Burnout says more about your workplace than it does about you.

If your employees are experiencing burnout at work, that likely says more about your workplace, than it actually does about your employees.

Let me tell you a story and then give you some research that may change your perspective on burnout.

The story —

A firefighter rushes to a fire. They put on their equipment. Gets inside the house. And finds that it's full of smoke and flames.

When the firefighter walks out, he is a much worse condition than he was when he walked in. He's covered in soot his lungs are filled with smoke. Ultimately he needs medical attention.

In this scenario, we would NEVER BLAME the firefighter for his health being worse. We would point to the burning house and say that that was the cause of the issues.

So why are you so often look to employees as the source of burnout? We give them strategies for coping with burnout instead of focusing on the high­-level issues, which is why the fire started in the first place. 

Instead, we must focus on why leadership making the changes in order to help prevent the burnout in the first place.

The research —- 

This research was done by Gallup and included 7,500 employees. They found the top five reasons for burnout are:

• Lack of clarity around their jobs

• Lack of communication and support from their managers

• Unfair treatment at work

• Unmanageable workloads

• Unreasonable time constraint,

All of these reasons, actually point back to leadership instead of pointing to the employee. Meaning if we can implement strategies that prevent this burnout at the leadership level, we can actually prevent burnout all together.