Cause and Prevention of Burnout in Human Services Staff Paper
Burnout is feeling emotional and mentally exhausted from working with people in demanding or difficult conditions. This is usually caused by being over worked and overly stressed.
Burnout is usually cause by an individual not being able to say no to fellow employees who are seeking assistance and always say yes then never have time for your own work. Also not having enough employees to have the workload even within the organization which cause work overload and really gets people to think that doing all this work for the little bit of money they are paid is not worth it. Other ways burnout occurs within an organization are when the employee is doing everything by the book and a difficult client comes in and demands to speak to the supervisor and the supervisor gives in to the client. This really makes the employ look like they don’t know what they are doing and also lets the client know that if they go to the supervisor then they can get what they want. Burnout can be identified by three major features: emotional exhaustion, feelings of decreased successful outcomes with clients, and increased feelings of being de-sensitized to the needs of clients (Lewis, Packard, & Lewis, 2007). Physical signs may include a fatigued or drained appearance, more frequent absences due to illness, increases in physical complaints, and changes in weight (Smith, Jaffe-Gill, Segal, & Segal, 2008). Also having an organization that allows for employees to have PTO and Sick leave not one that just has PTO because an organization with just the PTO really does lead to the burnout because employees are taking time off for sick child or sick themselves so when they are burnout they can’t just take a day off due to not having any PTO which doesn’t help with the burnout.
There are ways to prevent burnout and being able to speak up and know that it is ok to tell others no when you have work of your own to do. Making sure those employees have different task each day to do so they aren’t doing the same thing over and over each day. Also having motivational sessions so they employees and supervisor can feel a since of motivation within the organization. However having different activities or goals those employees can work toward to earn and incentive can really help with the burnout.
How do I deal with the burnout is a really try and find something to do that can keep my mind of the workload and just relax. I tend to walk around the parking lot on my lunch with friends or even going to lunch with friend who are positive. I also have friend who will push me to keep up the work and know that I can accomplish my goals even though I am overwhelmed at this certain time. One thing about working in the human service field that employees really need to learn is when you walk out the door at the end of the day you must leave your work there and step into your personal role, without being able to