We often hear the term “Burnout” used to describe a situation where someone is no longer performing well in his or her position. It is important to focus on the fact that he is no longer performing well, implying that he/she did perform well in the past.  What happened to this person? 

 First, here is the dictionary’s description: burn·out 1. Exhaustion: psychological exhaustion and diminished efficiency resulting from overwork or prolonged exposure to stress.  Here is another way to look at the situation.  A person works hard, putting in long hours in a difficult job.  She takes a needed rest like a long weekend or vacation.  Upon returning to the job, she is back a full speed with all her usual enthusiasm and dedication.  In this case, she was fatigued.  However, if she returns to the job and performs poorly, is grumpy, and generally unsociable, likely she has burnout.  Burnout is caused by something(s), or someone(s), in the environment that can no longer be tolerated.  Notice in the definition above that it is due to prolonged exposure to stress (more correctly, distress). 

 It should be common knowledge that people cannot continue to function at peak efficiency working 10 – 12 hours a day for weeks and months on end.  Brains need to rest and when they do, they will come back newly charged and functional.  Diagnosis: Chronic fatigue, Prescription: Rest. 

So how can a leader minimize the situations that cause employee burnout?  Remove distresses and create interesting and challenging work. Easy to say, difficult to do. Why do some get burned out and others don’t?  Because, each person perceives his or her environment in a unique way.  What is distressful for one is pleasurable for another.  What one finds interesting another finds boring. What one finds fun, another finds dull.  It is important to treat each person as an individual – one size does not fit all. Let’s look at some things that can work in reducing burnout.

“It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness.”  Thomas Jefferson

Design interesting and challenging work

Work must be interesting and challenging to create interest and excitement.  No one wants to perform mundane, repetitive, meaningless work day in and day out. 

Most people want some variety and some need a great amount of variety or they become bored.  There are a number of activities that will afford variety yet contribute to the overall success of the Support Center, i.e., training fellow workers, updating knowledge bases, solving very difficult problems, researching new tools for support, testing new products, writing documentation, marketing services, etc.

Match skills to the tasks

It is important that the skill levels match the work.  If a C++ programmer is hired to take first level calls and reset passwords all day, that person will reach burnout very quickly.  If a new employee, with little experience of lacking skills, is pressed into service to handle very difficult customer problems, burn out will occur quickly. 

Remove the mundane and boring tasks

As much as possible, remove mundane/boring work through automation.  Not only will it save on employee sanity, it will increase productivity for the Support Center.  The use of Interactive Voice Response Systems and Intranet/Internet web based tools can handle the simple password resets, FAQ’s, downloads, and basic “how-to” questions.  Use the employees for the difficult troubleshooting and customer handling situations.  They will relish the challenges.

“Great events make me quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.”  Queen Victoria

Make work meaningful

It is extremely important that employees feel they are making a difference and contributing in a meaningful way.  People must feel they are valued, their work is important, and that they are needed.  Periodically, reinforce the Support Center’s mission and how it supports the company’s mission.  Show how the department contributes to the health of the company and the success of the customers.  Obtain customer testimonials that describe how your company has helped them grow, be more competitive, or profitable.  People are more likely to dedicate themselves to their work when they believe there is a positive outcome.  Look for job activities that seem senseless to the employee.  Perhaps you can eliminate a senseless task or you can explain how that task is contributing to a higher good for the company.  Sometimes they simply need to know why they are performing a task.  What is obvious to the leader may not be obvious to the employee.

Reward desired work

Match recognition and rewards with required work priorities.  In other words, if the major part of an employee’s daily work is supporting customers on the phone, provide the major rewards for that activity.  When people are rewarded for performing well in particular tasks, they are more likely to continue those behaviors.  This, of course, depends on the employee finding the tasks enjoyable, or even tolerable.  Often the off-phone work can be project based which has a defined objective, time frame, and process.  Projects are easily measured, as generally there is a deliverable.  Leaders find it easier to reward project results than the day-to-day phone support.  When the employee knows recognition comes with a completed project, she will likely focus her efforts where the results “feel good” rather on the activities where the results are not so clearly defined and there is little recognition.

In a customer support role, the best recognition feedback is the customers’ testimonials of the great service they are receiving.  After all, isn’t the mission of the support center to serve the customer?  Aren’t the employees there to help the customer use products and services to their benefit and to gain customer loyalty? It is fairly easy to create quantitative measurements for number of calls, time to resolve, speed of answer and such.  Those metrics are important, but may not be as important as the qualitative measurements from a customer feedback survey process.  Sharing that customer feedback provides meaning to the work and reinforces an individual’s sense of worth.  That may be enough to prevent or reduce burnout.

Sense of accomplishment – Career Movement

Most people want and need a sense of accomplishment from their career.  Moving up or ahead is needed to stave off boredom and mediocrity.  Whether an individual chooses the leadership route or the technical route, there must be some sense of progress and movement.  Creating job positions that require a measurable qualification to advance provides challenges and a sense of progress.  It is important that there are real, specific, and achievable hurdles to advance.  Employees must demonstrate acquired competency (skills and knowledge) to advance to the next level or new job position.  When those hurdles are not specific, employees will believe there is favoritism at work when someone else gets the position and he doesn’t.  (One of the scariest words spoken in a department is favoritism.)  When those hurdles are cleared, there is a renewed sense of accomplishment and progress. 

Most people prefer to be autonomous and responsible for their own work.  Moving up may be simply be entrusting an employee with a new responsibility or higher level work function.  Ultimately, a leader’s responsibility is to develop employees to be able to work independently and be a major contributor to the organization.  All efforts that create that end will be worthy.  After all, isn’t a leader’s success based on the success of the team?  Isn’t a leader rewarded for developing employees who contribute to the company at the highest levels of competency and commitment?  Hopefully.

Stress Relief

Let’s refer back to the definition of burnout - burn·out 1. Exhaustion: psychological exhaustion and diminished efficiency resulting from overwork or prolonged exposure to stress.  It would make sense then to reduce work environment distress as much as possible.

One technique could be allowing the support personnel to vent, periodically, when frustrations build up.  Allowing employees to “purge” the frustrations, and sometimes anger, in a constructive, safe environment can be quite therapeutic.  It is important that ground rules are set so that no one gets hurt, no one gets mean, and the bad stuff stays in the room.  This takes a leader who can manage the “group therapy” and not let it get out of hand.  Also, the leader should be able to address environmental issues or else the frustrations will simply continue.  Sometimes an outside, non–biased person or HR expert can facilitate.  A result of the sessions should be action items that will improve undesirable conditions.

There are some business situations that can’t be avoided that are very distressful to support personnel.  It is important to provide relief for those situations so the same people are not continuously subjected to “abuse.”

In every organization there are the “fun leaders.”  Enlist their help to create fun and exciting social events.  Offering a fun outing once a quarter will provide much more payback in productivity and team spirit that far exceeds the actual cash investment.

“Time's fun when we’re having flies.” Kermit

Enlist input from team members, or representatives, to improve the department’s processes and performance standards.  Those who are involved will feel more in control of their destiny.

Address difficult customers.  Support personnel have the right to be treated with courtesy and respect.  It is possible to address the abusers or their management in a most tactful way.  Difficult customers should know that their anti-social behaviors will not gain respect, cooperation and patience from support personnel. 

There is no potion, magic wand or pixy dust that can create a positive, rewarding environment.  A supportive and understanding leader who demonstrates caring for the support personnel and is instrumental in their career development, listens to problems and makes every effort to fix those problems, and is fully involved in removing obstacles to career satisfaction and performance can prevent or reduce employee burnout.