Christina Maslach is one of the world’s leading experts on job burnout, pioneering researcher and the author of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) – the most widely used research measure in its field. She has been selected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science which cited her for groundbreaking work on the applications of social psychology to contemporary problems.
Author of books including The Truth About Burnout, Maslach is vice provost for undergraduate education and professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. magna cum laude graduate from Harvard-Radcliffe College, she received her PhD in psychology from Stanford University.
Professor Maslach talks with James Nelson for Management about how companies can handle job burnout and its high costs both to the employee and the organisation. She suggests roadmap for effective intervention strategies that turn the syndromes of exhaustion, cynicism and ineffectiveness into energy, involvement and achievement.
Job burnout is often understood in connection with fatigue. Could you explain exactly what burnout is?
The point you’re raising is part of the problem because everyone has their own idea of what burnout means. It’s very evocative term. Burnout was initially very slippery concept with no standard definition so there was not always basis for constructive communication, either about the problem or its solutions.
We have found three inter-related dimensions, which together comprise this psychological syndrome. The first is what we call ‘exhaustion’, which is when people feel drained and lack the mental or physical energy to get on with whatever they need to do. I should add that if exhaustion were the only symptom we observe, there would be no reason to call it any other name than exhaustion. We wouldn’t talk about burnout. So there’s something more going on there.
We talk about the second dimension primarily in terms of ‘cynicism’. This is negative evaluation and reaction to the job, the work one needs to do and the people one works with. It often begins as response to the work overload leading to the exhaustion, so people will back off and do less. People begin to think very negatively about the workplace and their colleagues. One hallmark is when people develop strong negative, hostile, cynical, dehumanised response to their job, the workplace in general and everyone who’s part of it. Having this set of feelings about the workplace means the way people do their job is different. They start doing the very minimum instead of their very best. This has important implications for the quality of work performed and both the individual and the organisation suffer.
The third dimension is essentially ‘negative self-evaluation’ which we talk about as decline in people’s sense of their own professional effectiveness. Rather then being negative about the job and their colleagues, people develop negative sense of who they are and what they’re doing. In essence they don’t like the person they’ve become.
Do all three dimensions always occur together, or might the person only suffer from exhaustion without any sign of cynicism or low self-evaluation?
People can range from high to low across continuum on all three dimensions. It’s important to understand what happens over time. Normally, it’s hard for someone to remain high on exhaustion and low on cynicism for long time. Over time, either the exhaustion will fade or the cynicism will rise.
Can burnout become serious mental health problem?
Let me give you an example. One of the questions has been, isn’t job burnout simply depression? Our research suggests no, it’s not depression but burnout could be an important precursor to people becoming depressed. It is basically response to mismatches between the workplace and the individual, and the strains it puts on them. If an individual is not able to cope effectively and get back to more engaged involvement with their work, they could become very depressed – not only about their job but also about themselves and their entire life.
Is burnout more prevalent in either men or women?
Men and women are much more similar in this than they are different. There is consistent but very small tendency for men to score higher on the cynicism dimension than women. You’ve got to be careful in looking at this. People often assume there must be substantial differences between men and women. The data just don’t support that view.
From the research you’ve done, does burnout sometimes tend to occur in clusters?
There’s not lot of good research on this but there is some suggestive evidence that this can happen. It’s clue there might be something particular going on within specific unit which is different from the rest of the organisation. This would need closer look, especially at the unit’s supervisory staff.
Is there any evidence to suggest that burnout is more prevalent in some countries and cultures than in others?
None whatsoever. Research has been done in many different countries and quite few of the leading researchers are in Europe. So the major indicators and dimensions have been studied across borders and cultures. The same insights and findings keep emerging in whatever country is being studied, while there are, of course, always some cultural nuances.
What about higher prevalence among high-responsibility managerial and knowledge worker staff as opposed to manual labour workers?
The answer to that is counter-intuitive because you might expect to see higher stress levels among senior level managers who shoulder the responsibility of running the organisation. In fact, the research does not indicate any increased vulnerability for certain occupational groups, be they white or blue collar employees.
The bottom line is that job burnout is all about mismatches – mismatch between the individual and their job, or between the individual and their workplace environment. So any good prevention strategy has got to aim to reduce these mismatches and increase job engagement.
What preventative measures can organisations take to avoid these mismatches?
Companies should look at the key dimensions of their workplace and how they affect their employees’ engagement with their jobs. We’ve identified six such dimensions. When there is good match between the employees and these six dimensions – whatever their job – you’ll find greater engagement with work and less burnout. As you’d expect, burnout lifts when the mismatches between employees and these six dimensions increase.
Would you elaborate on what these six dimensions are.
The first one is ‘workload’. Essentially, we are talking about whether employees are in situation where they can manage the work they have to do. And whether the resources are there for them to sustain the workload. If you have an overload situation where there is continually too much work to do, with too little time and too few resources, at some point employees are going to feel overwhelmed. You will then see higher burnout – particularly in the exhaustion dimension.
The second dimension deals with ‘control’, which also has to do with autonomy. When people feel they have reasonable amount of control over their work you will see higher positive engagement. But if people feel they’re not really calling the shots, or they’re dealing with chaotic situation where it’s not clear who’s making the decisions and who’s accountable for what, again you’ll see high stress levels.
Mismatches in control most often indicate the employees have insufficient control over the resources needed to do the work or have insufficient authority to pursue the work in way they feel is most effective. It’s distressing for people to feel responsible for results while lacking the capacity to deliver.
The third one is ‘reward and recognition’. This is the extent to which the employee receives feedback – positive when they’re doing something well or negat
