Have you heard? Everyone is ‘burned out’ these days, but what are employees actually saying and what, if anything, can leaders do to make things better?
What is Job Burnout?
In the past 2 years, I have heard lots of employees and managers tell me that they are burned out. They begin with, “I’m exhausted!” or “I’m stressed-out!’, but when I encourage them to explain further, they hit upon all of the things we’ve been complaining about for years. “It’s the clients,” they are quick to answer, “they are driving everybody nuts.” or “Our caseload is insane!” When I return, “But the clients and caseload have always been insane! It has never bothered us that much before,” they shake their heads insistently, “You don’t understand. This is different.”
Is the Problem Contextual?
I suppose every generation sees its current events as signs that the end of the world is nigh, but it’s hard not to feel as though today’s headlines are the biggest and blackest yet. Part of the reason is the constant stream of news that’s dinging, ringing and alerting on our every device. This Shake-and-Bake style of coating, then cooking us in one kind of a crisis or another has proven impact. Even if it missed its own irony, a BBC article on the impact of negative headlines on our collective psyche said it best, “The news is accidentally warping our perception of reality – and not necessarily for the better.”
No, Bash, Clients Really are Nuts!
Before the Pandemic, about 8.5% of Americans reported signs of depression. Since then, numbers have climbed to 33%, but those numbers hold true on both sides of the exam table. One could argue that we are just as likely to be impacted by more unreasonably behaved clients as we are to perceive that clients are being unreasonably behaved.
And teams are busier too. Though most practices have not seen any major change in growth as measured by the number of invoices or new clients, chronic staff shortages mean that the same-or-more caseload is spread out over fewer employees. We may not be in a period of especially high growth, but because of chronic staff shortages, we’re in a period of high groan.
Who are the Quiet Quitters?
The alliterative, Quiet Quitters, can be traced back to a social media trend started by Chinese factory workers in 2021. The original expression was translated to mean, ‘lying flat’. It was workers’ way of protesting against their tedious employment by doing the bare minimum to get by.
In America, quiet quitting has been blamed on burnout, but an increasing amount of data suggests that quiet quitting is an organizational issue, not a personal one; that quiet quitters aren’t burned out employees, they’re employees whose leaders have failed to sustain workplace engagement. If this is the case, employees’ disengagement isn’t a secret wish to be fired; it’s more of a case of follow the leader.
My work with practice groups leads me to believe that there may be some truth to the latter. Employees didn’t just check out during 2021-22, managers did too. That’s not to say that hospital leaders need any more blame heaped upon their shoulders. Practice ownership/leadership was already hard prior to March 2020, then COVID hit and leaders found themselves inundated with tough, never-before-encountered problems: unprecedented staff shortages, severe health crises, client and employee panic, and new workflow patterns to name a few. That leaders emerged on the other side of 2021 with nothing more than a lack of mojo isn’t a shame, it’s a miracle.
Generations of Complaints About Generations
Fundamental human needs do not evolve generationally. It may be true that today’s young people are more inclined to switch jobs or have less loyalty to an employer, but that’s because job opportunities abound, not necessarily because young people are tenure averse. Graduate programs teach that siloing employees based on age will make management easier and communication clearer, but burnout can’t be forecast by age any more than winter weather can be prognosticated by groundhogs. Pigeon-holing employees by age and then assigning to each of those age groups a set of characteristics isn’t science; it’s astrology with an MBA.
+ Parenthood
Perhaps another reason why the work/life equation is so difficult to balance is because it is written wrong. Maybe we need to add an additional + parenthood factor to the equation to truly understand the kind of force pushing down on everything right of the equal sign.
To be sure, worker-parents have had much more trouble balancing work and life since the pandemic. The Melbourne Institute released data in 2020 showing that working parents who were the primary care provider for children were 4 times as likely to suffer mental distress than working parents who were not simultaneously raising children. Research also shows that working parents experience an array of anxieties:
Scheduling conflicts
For all sorts of reasons, workers are asked to be workers and parents at the same time. Parents are navigating a daily schedule that increasingly looks like an obstacle course, forcing them to hopscotch between work-parent-work obligations and leaving them emotionally and physically drained. A recent study conducted by Bright Horizons, a corporate child care provider showed that 90% of parents are stressed at their jobs, with 61% of this group describing their stress as overwhelming. The report went on to conclude that these individuals were ´most at risk for leaving their current jobs.´
Carry-over Stress
In an effort to get everything done, worker-parents are clocking hours late at night as a parent, a professional, or both. They’re going to bed rattled from the day and then waking the following day with a combined lack of sleep and wallop of residual stress that complicates things more.
Personal Shame
As time wears on, work and home-life issues, cropping up from the worker´s inability to keep up, become a source of personal shame for the worker. Basically, they look back in time and see that they aren’t the parent they once were or, just as bad, that they will never be the parent that they hoped to be. This only compounds the worker´s stress levels and ability to optimally perform both at home and at work.
Despite the significant frustrations worker-parents experience finding a way to schedule all of their obligations, it is important to remember that work can be a genuine source of personal fulfillment, so the default solution shouldn’t always be less work. A better answer for everyone is a reexamination of the worker´s personal priorities, assistance with childcare, responsible time management by the parent-worker, and respectful problem solving by employer and employee that squares the needs of both life at work and home.
Understanding Negative Employee Behavior
Employee Negativity is a common complaint of hospital managers, even if they miss the irony in doing it. Negative employees take aim at the latest attempts to improve and blast away at them with ridicule, scorn, disregard, and sour outlooks. Numerous studies have uncovered the impact of their actions: increased lawsuits, harassment and bullying accusations, disengagement, burnout, and alienation.
Why Are Employees Negative?
Psychologists believe that employee negativity can be traced back to four core internal beliefs:
The group will shun me
Asking an employee to do anything outside of her normal actions may run up against how she sees herself or how she believes she will be perceived in the group. Employees who fear ostracization will frown upon any idea that they believe may make them, or others, look foolish.
No one cares for me
Asking employees to try new things risks failure. For some, failure isn’t an issue because they trust that others will be there to catch them if they fall, but for those that don’t feel loved, failure means ruin. When employees worry that friends or coworkers can’t be relied upon to help them, they will punch holes in any idea that risks failure.
Bad things will happen
Some individuals live with a steady worry that something bad is always around the corner. These people dread adverse events because they know the occurrence will trigger tough-to-manage fear and anxiety. If your bright new idea risks these employees’ cloud of doom darkening, they’ll be the first one to shoot it down.
No gas in the tank
The past few years have been tough. Daily changes and challenges have ramped up considerably and some people are simply out of the energy to fight back against gloom. For these employees, a new idea isn’t a spark, it’s a blob on their attempt to catch their breath and regroup. Worse, it’s also another distraction from one of their major needs: acknowledgement for how hard they have been struggling to work, live and cope.
What to do
At the risk of exemplifying what I’m talking about, I’m not being negative when I tell you that chronically negative people don’t need a manager; they need a psychologist. Even then, they will be months on the couch before anyone sees an appreciable change. Constant fear that the you’ll be shunned by the group? A feeling that you are unloveable? You’re not going to fix that in a coaching session with your lead tech. These are deep seated feelings and they should be sorted out by an experienced professional. For those who are more marginally negative, here’s a helpful strategy:
- Listen: Hear them out. Demonstrate that you care about what they think, how they perceive things, and how they feel.
- Share your perspective: If you believe that you have a realistic, more optimistic outlook, share it. Explain the deliberative process you took to understand things so they too might reach the same conclusion.
- Don’t argue: Don’t allow the exchange to turn into an argument; you’ll never win. Instead, continue to listen and show that you understand. Sometimes the act of listening and allowing the other party to talk things out us therapeutic enough to help the individual past their roadblocks.
- Telegraph that positive is better: If you have experienced a time when you couldn’t see past the negative, share it. In many cases, we don’t have the energy, the gas in our tank, to fight back gloom, so it may be helpful for the individual to know that he or she is not alone. Still, at some point, most of us come to understand the value of making positive choices versus negative ones. While you listen, try to telegraph that even in this moment, you are choosing to look at matters optimistically. Your body language should signal that positivity equals balance, groundedness, the ability to grow, and satisfaction with work and life.
- Acknowledge their value: Remember that many are negative because the feel that failure will mean ostracization or ruin, so reassure the individual of their skill, value and your support.
Work-Life Balance: Taring things up
Extracurricular activities and rest are important. Having time for loving relationships is also important, but working at something one finds fulfilling, engaging in problem solving, and having the sense that one is part of a worthwhile cause is also essential to human happiness. The resolution of the work/life balance debate has at its heart the wrong resolution; that more life equals more fulfillment. That’s not true. The road to happiness is mostly paved inside the borders of vocation, not vacation.
Veterinary work can be labor intensive, but it shouldn’t be laborious. It can be emotionally charged, but it shouldn’t be mentally incapacitating. Packed inside the grime, the toil, the tension, and the often-exasperating push and pull of group dynamics, is a sizable and obtainable core of fulfillment. If you’re not getting that from your employment in veterinary medicine, the answer is not more life, it’s a better way of accessing the support, organization, and teamwork necessary to find fulfillment in your work.
No-Cost Lunch-And-Learns For Your Group
Bash presented at the SPVS-VMG 2020 Conference in the UK and the feedback was amazing. Everyone rated him 5 out of 5 and had these kinds of comments:
– Enthusiastic and encouraging speaker.
– Great presentation.
– Energetic and motivational and lots of common sense.
– LOVED LOVED LOVED!! Bash smashed this and I would come again just to listen to him! His vision of a veterinary practice is exactly how I see it
Open any of the topics below or click through to the speaker page. Often presentations are fully supported by sponsorship. Email Bash for more information.
Conversations Worth Having
Grieving clients, upset pet owners, those mad at how much you charge...some of your younger team members have never managed a difficult conversation, yet we're throwing them into an arena full of lions. Let me give everyone on your staff an hour of thoughtful discussion and learning on how to manage conversations with the potential for tears, fits of anger or worse. Our job requires us to work in anxious situations and talk to those that may be at their emotional worst. Let's train up on how to do it with confidence and compassion.
Effective Client Communication
Taped phone calls to veterinary practices leave audience members slack jawed and laughing before Halow pulls everyone into a discussion of exactly what we are trying to say to clients and how to say it. This lecture is a big hit with audiences. Everyone has a chance to be thoughtful about great service, what it is and what it sounds like. This will make a lasting improvement on how all of your employees engage with pet owners.
Workflow and Communication in the Age of Stress
If your team has been complaining about burnout or is growing more resentful of demanding clients, this lecture is the perfect solution. With group exercises, audience interaction and science-based facts on workplace happiness this event both educates and inspires. This is Bash's most frequently requested lecture. Team members walk away with insight into their own happiness and practice teams learn how to work together to be more productive and joyful about work. Invite everyone, they'll have a blast!
Burn Out: A Way Forward
Practices across the country are giving into demands for more balance, more time, more life, but are teams actually happier or more productive? A candid look at what we're gaining or giving up when we step away from frustrations associated with a career in veterinary medicine. This interactive workshop explores career fulfillment and the power of togetherness in the face of stress, exhaustion, and pet owners who are increasingly demanding. Audience members are asked to personally define compassion fatigue, burnout, and work life balance as a way to specifically identify what is upsetting them and how to feel better.