Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Burnout makes a serious problem in the spheres of human service. Human services professionals have an emotionally intense job.  In addition, they often may have an extreme caseload. Unfortunately,  they also have little chance to have professional support or supervision. All these factors, taken together often result in such problems as stress, depression, emotional fatigue and professional burnout. It is important to be aware of these problems, their signs, and means to prevent them, in order save physical and emotional health and to be able to work effectively. If not treated timely, burnout can have a negative impact on physical health, emotional state, and job performance. Specialists note that job stress and burnout is not an individual problem anymore. It affects the big groups of people and it is hard to overestimate the meaning of this problem. “Job stress is estimated to cost the U.S. economy $300 billion in sick time, long-term disability, and excessive job turnover. Stressful jobs have been identified as equally harmful to women as smoking and obesity” (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 1998).   According to recent statistics, about 75 % of social workers experience burnout (Gerry 2008). These numbers illustrate the seriousness of the problem.  The work of human service professional requires excessive energy, time and resources.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

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Originally the term “burnout” was introduced by Herbert Freudenberger in 1981. According to him, burnout is ”a debilitating psychological condition brought about by unrelieved work stress, resulting in depleted energy and emotional exhaustion, lowered resistance to illness, increased depersonalization in interpersonal relationships, increased dissatisfaction and pessimism, and increased, and work inefficiency”(Freudenberger & Richelson, cited in Clark 74).  The workers, who have a professional burnout, are unable to meet their professional demands. On further stages of burnout, human service professionals may lose interest and motivation in their professional activity.  The problem of burnout did not lose its actuality nowadays. The high speed of life, high professional demands and changes in social roles and functions contribute to burnout. David Ballard, the head of the American Psychological Association, notes, “A lot of burnout really has to do with experiencing chronic stress. In those situations, the demands being placed on you exceed the resources you have available to deal with the stressors.”(cited in Gerry 2013).  A lot of professionals from different fields experience this kind of stress. At the same time, working in social sphere gives additional sources of stress.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Specialists name different reasons of burnout, but, at the same time, most of them are a condition by the peculiarity of professions, connected with social service.  Human service professionals serve the neediest part of the population. They face negative information every day. They also often share negative emotions with people they help. As Marianne Borritz notes in her research, “burnout The prospective analyses on determinants of burnout showed that high emotional demands, high demands for hiding emotions, high quantitative demands, high work pace, low possibilities for development, low meaning of work, low predictability, low role-clarity and high role-conflict predicted burnout on at least one burnout scale” (Borritz 28). All these factors become the source of professional stress and finally contribute to burnout. Social workers usually meet most of these factors on the daily basis. When it is impossible to impact some of them, such as predictability or high emotional demands, it is possible to influence others, such as the meaning of work or work pace. It is also important to keep in mind that usually sensitive and caring people choose human service. They have a desire to help others. This desire makes them good professionals. At the same time, this desire may also become the reason for burnout.  The problem needs complex approach and united effort of the different organization in order to be developed.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

There is a number of sings, which can help identify burnout. Physical symptoms can help identify burnout among social service workers. These symptoms include a feeling of fatigue, headaches, bad sleep, feeling sick, bad work of the immunity system. Different kinds of body pain, as well as muscle aches,  can also be synthons of burnout. Specialists also note that negative change in eating and sleeping habits also may come as burnout symptoms. Emotional symptoms of burnout often accompany physical ones. Emotional singes of burnout may include: feeling of failure, feeling of helplessness, defeat, and detachment. Human service professionals, who have professional burnout may also feel lost and abandoned (Susso ). People, who have a burnout may also experience difficulties socializing with their friends and family.  Professional burnout has an impact not only on the emotional and physical condition, it also affects professional activity. Professionals with burnout turn to withdrawing from responsibilities, procrastination, and isolation at the workplace. These actions may have negative effect professional performance, and this often becomes the reason for additional stress. In some cases, professionals, who experience burnout turn to drugs or alcohol in order to cope with the problem.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

The timely diagnostic is an important factor, which can help deal with burnout effectively. People, who work in social sphere often do not know about the possibility of professional burnout until they face the problem. In addition, prevention of burnout in many cases can be an easier way to deal with the problem. Timely informing about burnout, its symptoms and sings should become the first step when dealing with the problem. Managers and administration of different social care institutions should take time and effort in order to provide their employees with detailed information about burnout. They also should develop the plan aiming to prevent it. It is also important to know different ways to escape burnout. Some of them can be implemented for the entire organizations, while others should be made individually. Timely rest and normal working schedule are important to escape burnout. They are also important when dealing with the problem when it already exists.  Relaxation can be effective when dealing with burnout. Social service professionals should now the basic method of relaxation and should practice them regularly. Different relaxation techniques proved to be effective stress-reducers. Yoga, stretching, meditation or listening to relaxing music can be helpful for relaxation. Being in nature and spending time on a hobby can also reduce stress level. Professionals, who work in social service, should be aware that they spend much energy on their professional activity. At this point, they should know their personal ways to restore energy level. Techniques of relaxation, mentioned above can be supplemented by individual techniques. Healthy eating and sleeping habits, as well as regular sports exercise,  are also useful when dealing with burnout.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

The methods, mentioned above deal mostly with the physical component of the problem. They deal with chronic fatigue, physical stress, and work overload. At the same time, emotional and mental components make a big contribution to burnout. That is the reason it is necessary to deal with this part of the problem as well.  Counseling, mentoring or team support can become effective instruments to deal with the problem.  Social workers constantly experience lack of understanding of their roles they have with clients, organizations and even their families. Counseling and self-reporting can help to find an effective solution to the problem.  Setting boundaries are an effective way to prevent job burnout.  Human services professionals should make distinctions between their professional activity and their private life. They should dedicate time to themselves. Creative activities can bring necessary relaxation and positive emotions.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Causes and Prevention of Burnout in Human Services Staff Burnout is most common in individuals that are motivated and dedicated in his or her field of services, including among human services professionals. This discussion will included the definition of burnout, describing some of the individual, cultural, organizational, supervisory, and social support factors that cause burnout, describing various individual, job role, and organizational methods to prevent burnout, examine your own personality and share how you react and respond to personal
“The organization as a whole can provide a more or less stressful work environment depending on whether all organizational members share a sense of excitement and strong purpose and clear goal and objectives.” (Lewis, Packard & Lewis, 2010) Having every staff employed on the same page with reaching goals to give to each of his or her clients is essential to the organization and the client involved. If one should lack in providing services to the clients and the effects do appear to be seen, there is a chance that problems will surface back to the other staff and/or client. Many accomplishments will be beneficial to everyone involved only if he or she is motivated enough to complete each task effectively towards helping his or her clients. “Clarity of purpose in an agency and commitment to ongoing learning and development of staff and the organization can help in providing such a supportive climate.” (Lewis, Packard & Lewis)Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Burnout is frequently found in the Human Services field due to its emotionally and mentally demanding nature. “According to experts, the causes of Burnout include heavy caseloads, unrealistic timeframes, low pay, and adverse working conditions.” In 1996, Burnout had become so prevalent that the National Association of Social Work felt the need to address it and added it to the NASW Code of Ethics. So what do we, as newcomers, need to be prepared for?
According to research done by psychologist Christina Maslach, Ph.D. Burnout effects a person’s mental, emotional, physical and behavioral functioning. Maslach’s research provided the following list of typical symptoms one would experience. Mentally, Burnout can lead to confusion; impaired judgment and decision-making; forgetfulness; and decreased ability to identify alternatives, prioritize tasks, and evaluate one’s own performance. Emotionally, Burnout can cause emotional exhaustion; loss of a sense of personal accomplishment and merit; depersonalization and alienation; depression; and easy excitability, anger, and irritability. Physically, Burnout can lower energy level, change appetite and sleeping, and cause gastrointestinal problems, hypochondriacal complaints, and exhaustion. Behaviorally, Burnout can cause increased or decreased activity level; extreme fatigue; excessive isolation from coworkers, family and clients; disorganization; misplacing of items; and impaired competence on the job.
Since we are all at least heading towards the Human Services profession, what do we need to do to prepare ourselves? By following a few suggestions and taking to heart the seriousness of Burnout, hopefully, we can create ourselves some resiliency to withstand the daily grind.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Burnout

The term was first coined by psychologist Herbert Freudenberg to describe the effects of highly stressful and idealistic work in “helping professions.” There is no clear single definition of burnout, but it commonly defined as “a psychological syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who work with people in some capacity.” Another relevant definition is “a defensive response to prolonged occupational exposure to demanding interpersonal situations that produce psychological strain and inadequate support.” While burnout was originally used to describe a phenomenon unique to helping professions, it has been broadened to apply to various different types of work that involve human interaction. There are three main symptoms of burnout: emotional exhaustion or the depletion of emotional resources, depersonalization or callus, pessimistic feelings about one’s clients, and reduced personal accomplishment or the tendency to evaluate one’s work negatively especially when referring to client work. Depersonalization seems to be related to and a main effect of emotional exhaustion. Some consider it a misfit between intentions and reality in helping work. Often it can go unnoticed and is self-perpetuating because part of the problem is a lack of adequate coping strategies.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Emotional Labor

There are two types of emotional labor, job focused EL and employee focused EL. For the purpose of this paper, job focused EL or the emotional demands of service work will be the focus of this definition. Emotional labor is the emotional demands of an occupation that arise from the necessity of emotional control, expression, and the interaction with clients’ emotions. The intensity, quality, and variety of emotional expressions necessary during interactions with clients are key dimensions of emotional labor and also predict burnout. The emotional labor of service professions is considered one of the major factors that contributes to the higher rate of burnout in these fields.

Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue is specific to workers in social services that work directly with victims of trauma. It is characterized by episodes of sleeplessness, anxiety and depression. The more empathetic a therapist is, the more likely they are to internalize the trauma of their client. Compassion fatigue can be difficult to distinguish from burnout, but normally has a quicker onset than burnout and may contribute to long term burnout. Compassion fatigue has symptoms of fear and sadness and a generally faster recovery rate when compared to burnout. Social services workers experiencing compassion fatigue may have thoughts or experiences than reflect something similar to the reactions of their patients. Compassion fatigue is also referred to as secondary traumatic stress.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Introduction

I chose to do an individual major because I wanted to understand something; how do you effectively help others? My major allowed me to explore this theme by conducting research in South Africa on effective programming and evaluating existing programming at Tubman. While that contributed to my knowledge of effective services, I started to notice a real problem with my coworkers and myself. In South Africa and Texas, I encountered dangerous working situations and little support or training. I found myself losing my passion and ability to help clients.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

After coming back to St. Olaf, I realized that focusing on clients had blinded me to the ways helping professionals impact service and care. After experiencing burnout myself and watching co workers leave after a mere three months on the job, I realized that there was something systemically wrong in the social services world. I continued to work for nonprofits and saw time and time again a high turnover rate. Employees were dissatisfied with jobs that they chose because they were passionate about the work. The leaders that I worked for seemed to accept that this pattern was unavoidable. But the consequences of burnout are real and extremely negative for employees and organizations, not to mention quality of client services. I started researching this topic because I realized that my major focused on effectiveness in service delivery and the biggest impediment I could find to that was burnout, changing staff, caulous staff, workloads that were impossible, and overall lack of care. The problem was no one seemed to be talking about or addressing it. The more I researched, the more I found data about how burnout affects employees, organizations, and clients. I hope my senior project and this paper can be used to further education about burnout and change in the social service industry.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Methodology

I collected data and information for this paper by using research databases and Google Scholar. Through collaboration with a St. Olaf research librarian, I narrowed my search by using keywords like burnout, emotional labor, self care, and employee care. I also used the references of key articles to inform further study. Throughout this process I discovered that there was little research or information on nonprofit burnout rates, but there was a greater variety of information on social work statistics. Because social work often overlapped with my own experiences and the nonprofit field I relied heavily on social work data.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Research Questions

What is burnout?
How does it affect employees, organizations, and clients?
What factors make employees or organizations vulnerable and what factors protect against burnout?
How can organizations and individuals protect against and address burnout in social service organizations?Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay
The Problem

When compared to other jobs that require frequent client interactions, social service positions are defined by the emotional intensity and subsequent increased emotional labor of their jobs. Research demonstrates that social service workers, when compared to service/sales, managerial, and physical labor work, perform more emotional labor and have lower emotional autonomy. While there is little research on burnout rates in nonprofits, other fields of social service, like social work have investigated burnout to a greater degree. Daniel Fox found that chronic burnout contributes to a turnover rate exceeding 60% every year. When looking specifically at social workers, studies in the United States, Ireland, and Norway found a majority of social workers (from 46% to as high as 71%) suffer from moderate to severe intensity burnout as measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory. These studies also found 40% of social workers from a variety of fields report that they will likely be changing jobs in the near future. According to the National Association of Social Workers Membership Workforce Study in 2014, 37% of social workers experience psychological problems related to work stress, 23% experience sleep disorders, and 66% experience fatigue. Their survey concluded by making the assertion that burnout is the main reason people are leaving the social work profession. Other fields in the social services also experience high levels of burnout. 40 to 50% of teachers burnout within the first five years and nursing faces a chronic shortage because of fatigue. In summation, burnout is widespread and contributes to incredibly high turnover rates.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

But how does burnout affect helping professionals and their work? Not only does burnout contribute to an incredibly high turnout rate, but burnout is incredibly costly. It is estimated that the cost of each employee lost is anywhere from five thousand dollars to 25% of an employee’s yearly salary to recruit, train, and make up for lost efficiency. Because of the budget constraints that nonprofit and social services already struggle with, this expense is unneeded drain on already limited funds. Research in Palestine identified significant individual costs as well. Burnout contributes to hopelessness, anger, exhaustion, and a multitude of mental and physical ailments. Most frightening may be the effect on client relationships. Employees experiencing burnout have decreased contact with their clients and are less willing to help. Additionally, burned out employees are less efficient, more often absent, perform poorly, and are less committed to their organization and work. Employees experiencing burnout demonstrate more of the following behaviors: derogatory language meant to put others down, refusing to help, refusing to be professional or civil, and failing to provide services or help. Burnout also affects relationships outside of work and may contribute to marital and familial problems. Burnout affects all aspects of an employee’s life and contributes significantly to more negative client outcomes and organization culture.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Risk Factors

Work Environment

Helping professions come with certain inherent risks for poor work/life balance. Many choose social work and other social service professions because of their desire to help. While this is an important qualification to be impactful in the field, it puts workers at risk for over involvement in their clients’ lives and boundary issues. Social work is a profession of relationships and social workers must balance the demands of work, clients, and pressure for certain outcomes. Valuing social justice, individual worth, and empowerment may clash with work expectations due to budget and time constraints. Balancing all of the expectations, while still attempting to empower individual clients, can be a delicate balancing act. Some consider social work inherently stressful because of these complexities.

Organizational culture is an important factor in protecting against or contributing to employee burnout. Carolyn Dillon, a professor and researcher in clinical social work, studied burnout in the workplace. She found that the common structure of social service organizations contributed negatively to employee stress. Her research revealed that social workers have little autonomy or control in working with clients. Social workers often did not dictate who they saw, how long they saw them, when they interacted with clients, and what was expected of them in such meetings. This lack of autonomy and control contributed to social workers’ stress and their risk for burnout. Many researchers have examined what work structures contribute to stress. In the social work field, Borland found that administrative goals are not always the same as the goals of social workers. The social worker’s goals of helping the client might not be cost effective or, in following procedure, social workers may have to make choices for clients that are at odds with their idea of what is best. This can cause social workers to feel they have little power when it comes to discharging clients, making important decisions, or impacting change.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Another stress within the workplace can be other co workers attitude towards social work. Social work can be undervalued by other workers, as well as society in general. Reid et al. found that in the mental health field workers experienced increased frustration because their role was not understood or appreciated by their co workers. This lack of social support negatively affects workers and is another leading cause of burnout. This feeds into a general trend of role conflict and role ambiguity. Role conflict, or a situation in which a social service worker is expected to play two roles that conflict with each other, increases the amount of dissatisfaction and burnout experienced by social workers. Role ambiguity, as studied by Balloch et al., was found to be another important factor in job dissatisfaction in social service employees. Employees who were expected to do things outside of their job description, unable to do things that were part of their job, and unsure of expectations were more likely to experience lack of job satisfaction, lower motivation and self esteem, greater desire to leave their job, and burnout.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Occupation stress in social workers is often increased by work overload, unnecessary paperwork, and time pressure. The National Association of Social Workers reported that 25% of social workers surveyed (around 4,000) said that their heavy workloads contributed significantly to their stress, and many noted they were unable to complete their daily tasks. 31% of respondents indicated that they lacked the time required to complete the necessary tasks of their job. Other stressors identified by the survey were having to complete paperwork/tasks with little value, getting minimal support from coworkers, being expected to work long hours, and having few opportunities for advancement.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Stress affects certain demographics at greater rates than others. While some research has found no link between sociodemographic characteristics (gender, age, race) and stress, other studies report that younger female social workers are more likely to encounter work related stress and experience emotional exhaustion. Female workers report more incidents of work/life conflict, which is a significant contributor to stress. Social workers who have experienced trauma themselves report higher levels of emotional exhaustion, but also report higher levels of personal accomplishment. Older social workers are more likely to have developed strategies that help them cope and found resources to mitigate work stress. Additionally, studies have linked higher introversion and neuroticism with burnout while extraversion, agreeableness, and openness appear to be buffers against emotional exhaustion and burnout. Certain types of clients seem to affect burnout rates as well. Fields with clients who more commonly have poor prognoses are linked with much higher rates of burnout. Specifically social service workers whose clients are schizophrenic, psychotic, have another form of chronic mental illness, struggle with substance abuse, or frequently engage in aggressive, stressful, or violent behaviors are more likely to experience burnout. There are individual factors that protect against burnout like high emotional intelligence and life satisfaction. Nina Oginska-Bulik explored the effect of emotional intelligence on stress and health outcomes in social service jobs. Her research uncovered the essential nature of emotional intelligence as a method of perceiving occupational stress and preventing negative health outcomes in social service employees. Those with higher emotional intelligence were less likely to experience burnout because of this heightened awareness. General life satisfaction combined with social support is also associated with decreased risk of burnout. This may be because burnout affects all aspects of life including general life satisfaction.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

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Methods of Decreasing Burnout

Self Care

Caring for employees and giving employees tools to care for themselves is essential to mitigating the stressful and emotionally draining work that often comes with the social service territory. The question then becomes: what methods of intervention and support are effective at decreasing rates of burnout and improving employee health? A national study of social workers showed that social workers cope with stress through exercise (73%), meditation(27%), therapy (25%), use of prescription medication (22%), yoga (18%), alcohol (17%), and absenteeism (7%). Carroll et al. provides a method of conceptualizing the many aspects of self care by dividing self care into four categories: intrapersonal work, interpersonal work, professional development and support, and physical or recreational activities.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Physical or Recreational Activities

Physical or recreational activities like exercising, reading, watching tv, or engaging in personal hobbies are another important part of self care. These activities help employees enrich their definition and use of self, as well as relieve stress. Physical exercise can be used as a way of alleviating physical stress specifically. Hospice workers commonly engage in amusement activities like gardening and fishing or expressive tasks like drawing, writing, or singing as methods of self care.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Intrapersonal Self Care

Counseling

Research on the impact of workplace counseling demonstrates that counseling positively affects stress and psychological symptoms. Counseling was also shown to affect symptoms of depression and as an effective treatment of burnout and occupational post traumatic stress. Counseling can also save organizations money as counseling has been shown to reduce sickness absence by 20-60%. Counseling has also been linked to higher retention rates as well as improved client ratings of performance in their work. Other studies have shown counseling lowers the number of accidents and disciplinary cases among staff. Based on a meta analysis of research on client satisfaction with workplace counseling, 80% of clients were either satisfied or highly satisfied with the service.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Meditation

Mediation also falls into this category and is a practice commonly used by social workers according to the National Association of Social Workers. Meditation is the cognitive practice of quieting the mind and teaching recognition and control of intrusive thoughts. It focuses on teaching participants to respond to situations, as opposed to reacting to them. Research shows many benefits to meditation including mental clarity, concentration, and increased ability to manage daily stress. Yoga has also been studied as a method of intervention. In a study on psychotherapists who practice yoga in their daily lives, their ability to self reflect and relax were shown to improve. Meditation can be an effective intervention for stress and burnout because it can rejuvenate and refocus tired minds.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Programs is another method of intrapersonal intervention in stressful workplaces. Mindfulness is defined as “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.” Mindfulness has been shown to decrease and prevent stressors, as well as increasing wellbeing. Mackenzie et al. studied the effect of a mindfulness intervention in the nursing population. Nurses reported relief from burnout symptoms and increased satisfaction and relaxation. Shapiro et al. investigated MBSRP as a method of self care for therapists. They demonstrated that MBSRP decreases mental challenges and enhances positive health practices. Mindfulness is proposed to be a bridge between self care and wellness.

Professional Development and Support

Organizational Structure

The number one reason people leave the field of social work is work overload. Unhealthy and unsafe work environments also contribute to burnout. Giving workers the freedom to act, agency, and autonomy contributes to worker well being. The lowest rates of burnout are found in organizations that have social cohesion, goal congruence, autonomy, and self efficacy. As mentioned in the predictors of burnout, organizations that are understaffed, put high pressure on employees, and require staff to lift physical burdens have a higher rate of burnout. Reducing those stressors can positively impact individuals and the entire organization. Increased financial compensation can also be a factor in reducing occupational stress.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Supervision

Supervisors can be an added layer of protection against burnout. Having an active and caring supervisor has been shown to assist professionals during stressful periods and increase their patience with clients. Caring supervision also ties in closely with social support and a healthy work environment. Receiving support and engaging in positive interactions with other coworkers who encourage self care and manageable caseloads decreases the likelihood of burnout. Adequate supervision can be a safety net for catching burnout before it severely affects employee health and client care. Supervisor relationships also affect employees views on organizational climate, wellbeing, employee commitment, and psychological capital. Employees that rated their relationship with their supervisor highly were more likely to also view the organization and their work more positively. Positive supervisor relationships are also associated with a greater engagement with coworkers to resolve and discuss problems. Supervisor support and good supervision are critical factors in employees staying at their jobs even under high levels of stress.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Interpersonal Support

Social support can be a method of coping with high stress jobs. Whether through informal or formal support, the main effects model supports a linear relationship between social support and burnout where social support protects employees from burnout. As social support decreases, rates of burnout increase. The buffering hypothesis offers an alternative theory: that seeking social support from other employees who have depersonalized worsens burnout. Research on this hypothesis has been inconclusive, but it is important to note that workers seeking support from other workers also experiencing burnout may exacerbate the problems.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Self Care Planning

A crucial part of effective self care strategies is self care planning or planning a balance between output and input energies in personal and professional life. Self care planning can help employees to relieve stress by identifying effective strategies and recognizing what aspects of life cause stress. Self care planning takes into account physical, emotional, spiritual, cognitive, and relational aspects of life. Activities like gardening or crying can be identified and capitalized upon in an individual specific way to alleviate stress and create a better balance in all aspects of life.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Organization Ideas for Addressing Burnout

Based on my experience, my coursework at St. Olaf, and this research, these are my suggestions for changes to organizational structure to promote healthy environments and address chronic burnout.

Prioritize Supervisor Relationships

Supervisor relationships are key to employee health and resilience. While doing research at Tubman, I saw that those who did not feel like their supervisor cared or invested time in them were more likely to have an overall negative experience at Tubman. Through collaboration with Tubman’s Volunteer and Intern Services we developed these methods of strengthening supervisor relationships:Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

mandatory weekly checkins
mandatory exit interviews
supervisor handbooks
volunteer/intern quarterly surveys
collecting positive quotes about supervisor and emailing them as forms of encouragement
scheduling meetings with supervisor who had the most negative feedback to create ways of strengthening these relationships
Training Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Training is very important to address client needs but more training on self care and burnout is necessary. being able to recognize signs of emotional exhaustion and burnout can help employees communicate and advocate for themselves. The onboarding process can also be pivotal. Giving employees the tools to do their job and grow in their skills was missing at one of my jobs and it put me in a very vulnerable position to feel insecure about my abilities. Trainings should address:

methods of self care
information about burnout
meditation training
in depth job specific training
self care planning
Create Community Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

In the three Tubman surveys that I analyzed I found a common theme. Volunteers wanted to connect to those who did their job and form relationships with their co workers. Many people asked specifically for support groups and community activities. Here are some possible activities for nonprofits:

book club/ monthly reading list
have a social after mandatory training
create social spaces in break room with ways to write notes/communicate positively with co workers
have informal meet ups at entertainment activities
Offer Flexibility

The for profit world has embraced the idea of offering employees the agency to dictate more of their schedules. This is obviously not possible for many direct care jobs but making sure positions are manageable is possible. Other suggestions:

remove unnecessary paperwork
evaluate job responsibilities
offer employees input into important decisions
giving more flexible paid time off options Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Conclusion

Burnout rids the field of social work of its passion and ability to help. The effects of burnout are various and extensive, but they point to a key struggle in the social services field moving forward. Leaders in the field need to prioritize preventative measures to retain employees, save money, and gain better outcomes for all involved. There are methods proven to be effective and they should be implemented along with training on self care. But overall the field of social services needs reasonable workloads, higher salaries, and a conversation about stress and burnout. Some interventions may be more difficult to accomplish than others, but caring for employees lies at the heart of effective service. However, more research needs to be conducted on which interventions are the most effective at addressing burnout and which can be implemented into organizational structure at a low cost.

From the data presented here, the only conclusion to be drawn is burnout is an epidemic in the social services and it is vital that employees and organizations move to prevent against and address chronically unhealthy environments. Burnout is not a problem that can be ignored or failed to addressed as it affects most social servants and the effects are disastrous, not only to client services, but to individual’s holistic health. It is the responsibility of organizations to care for their employees and clients. Addressing burnout is a major part of that responsibility in the social service sphere. It is also important for employees to give feedback about work/life balance and prioritize self care. It benefits all aspects of an organization to have healthy employees who can provide the emotional labor and care they were hired for.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

From personal experience, I know that toxic workplaces take a toll on the soul. I almost lost my passion for the work I love and helping professionals need to know when enough is enough. Another important element of burnout is knowing when you can no longer work in a certain environment and having the awareness to know it’s not your fault. Recognizing the signs of exhaustions and workplace elements that fail to support employees is vital to retaining social workers, teachers, nurses, and other helping professionals. The work is incredibly important, but so are the workers and their needs.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Appendix

This information was obtained from data collected by an adoption agency in Texas. They graciously allowed me to analyze their exit interview data for the purpose of greater understanding of nonprofit turnover.

This organization has a current turnover rate of 67% which matches data collected by other agencies.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Burnout was not a choice in this survey, but it begs the questions: do employees know if they are leaving because of burnout? 30% listed their reason for leaving as supervision inadequacies which further reiterates the importance of good supervision and leadership. Work life balance could be a category that directly translates to burnout. These results support the importance of proper pay, opportunities for advancement, and clear job roles.

These two graphs demonstrate what an important impact work environment has on employee turnover. Employees also noted lack of training, communication, work/life balance, and leadership as key factors in turnover.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

Lastly, this research shows a systemic problem with supervisor relationships and leadership within this nonprofit. Many said their supervisor never resolved their problems property, gave usable performance feedback, encouraged/listened to suggestions,or mentored them. Additionally, growth opportunities, workload, training, morale, and communication were severely lacking.Burnout for Human Services Professional Essay

 

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