Living Mindfully with Aruna Manathunge: Mindfulness in the Business World - Part 4

Brownouts and Burnouts

In this fifth article of the series we look into another important area for both private and government organisations. It is burnout at work. Latest research has found out that Mindfulness could enhance the workplace performance and functioning byreducing the burnout among the workforce.

So what is burnout? Burnout is a state of emotional, mental and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress.It occurs when the workers feel overwhelmed and unable to meet constant demands at work. Occupational burnout often develops slowly and may not be recognized until it has become severe. When one's expectations about a job and its reality differ, burnout can begin.

How pressure is dealt with determines how much stress someone feels and how close they are to burnout. One individual can experience few stressors, but be unable to handle the pressure well and thus experience burnout. Another person, however, can experience a far greater number of stressors, but effectively deal with them, and avoid burnout.

Burnout is becoming more common in the modern workplaces. Sometimes a mismatch is present between the nature of the job and the person doing the job. This may occur in situations of downsizing and also in mergers and acquisitions of companies. In such situations the companiesdon’t reduce their areas of operation but rather increase the operations especially in mergers and acquisitions. The organizations usually allocate the increased responsibilitiesamong their presentemployees.

The idea of burnout at work has been with us for decades. But recently, the business psychologists have started talking about ‘brownout’, which is a junior sibling of burnout. The staff affected by brownout become disengaged, demotivated and lose interest in their jobs. Even though brownout is not as seriously debilitating as burnout, it is much more prevalent and affect the overall atmosphere and productivity of organisations.

Almost half of the workforce can get Burnout

A leading US coaching firm recently investigated 1,000 executives. They found that 5 percent of them suffered from burnout and 40 percent suffered from brownout. Brownout can be fairly mild and usually reversible, however in the long term even brownout can cause serious problems to the affected employees. Brownout will often spill over into their home lives. They could become withdrawn and passively aggressive.

As almost half of the work population could suffer due to burnout and brownout, effective organizations have to implement strategies to overcome these common conditions.

Mindfulness can reduce Burnout

Mindfulness is increasingly being used by global organisations as an important practice to reduce the burnout among their workforces. This important trend is backed by the latest scientific research. These research suggests that Mindfulness could be a new personal trait that buffers against burnout.

The researchers have listed down 3 progressive levels or components ofburnout among the workforce. In the first level, the staff starts to increasingly experience ‘Emotional Exhaustion’. At the second level they become more ‘Cynical’. These, if continued will lead to the third level called ‘Reduced Professional Efficacy’.

One such trial directly investigated the contribution of Mindfulness as a single system and then predicted the burnout in the workplace. The trial went deeper than previous investigations by analyzing the connection between the Five Facets of Mindfulness and the above explained three components of burnout. The five Facets of Mindfulness are Observing, Describing, Acting with Awareness, Non-Judging of Inner Experience and Non-Reactivity to Inner Experience.

The researchers found that different Facets of Mindfulness had the ability to reduce different components of burnout. The researchers concluded that Mindfulness is a new, unique personal trait that can be factored in by Organisations to address the growing issue of burnout among the workforce.

The Organisations in this context involves all – even the hospitals. The burnout among the doctors, nurses, psychologists and other healthcare providers is well recognized in the US and UK Ironically, these healthcare workers are under increasing stress and the resulting work related burnout could end up them becoming patients themselves.

The research has also found that that Mindfulness based stress reduction was associated with significant improvements in burnout scores and mental well-being among a broad range of healthcare providers.

Aruna Manathunge has practiced Mindfulness for over 42 years. During the past 7 years he has closely followed the development of Mind Science in the Western world. He has had a long career as the Country Head of Sri Lanka and the Head of the Indian Sub-Continent of an American Pharmaceutical Multinational company. Presently Aruna conducts Coaching in Mindfulness to Schools and Companies. Aruna can be contacted at [email protected]