Welcome to Read Before Burning, a monthly newsletter by Dr Ben J. Searle. Come here for simple but informative coverage of burnout-related concepts, research findings, and actionable advice – all firmly grounded in science.
Who am I? After earning a PhD in psychology (UNSW), I spent 20 years as an academic studying stress and related issues – until I burned out. I now write, consult, and talk about burnout, psychosocial hazard management, and developing psychological measures for use in organisations.
Burnout Risk Factors
This month’s feature is about the core risk factors for burnout.
Many research studies have been conducted to identify aspects of work that put people at risk of burning out. For decades, the top burnout experts have drawn our attention to six organisational risk factors we should focus on if we want to, you know, prevent burnout from happening.
In this feature, I unpack these six risk factors, discuss some ways to manage them, and talk about why these are particularly useful ones to know.
Overload
That work overload is one of the strongest predictors of burnout should shock nobody. If you’re surprised that there is a human cost to overloading people with work, pushing them to reach unattainable goals, or keeping them under constant time pressure, then maybe you shouldn’t be making decisions that affect other people.
I’ve seen problems with workload in approximately [checks notes] 100% of the organisations I’ve worked with. Often, it’s seen as an unsolvable problem. It’s true that in some cases there just isn’t the money to hire more people. More often, however, the money is there, but the leaders with the power to authorise hiring more staff are too far from the front line to understand the problems.
But there may be other ways to manage work overload. One worthwhile area of focus is clarity. In a changing world, an organisation’s priorities and expectations can change over time. Often, an employee feels their responsibilities keep growing because no-one has taken the time to clarify which tasks are no longer essential.
Low Autonomy
We’ve known it for more than 50 years, but it’s always worth repeating: autonomy matters! People are more at risk of burnout if they feel they have no control over their life – or their work. Lack of control reduces our sense of capability and can make work feel meaningless.
Empowering employees to make more choices is hardly a recipe for anarchy. Letting people find their own paths to achieving goals can do more than build morale and trust, it can encourage innovations and remove process bottlenecks. Involving employees in decision-making increases commitment and involvement, and can also bring valuable information and perspectives that help solve problems.
Involving team members in decision-making also goes a long way to creating a sense of fairness.
Injustice and Unfairness
You can’t please all of the people all of the time – no matter how well you run your organisation. What you can strive for instead is to treat people fairly all the time. Because if you let injustices persist, that’s a red flag for the cynicism and discontent that drives a lot of burnout.
Injustices should be easy to stamp out, but they have a way of creeping in. The opportunity that goes to a leader’s favourite when someone else is better qualified. Extra resources that always seem available to the leader who allocates resources. Complaints that never seem to get resolved when they are about that one senior leader. The tendency to keep hiring people who look just like the people who already work here.
Creating fair systems isn’t simple, in part because changing systems is never easy, and also because few of us have good insight into our own assumptions and biases. But a lot of progress can be made by focusing on transparency. The more transparent a process is, the less scope there is for injustice to happen. And if someone does detect injustice in a transparent process, an open discussion of ways to resolve it goes a long way to show your commitment to fairness.
Community Disharmony
“The people” can be the best thing about working in an organisation. The advisors and mentors who guide us and help us improve. The team working hard to help us achieve our goals. The community of diverse souls with similar interests who support one another with camaraderie, friendship, and understanding.
But research on burnout reveals that people can also be the worst thing. Individuals can be bullies, harassers, grumps, and tyrants. When we ignore counterproductive behaviours, we communicate that those behaviours are acceptable.
It’s important to remember, however, that individual behaviours are often shaped by the environment. For example, constant pressure can make people aggressive or sullen. Punishment for admitting mistakes can make people secretive about problems. In these and other ways, groups can develop problematic cultures (a topic I’ll discuss in another newsletter) that leave many people feeling unsupported.
Building supportive communities can be difficult, but it’s rarely impossible. It often starts with getting the team together to discuss the social environment they want to work in, and what the benefits might be. You may need to invest in skills development, for example in collaborative problem-solving. But don’t forget to also address the systemic problems that encourage bad behaviour.
Value Conflicts
Employees are more likely to burn out if their personal values and work values are misaligned. This can be the result of specific events, such as a new boss who cares more about style than substance, or a new project that impacts an employee’s family time. But it can also be the result of issues with the job itself.
We seek out the work we do for many reasons, but few of those reasons revolve around enhancing shareholder value. Our reasons tend to grounded in values, the things we believe are important. Such values might include “helping others” or “achieving something worthwhile”.
Someone may take on a job that seems to involve helping others (an action consistent with their personal values), only to discover that they are also expected to do unhelpful things. A handy example is in the film The Incredibles, where Bob – a superhero who loves to help others – is almost destroyed by working in the (American) health insurance industry.
Good selection practices can help ensure employees are suited to an organisation’s values and a role’s requirements. But over time, roles evolve, employees progress to new roles, and organisations adjust their policies and priorities. Changes like this can mean work that was once consistent with our values becomes less so. This is another reason why ongoing consultation with employees is important.
Insufficient Reward
It’s only fair that the time, effort, and skill people invest in their work should be compensated appropriately. To do anything less is to invite distrust, disengagement, and disillusionment.
Are capable people given suitable opportunities and support for development and promotion? Are exceptional achievements, both short- and long-term, recognised and praised? Do people feel valued by their teams, who in turn feel valued by their organisation? When the answers to any of these questions is “No”, it should be clear what needs to change.
Why These Six?
These six risk factors go a long way to explaining why people burn out. People might burn out because they experienced all six. It might happen due to a combination of a few – risk factors can interact, such as when an increased workload is distributed unequally (Overload x Injustice). Over time, even a single risk factor has the potential to trigger burnout.
Furthermore, as I recently explained to someone on BlueSky, I don’t believe these risk factors define the condition of burnout itself. Burnout expert Michael Leiter once told me that just about everything you can measure in the workplace correlates with burnout. If we see burnout as a process triggered by chronic stress, then people could burn out as a result of stressors that don’t clearly fall into the six categories I’ve listed. I could list hundreds of other stressors and still not capture everything that can lead to burnout.
The six risk factors listed above, however, are useful ones to know. In part, it’s because they are found in so many work organisations. In part, it’s because each one captures a broad set of stressful work situations and experiences. And in part, it’s because there are nearly always actions that can be taken to manage them better.
References
Beugré, C. D. (2011). Repairing injustice in organisations: Beyond social accounts. Journal of General Management, 37(1), 47-63.
Heaney, C. A., Price, R. H., & Rafferty, J. (1995). Increasing coping resources at work: A field experiment to increase social support, improve work team functioning, and enhance employee mental health. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 16(4), 335-352.
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2022). The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with their Jobs. Harvard University Press.
Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job Burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 397-422.
Parker, S. K., & Knight, C. (2024). The SMART model of work design: A higher order structure to help see the wood from the trees. Human Resource Management, 63(2), 265-291.
Burnout News
There’s barely a week left in my survey research project to identify early warning signs of burnout. We’re close to reaching our participant goal, but we’re not quite there yet. Please consider participating if you have personal experience of burnout! You can also help by sharing information about the study.
Monthly Updates
Burnout symptom status: Low to moderate.
Secret burnout book query status: Zero full requests.
Podcast status: New series still in development.
Garden status: Chaotic evil.
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Till Next Time…
Stay well until my next newsletter drops!
(c) 2025 Ben J. Searle