Job Burnout

You find yourself losing interest in work. Even after a good break, you  feel ill-equipped to handle daily office responsibilities. Be cautious, you could be suffering from Job Burnout!

Probably, you had never heard of a Job Burnout before. You were so deeply immersed in your career plans that such a term did not exist as far as you were concerned. Until, your body and mind started revolting.

Now you feel disillusioned, helpless and ill-equipped to resolve problems. You lose control over your regular sleep pattern and appetite. When dragging yourself out of bed every day is a mission, you wonder how your boss can expect you to meet deadlines with efficiency!

This condition could be temporary because you are battling too many issues on all fronts. And you think when some of the issues are sorted; you will be able to get back on your feet again. What if it is not just stress but the onset of a work related burnout? You cannot afford to take such symptoms lightly. Feeling stressed out and feeling incapable of managing problems could just be the tip of an iceberg called burnout. Burnout becomes harder to cure with time and worsens your condition. It can become a major health risk if left unattended. It can make you more susceptible to common illnesses like cold and flu. You will find yourself frequently suffering from headaches, neck pains and back aches.

Most people don’t even realise when burnout hits. It is essential to be ‘burnout-aware’ to combat this situation well in time. There has been a new wave of interest in burnout particularly in corporate circles. Big companies are trying to grapple with increasing cases of work related burnouts even in the case of employees who are offered exorbitant salaries. But the reasons which cause burnout are many. They vary with culture, with people’s personalities and their aims in life. Though burnout is always case specific, we could list some broad reasons that often lead to work burnouts:

• If you are a part of an unjust work environment: it is easy to get disillusioned with your work environment if you think your work is never valued in the organization, when even after a good salary your work is not generating the desired results, you are paid comparatively less for the amount of work you do, etc. There could be any reason that makes you feel your employers or the market conditions are not being fair to you.

• If you lack any sort of agency or control at the workplace. You do not have a defined job profile and are being bossed around all the time to accomplish various tasks. You have no say in deciding what your work responsibilities should be.

• If you are working under a company whose values do not agree with you. Thus, you find yourself questioning your ethics every now and then.

• When you lack social rapport or daily interaction with like-minded people. Work related stress gets aggravated under such conditions as a person starts feeling claustrophobic and stagnant. Especially when one does not get mental and emotional support from outside office.

• When there is too much of a gap between what one expected out of a job and the real picture. This is particularly true for people who do not receive sufficient appraisals or rewards even after sticking with a company for years. A person starts feeling stagnant and worthless in such a scenario.

Any one of these reasons or a combination of them could cause a work related burn-out. It essentially strikes when a person is struggling too much for long hours without sufficient rewards or desired results. You will find yourself becoming aggressively cynical and sarcastic about your job and career. Many people start indulging in unhealthy doses of food, alcohol or drugs to sustain themselves. A burn-out is characterised by a feeling of emptiness and in such a condition, the person tries to fill that vacuum by indulging in such things.

Be wary of any of these signs, do not ignore them as a sign of your weakness and try to motivate yourself to perform better – if pushed aside, it could make things worse and render you incapable of getting your career back on track.

In the next article under this section we will discuss the various ways in which you can prevent and also recover from or manage this condition.