What Causes Burnout In Schools, And What We Should Do About It.

Key Takeaways

1. Burnout is not new, but it is worse than ever, and educators are particularly susceptible: Our jobs require emotional investment putting us at a greater risk of burnout
2. Six things cause burnout: understanding each may help us learn more about what is driving it in ourselves or at our schools
3. Great “people management” is key to reducing burnout: Great managers who listen and engage with their teams are best placed to understand and address the causes of burnout.
   
   

Burnout is not new, but it is worse than ever, and educators are particularly susceptible

The challenge of teacher burnout is not new. A 1983 article on the topic describes a situation that, depressingly, still holds true almost 40 years later:

From: “Teacher burnout—Solutions for the 1980s: A review of the literature”:

“[Burnout] is described as “physical, emotional, and attitudinal exhaustion” and results in a significant decrease in teacher job satisfaction and performance. It is caused by high levels of stress related to inordinate time demands, inadequate relationships, large class sizes, lack of resources, isolation, fear of violence, role ambiguity, limited promotional opportunities, lack of support, etc. In addition to resulting in a number of emotional and physical illnesses, burnout manifests itself in increased job turnover and absenteeism, reduced job satisfaction, mental and physical withdrawal and detachment, increased inter- and intraindividual conflict, and a general reduction in individual and ultimately school performance.”

In the post-COVID/perma-COVID/”New Normal”, these pre-existing challenges are supercharged. The pandemic shifted the way we work, connect with others, and think about our relationship with our job. This has led to widespread changes in the labour market across industries. Research by Mckinsey shows how the “great resignation” is spreading across countries and industries, involving higher rates of voluntary turnover, more people resigning without another job offer, and around 40% of workers considering leaving their current job in the next 3-6 months. In schools, the pandemic’s ongoing effects add to the job’s existing pressures. Teachers still plan lessons when on medical leave, return to cover extra classes for their unwell colleagues and manage higher levels of student absenteeism (which are worse still in low SES contexts). Many teachers are experiencing burnout – in the US teaching has higher rates of burnout than any other industry. This makes sense; people-oriented industries are more susceptible to burnout because good practice and emotional investment are difficult to separate.

From Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry:

“For many years, burnout has been recognized as an occupational hazard for various people‐oriented professions, such as human services, education, and health care. The therapeutic or service relationships that such providers develop with recipients require an ongoing and intense level of personal, emotional contact. Although such relationships can be rewarding and engaging, they can also be quite stressful.

Within such occupations, the prevailing norms are to be selfless and put others’ needs first; to work long hours and do whatever it takes to help a client or patient or student; to go the extra mile and to give one’s all.”

Chances are you are feeling it or working with a bunch of people who are. So, what causes burnout, and what can we do about it?

Six things are known to cause burnout

Research into burnout has been going on since the 1970s, and the WHO recognises it as an “occupational phenomenon” in the International Classification of Diseases. Being burntout does not mean you have quit your job, or are about to. People suffering from burnout still show up to work; they just find it increasingly difficult to engage with their jobs positively and productively. Defined scientifically, burnout involves exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and hostility towards work, and reductions in job performance. The WHO sets out the three dimensions of burnout as:

1. feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
2. increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and
3. reduced professional efficacy.

Driving these three dimensions are six causes of burnout: workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values. Let’s have a look at each and consider what schools can do to support better engagement.

1. Workload

When your workload outstrips your capacity to effectively complete your work, you are more likely to suffer from burnout. In this overload state, excessive workload undermines our ability to rest and recover or pursue formal and informal professional development that helps us work more effectively.

In schools, there will always be a fixed element to our workload – most schools need teachers to deliver a certain number of face-to-face hours to balance the books. Around this fixed workload, though, there are a variety of other tasks, processes, or procedures unique to each school. Identifying what workflows can be changed, deleted, delegated, or refined is key to reducing school workload. Easy to write down, hard to do.

Individual personality traits contribute to burnout risk, so if individuals find ways to work more effectively, they may sustain their engagement with work. We looked at teacher wellbeing in detail here, including ways you can work out if you are suffering from it and pursue strategies to alleviate it. You may also want to consider how you can reduce perfectionist tendencies, plan your workload, create time for deep work in your school day, or solve problems in structured and strategic ways to reduce feelings of professional inefficacy associated with burnout.

2. Autonomy

When you feel in control of the significant decisions about your work, you will likely feel more engaged. When you feel like the major decisions about when, where, and how you complete your work are taken out of your hands, you are more likely to feel burnt out.

In schools, the “when” and the “where” of most of our work is constant – it happens during the hours of the school day and at our schools. There is still a lot of room for autonomy in the job, which means there are a lot of ways poorly managed schools can strip this away and contribute to burnout. Teachers having decision-making power over how they deliver lessons, the sequence of learning activities and how they leverage their interpersonal strengths to form meaningful relationships with their students are all likely to increase feelings of engagement with work. Despite the requirements to be onsite and teaching during school hours, schools can provide a lot of autonomy over where and how teachers complete their planning, feedback, and administrative duties. The COVID experience boosted everyone’s ability to meet, work and collaborate remotely – schools that leverage this to provide more autonomy are likely to support higher levels of employee engagement.

3. Reward

Rewards from work can be intrinsic and extrinsic – if you are not getting reward and recognition that you perceive to match your investment in your work, that is going to contribute to feelings of burnout.

From Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry:

“The area of reward refers to the power of reinforcements to shape behavior. Insufficient recognition and reward (whether financial, institutional, or social) increases people’s vulnerability to burnout, because it devalues both the work and the workers, and is closely associated with feelings of inefficacy. In contrast, consistency in the reward dimension between the person and the job means that there are both material rewards and opportunities for intrinsic satisfaction”

Most schools face standardised pay scales meaning radically changing compensation for teachers is unlikely to be a lever within reach. Other forms of reward can help teachers feel their investment is being noticed and appreciated. Positive feedback and other efforts to recognise and celebrate the contribution of staff will improve levels of engagement.

4. Community

The social community of the workplace can alleviate, or fuel feelings of burnout. Trust and psychological safety are important.

From Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry:

“The area of community has to do with the ongoing relationships that employees have with other people on the job. When these relationships are characterized by a lack of support and trust, and by unresolved conflict, then there is a greater risk of burnout. On the contrary, when these job‐related relationships are working well, there is a great deal of social support, employees have effective means of working out disagreements, and they are more likely to experience job engagement.”

Creating opportunities and spaces for staff to collaborate and socialise positively will boost engagement. Having clear, transparent, and fair ways of dealing with conflict and tension between employees will stop toxic workplace cultures building. Where schools can get this right, they will support better engagement and less burnout.

5. Fairness

If you perceive your treatment at work as unfair, chances are, feelings of cynicism and negativity will arise that can contribute to overall burnout. Transparent, clear, and equitable processes for managing expectations, distributing resources, and accessing opportunities will all reduce cultures of burnout in schools.

6. Values

Alignment between your values and that of the school and leadership team with whom you work will support feelings of engagement. Values alignment can be a significant driver of engagement as it elevates your relationship with your job beyond the transactional nature of working in exchange for a salary. If you feel like you are working towards something that you derive meaning from, and you are part of a group of people that are also working towards that “bigger picture”, then you are more likely to invest fully in your work. If there is a mismatch between your values and those of the school, your colleagues or school leadership, it can result in you feeling like you must choose between what you believe in and what your workplace is making you do – this can lead to burnout.

From Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry:

“When there is a values conflict on the job, and thus a gap between individual and organizational values, employees will find themselves making a trade‐off between work they want to do and work they have to do, and this can lead to greater burnout.”

Great “people management” is key to reducing burnout

It can be tempting to try to address burnout with simplistic, employee-boosting fixes – run a PD on time management, provide free morning tea once a week, offer lunchtime meditation sessions. These are unlikely to lead to widespread and lasting change to the problem of burnout because they overlook its systemic and deep-seated causes. Fundamentally, burnout results from chronic workplace stress, so any strategy to alleviate burnout needs to find and address the causes of workplace stress, rather than trying to alleviate the employee’s reactions to these stressors.

The best solutions to burnout then, likely lie with the practices of “people managers” in organisations – those who lead teams, oversee the work of others or have employees “report” to them. Each school, and each team of teachers within a school is likely to have a different combination of factors contributing to feelings of burnout. Recent research by Mckinsey suggests that when people leave their jobs, relational factors (i.e. their relationship with their managers, the extent to which they feel valued at work and their sense of belonging in the workplace) contribute to that decision a lot more than organisational leaders expected. Alleviating burnout, retaining teachers, and lifting engagement will be best started by great managers who mentor, coach and build high-functioning teams. Importantly, effective people managers are those who listen, understand, and respond to their team members rather than reaching for simplistic off-the-shelf fixes.

From: ‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? The choice is yours:

“…it requires companies and their leaders to truly understand their employees. It requires leaders to develop a much deeper empathy for what employees are going through and to pair that empathy with the compassion—and determination—to act and change. Only then can employers properly reexamine the wants and needs of their employees—together with those employees—and begin to provide the flexibility, connectivity, and sense of unity and purpose that people crave.”

Leaders that can build high-trust relationships that support a genuine dialogue about workplace stress will be well placed to understand the specific causes of burnout among their people and make changes to improve engagement. Leaders that do this are far more likely to build and sustain schools that attract and retain great teachers and deliver great outcomes for students than the schools running stress management workshops and meditation sessions to address burnout.

Key Takeaways

1. Burnout is not new, but it is worse than ever, and educators are particularly susceptible: Our jobs require emotional investment putting us at a greater risk of burnout
2. Six things cause burnout: understanding each may help us learn more about what’s driving it in ourselves or at our schools
3. Great “people management” is key to reducing burnout: Great managers who listen and engage with their teams are best placed to understand and address the causes of burnout.