TAKEAWAYS
Wenche Fredriksen was a high-achieving manager at a consulting firm and mother of two young children when her life fell apart. Diagnosed with burnout, Fredriksen “could not focus or handle information. I could not eat, sleep or cry. At my lowest point, I was convinced that I would never work again”.
She spent over a year recovering from the debilitating effects of burnout, a condition that is unfortunately all too familiar to many of us. Singapore is among the top three markets in Southeast Asia with the highest levels of burnout. A separate study revealed that 61% of Singaporean employees struggle with burnout.
How can you tell if you are experiencing burnout?
According to psychologist Christina Maslach, those who suffer from burnout often feel depleted of emotional and physical resources, without time and space for rejuvenation. Victims can also feel increasingly cynical or detached about their work, as a self-protective buffer against emotional exhaustion. A sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment may follow, as their feelings of competence and productivity decline.
By the time you reach the stage of burnout, recovery will be an uphill climb. Take preventative action by mastering the ABC of workplace well-being – address job demands, boost your resources and curate your role.
Job demands are the physical, psychological, social, or organisational aspects of a job that require sustained effort. They often come with physiological and psychological costs. Job demands could be an excessive workload, tight deadlines, poor work relationships, and even a lack of feedback. If not managed properly, these demands can lead to burnout.
Time is the most valuable resource in modern life. By managing your time well, you can better manage your job demands. Use tools like the Eisenhower Matrix to distinguish between urgent and important tasks. Prioritising the important tasks enables you to focus on what matters most. Optimise your time using energy management – tackle challenging tasks during periods of peak energy.
Remember to schedule time for yourself. The route to burnout is marked by poor boundaries. Make maintaining a healthy work-life balance as important as your work priorities. Experiment with different schedules to find out what works best for you, whether it’s starting early or incorporating regular breaks to recharge.
Instead of tackling your workload by doing more, find ways to do less but achieve more. By “sharpening the saw”, you can enhance your productivity and better manage your job demands. For example, leveraging generative artificial intelligence (AI) allows you to complete tasks like research and ideation in significantly less time. By investing time to acquire skills that boost your productivity, you will be able to do more by doing less, thus reducing your stress levels.
The other lever in burnout prevention is increasing your resources. Resources, in this context, are supportive factors which encompass both the external and internal/personal. External resources may include having more autonomy at work, social support from colleagues, career development opportunities and constructive feedback; personal resources tap on your individual character strengths. Self-efficacy, optimism, resilience, hope, emotional intelligence and self-esteem are innate strengths that serve as your psychological armour. Developing them will buffer you from the challenges of a stressful work environment.
Burnout prevention is also about mindset correction. More often than not, we see movies depicting the hero as a lone ranger who single-handedly defeats the bad guys through his/her ingenuity and superior skills. In real life, no one achieves great goals alone. Although your instinct is to hustle your way through a heavy workload and neglect your social commitments, this is counterproductive. Social connections are a buffer against stress. Beyond the emotional support, a strong social network reinforces the various roles you play outside work – as a family member, a community volunteer or a friend. Engaging with communities beyond the workplace serves as a reminder that your identify is not solely defined by your professional role. Amid work challenges, this diversification can bolster self-esteem and personal fulfilment.
Many of us appreciate the restorative benefits of a three-week vacation but underestimate the value of short breaks. Thrive Global, founded by Ariana Huffington to “end the epidemic of stress and burnout”, recommends micro steps – small, incremental science-backed actions that bring immediate and long-lasting benefits. A micro step at night could be escorting your phone out of your room an hour before bedtime. At work, it could involve doing five bodyweight squats every hour or doing a walking meditation from your desk to the pantry; these actions can recharge you throughout the workday.
Make time for pleasurable activities, whether it’s reading, painting or hiking. Incorporating leisure activities into your routine is not just about relaxation, it’s about rejuvenation, so that you can return to your responsibilities with renewed vigour and focus.
Research shows that when individuals feel they have a say in how their work is structured, they’re more likely to be invested in the outcomes. And when employees align their roles with their intrinsic motivations, they are more engaged at work and their performance improves.
Enter job crafting. This concept empowers you to reshape your role to better fit your strengths, passions, and aspirations. The beauty of job crafting is that it is an employee-initiated approach. It enables you to shape your work environment according to your needs by adjusting job demands and resources.
Task crafting can involve adding or dropping the responsibilities set out in your official job description. For instance, a chef may take it upon herself to not just serve food but to create beautifully designed plates that enhance a customer’s dining experience. A bus driver may decide to give helpful sightseeing advice to tourists along his route. To leverage task crafting, proactively discuss with your boss how you can add responsibilities that align with your interests and shed tasks that don’t leverage your strengths.
Relationship crafting is about building new connections or altering existing ones to foster a more supportive environment. To leverage relational crafting, proactively reshape the type and nature of the interactions you have with others. For example, a marketing manager might brainstorm with the firm’s app designer to talk and learn about the user interface, unlocking creativity benefits while crafting relationships.
Cognitive crafting is about changing how you perceive your job. An example would be hospital janitors who describe their role as contributing to an environment that saves lives. By reframing tasks in a way that highlights their significance or aligns them with your personal values, you can find greater meaning in your work.
These are highly stressful times. We can’t control external stressors like economic uncertainties and geopolitical tensions. But we can safeguard our most valuable asset – ourselves – by taking these proactive steps to protect our well-being.
© 2024 Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants