to recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach is just not going to work and then i think we also have to be honest that we are living in a new normal we are never going to go back to um we can't go back into time right so we have shifted and changed um culturally society has and so we are living in 2022 and so it's living and working in this year in this moment and in this time and figuring out ways um to to meet our employees where they are currently awesome thank you so much thank you both so much for speaking on this panel i know that this is such a important and topic that affects literally all of us um today and um we're just gonna be more grateful for how for your insight and for sharing that with us today um and thanks for everyone for joining us we hope you enjoyed today's webinar we will share this playback and resources on our website and our youtube channel um we have a and one announcement as well this week we have a new episode of our series race in the pr classroom this thursday at 12 pm eastern time on intersectionality featuring featuring dr natalie tindoff from the university of texas at austin and dr jennifer bardman from the university of houston so thanks again to our panelists and for everyone for attending today um and stay tuned for the playback and for sharing these um resources that we all discussed um thanks again thank you bye bye
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thanks for the video