Slashdot Mirror
Employee Burnout Is a Problem with the Company, Not the Person (hbr.org)
Employee burnout is a common phenomenon, but it is one that companies tend to treat as a talent management or personal issue rather than a broader organizational challenge. That's a mistake, reads an article on HBR. From the article: The psychological and physical problems of burned-out employees, which cost an estimated $125 billion to $190 billion a year in healthcare spending in the U.S., are just the most obvious impacts. The true cost to business can be far greater, thanks to low productivity across organizations, high turnover, and the loss of the most capable talent. [...] When employees aren't as productive as they could be, it's usually the organization, not its employees, that is to blame. The same is true for employee burnout. When we looked inside companies with high burnout rates, we saw three common culprits: excessive collaboration, weak time management disciplines, and a tendency to overload the most capable with too much work. These forces not only rob employees of time to concentrate on completing complex tasks or for idea generation, they also crunch the downtime that is necessary for restoration.
Nothing like sitting through a .25hr scrum daily meeting and it turning into 1.25hr/daily. By the time it's over I could go take a nap!
Then you must not be very important if the company can survive an entire month without you.
If I didn't take my vacation they would get to try surviving without me around at all.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
...You may wonder who exactly *is* incompetent in my post. I am referring to company leadership that has got no clue about how things run.
Sometimes, they do have a clue, but pretend not to know; or provide "non answers" or "non solutions" to real issues.
In many cases, these managers have risen up the ranks of the company solely because of *nepotism* and not capability.
Sometimes, they have risen because of "who you know" for lack of better terminology...
Sometimes they have risen because they [have] provided a "service" or "favor" to the founders or influential parties. I will leave the nature of this service or favor to your imagination...
And BTW, this is very common in today's USA as well. I am speaking as one who lives right here in this blessed "land of the free."
Developers are so expensive and so hard to find that companies have to work the ones they have pretty hard and not allow them time off. I haven't had a full week off since 1993, and it sucks. Also, I typically lose two and a half weeks of vacation each year since I hit the accrual max. It gets old, but until there's enough developers, things are going to stay bad.
If you're good enough, when you say, "I'm taking two weeks off!" your boss says OK.
If he says, "You're too important to take that time off." then you need to reply with, "Then I need a raise. Right now."
If you're so important they can't afford to let you take time off, you're underpaid.
Cut me a check for the *overtime* value of the lost vacation.
Pretty simple.
No. There is no federal law requiring compensation for forfeited vacation time. Some states require that employees be compensated. None require it to be at "overtime" rate.
My company has a "use it or lose it" policy ... which is how it should be. Vacation exists for a reason and "extra pay" is not a substitute.
it's usually the organization, not its employees, that is to blame
It is incorrect to suggest that only factors related to work are the cause of burnout and that therefore it is a "company" problem. There can be many issues with an individual's personal life (or their finances, children, partners, parents, neighbourhood or many other sources) that means they are more or less susceptible to "burnout".
Even two people doing the same work: subject to the same level of professional stress can have vastly different reactions to it, depending on how pre-stressed they already are, or what coping mechanisms they have developed, or not - or even due to their personalities.
So while the pressures of a job may well add to an already stressed individual's burnout, it is unlikely to be the sole reason for it. Consequently a proper study would have to look at all aspects of a person's life to determine the extent to which their job or their boss or something else caused them to have problems. And therefore it seems reasonable that the solution to a person's recovery could, in many cases, be found outside of their work life, rather than within the company they work for.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Open offices, too. But the fact that they're so popular suggests that the people who are making the decisions really just don't care about the consequences; they're just hanging on until retirement.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Let's not kid ourselves. Burnout happens because people no longer care about their jobs. Why? Because there is no benefit to working any harder.