Investigating the temporal relationship between proactive burnout prevention and burnout

Work has a tiring effect on most people, but for some it does more than just that. Burnout refers to a work-related state of exhaustion, in which someone suffers from extreme tiredness, cognitive and emotional impairment, and mental distancing.

Not only are burnouts bad for you and everyone else around you, they’re also hard to recover from. Since prevention is better than cure, many employers have initiated burnout prevention programmes.

Studies have shown that these programmes have a lasting effect, but unfortunately it is also quite small. A possibly explanation for the limited effectiveness of employer-initiated programmes is that non-work factors also play a role in the development of burnout. It is therefore essential that employees take action as well to prevent burnout.

The table below lists proactive actions that employees can take to prevent burnout, along with some examples.

We know that self-initiated actions can be effective, but probably only up to a certain point.

According to the conservation of resources (COR) theory humans are motivated to maintain their current resources and gain new ones. When they are threatened with the loss of a resource, this creates psychological stress. Humans will then try to invest resources in order to improve their situation, e.g. prevent burnout.

This works well in theory, unless you already have a burnout: employees who suffer from burnout may no longer have the resources they need to get back to track and therefore become stuck in a cycle that continuously increases their suffering.

Little is known about how burnout and burnout prevention impact each other over time.

This study uses a so-called four-wave “shortitudinal” panel design.

What that means is that the researchers studied the effects of burnout and burnout prevention over multiple relatively short time periods (3, 6, and 9 weeks (side note: The first week is considered to be the first wave)).

The participants in the panel were all employees at the Dutch branch of an organisation in the financial services industry. About 61% of participants had a university degree.

The findings provide empirical evidence for COR theory: they suggest that proactive burnout prevention results in lower levels of burnout and that those who already suffer from burnout take less actions to prevent burnout. This means that as an employee you should take action to prevent burnout before it becomes too late to remedy your situation.

However, the researchers did not find any evidence for effects related to vicious cycles (side note: This does not necessarily mean that they do not exist!). Resource-rich employees do not tend to gain more resources over time, while resource-poor (i.e. burnt out) employees do not become more burnt out at a higher rate over time.