How to Spot the Signs of Burnout at Work

We've all been there: you finally overcome procrastination and dive into a task, feeling a sense of accomplishment. But then, your manager interrupts with a new assignment. 

You put your original task on hold, trying to familiarize yourself with your new task, when a project manager pulls you into yet another project. Now you're juggling three assignments, wondering how you’re going to keep all these balls in the air. An email arrives from your boss asking about the first task: “How’s the assignment coming along?”

We think of this as “the dripping faucet phenomenon”: each interruption is a small drop, but over time, they erode your energy and well-being, leading to burnout.

Unfortunately, this scenario is just one of many ways burnout can manifest. In this guide, we’ll explore the various signs and symptoms of burnout, and consider their underlying causes. Whether you're personally struggling with burnout or trying to mitigate the risk for your employees, understanding burnout is the first step towards recovery and prevention.

What is work burnout? 

In the 1970s, amidst the burgeoning free clinic movement, a German-born American psychologist named Herbert Freudenberger noticed something troubling. His colleagues, a talented group of mental health professionals dedicated to helping others, were themselves becoming exhausted, cynical, and depressed. He helped to popularize a term for this phenomenon: "burnout."

"If you have ever seen a building that has been burned out, you know it's a devastating sight. What had once been a throbbing, vital structure is now deserted. Where there had once been activity, there are now only crumbling reminders of energy and life. Some bricks or concrete may be left; some outline of windows. Indeed, the outer shell may seem almost intact. Only if you venture inside will you be struck by the full force of the desolation."
— Freudenberger, “Burn Out: The High Cost of Achievement” (1980)

Freudenberger used this metaphor to describe people affected by burnout. While they may look fine on the outside, they’ve been worn down internally by the many stressors of life and work. For many who experience burnout directly, this metaphor is all too apt. 

While at work, people reported feeling:

• Overburdened: “My boss just keeps throwing more and more at me. The work isn’t evenly divided here. When I finish one project, it’s onto the next one.”
• Underappreciated: “Nobody thanks me for my work. I only hear about it when I’ve done something wrong, never when I do something right.”
• Disillusioned: “At the beginning of my career, I wanted to accomplish great things, but I’ve realized my wins only help my boss to move up. My losses are held over my head, and I’m never allowed to forget them.”

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What are the signs and symptoms of burnout?

This may be the first time you’ve heard about “the dripping faucet phenomenon,” but we’d warrant a guess that you’re more than familiar with how it feels. 

Sure, each interruption, demanding task, and unmet expectation is just a small drop from the faucet. But it doesn’t take long before you're facing a flood of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and detachment. Recognizing the early warning signs of burnout – the drips – is crucial to preventing it before it becomes a deluge.

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The first drip: Imbalances in workload

Uneven workloads have an adverse effect not only on employees who are overloaded with tasks, but also on their underutilized co-workers, who can feel alienated and disengaged.

Employees who are assigned more than they can handle end up working long hours and constantly feel the weight of looming deadlines. All of this comes at the sacrifice of regular breaks that could offer a moment of relief, but feel impossible to take considering the building pressure. All of this work-related stress manifests as profound physical exhaustion. 

Meanwhile underutilized employees undergo a whole different form of burnout syndrome, and often feel a sense of failure or exclusion. For everyone, these imbalances in workload can make employees feel like they’re in a work environment that doesn’t take fairness into account and isn’t living up to their company’s touted values.

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The second drip: A lack of appreciation

When employees pour time, energy, and creativity into their work, and it isn’t properly acknowledged by their supervisors, it chips away at their sense of purpose. An additional hit is taken when overloaded employees see employees with seemingly lighter workloads who somehow have similar — or even greater — levels of compensation. 

Each moment where an employee feels a lack of appreciation is yet another drip that adds to the building pubble of resentment and disillusionment. What incentive does someone have to put their best foot forward when they see absolutely zero reward?

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The third drip: Loss of control 

When employees feel they have no control over their tasks, decisions, or even their schedules, it fosters a deep-seated frustration. They start to lose their sense of gravity altogether, feeling a deficit of freewill itself. A sense of human connection at work is an absolute necessity, but all too often employees are made to act like cogs in a machine. This depersonalization is not only demoralizing but a direct path to burnout. For more on this — and other causes of burnout — we recommend “Burnout: The Cost of Caring” by Christina Maslach.

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Burnout in the wake of COVID-19

It’s worth noting that burnout has been especially prevalent amongst healthcare professionals in the last five years. When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus pandemic, the American healthcare system was suddenly put to its ultimate test.

While the American public only saw a glimpse of this on social media, doctors, nurses, and other essential workers were forced to brave hazardous conditions, facing long hours, dwindling supplies, and the constant risk to their own physical health. A group of people who were already combating intense tiredness pre-pandemic, found themselves thrust into an unsustainable battle against exhaustion.

The emotional burden was immense as healthcare professionals witnessed firsthand the suffering and loss caused by COVID-19, often having to continue going to work even as their own loved ones and family members were grappling with the illness or its devastating consequences. While many doctors have personality traits that equip them for high-stress situations, the question for many became: How do you continue to go to work and provide caregiving when your own wellness is on the line everyday? How do you compartmentalize your work life and your personal life when you’re confronted with this level of workplace stress?

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Before and after burnout 

Many of us begin a new job with a huge amount of energy, enthusiasm, and confidence. We wake up in the morning with a pep in our step, ready for any of the challenges we might have to face.

But as we feel the effect of “the dripping faucet phenomenon,” this changes.

Your energy levels after burnout 

• Regardless of whether you’ve gotten enough sleep, you can’t escape mental exhaustion.
• You suffer from chronic stress. Even the smallest work-related task feels difficult to tackle.
• Your focus takes a hit. It’s hard to concentrate, make decisions, or meet deadlines. You become less effective in all areas of your life.

Your enthusiasm after burnout 

• The passion you started with has dwindled. You’ve lost sight of your purpose.
• There’s a decrease in proactive problem-solving. What difference does it make to solve one problem when another is just around the corner?
• You start to express cynicism to others, spreading your sense of disillusionment.

Your confidence after burnout 

• After so much time chipping away at an infinite stack of work, you feel like success is impossible, and self-doubt intensifies.
• You become more withdrawn. You feel like it’s impossible to break through the noise in a series of endless meetings.
• You can even start to suffer from depression as your sense of ineffectiveness grows.

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Additional burnout symptoms 

Burnout often affects more than an employee’s mental health and can manifest in physical health problems as well. Physical symptoms can include chronic fatigue, unhealthy changes to sleep patterns, headaches, colds, stomachaches, muscle tension, high blood pressure, weakened immune function, and changes to a formerly healthy diet like overeating or loss of appetite. 

These are just some of the many health conditions that employees feeling the effects of burnout can suffer from. It’s no wonder that burnout is included in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases as an occupational phenomenon. If your health has been affected by any one of these burnout warning signs or symptoms you should consult a mental health professional or a primary care physician who can assess your medical condition.

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How to prevent and recover from burnout 

It’s clear, when you leave a leaky faucet unchecked, it isn’t long before your whole house is flooded (facing the same devastation as the building Freudenberger described earlier). That’s why it’s so important — metaphorically speaking — to call a plumber to deal with that leak before the problem gets out of hand.

Preventing burnout: Balanced workload 

One of the best ways for managers to prevent job burnout is to make sure that work is distributed equitably among team members.

Managers should:

• Make sure each employee clearly understands their roles and responsibilities
• Encourage team members to voice concerns about workload imbalances
• Distribute tasks based on specific areas of strength for employees
• Adjust workloads when unexpected situations arise
• Conduct frequent workload reviews to identify any team members who are overtaxed

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Preventing burnout: Showing appreciation 

Employees need to feel like good work is recognized when they’ve done it. 

To show appreciation, managers can:

• Increase employee’s salary or give a bonus
• Change a team member’s job title to recognize growth
• Give employee a shoutout in a company meeting
• Offer extra time off and encourage employee self-care
• Learn a team member’s personal goal and help them to accomplish it

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Preventing burnout: Empowerment with control

The happiest work environments are filled with employees who feel like they are truly in the driver seat, not just passengers forced to go wherever their supervisors want to take them.

Managers would be wise to consider the following interventions:

• Allow employees to work flexible hours, set boundaries, and ensure a sense of work-life balance.
• Include employees in conversations as various workloads are established.
• Make sure employees truly feel like they can meet deadlines.
• Be thoughtful about deadlines when changes to an employee’s workload are made.
• Check in with employees frequently. Make sure they see alignment between the company’s values and their own values.

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Bonus: Unlock our free Burnout Prevention Kit, which includes an interactive quiz and curated tips to prevent and repair burnout!

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How Clockwise can help mitigate the risk of burnout at work 

Want to fix that leaky faucet for good? Our best tip is to try Clockwise, our AI scheduling and calendar automation tool.

Clockwise helps you to avoid the drip, drip, drip of interruptions altogether. By reviewing Team Analytics you can make sure your team is getting enough Focus Time and protect that time against unnecessary meetings and lower priority projects. 

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You can also make sure everyone has time for breaks throughout the working day (or the non-rushed lunch that makes all the difference in combating burnout).

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Scanning your Clockwise Team Dashboard is a great way to get a bird’s eye view of where your time has been going. Maybe you’ve been spending too much time working on a project that would be better handled by an employee with specific skills that empower them to do the work in half the time? Clockwise shows you a visual breakdown so it becomes easy to see how you can free up time from that employee so they can help you lighten your load.

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Clockwise also makes it easy to:

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• Create time blocks in your calendar for high-priority projects
• Schedule across entire teams and companies
• Understand team capacity with just a quick glance

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You can even ask questions to your Clockwise conversational calendar assistant — a partner in fighting burnout who intimately understands the intricacies of your schedules.

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Going forward

We’re in an era much like the 1970s when Herbert Freudenberger coined the term “burnout” in the first place. Millions of people today feel overburdened, underappreciated, and disillusioned. It’s times like these when we’re most likely to see burnout and “the dripping faucet phenomenon” at work.

But a manager who puts real thought into balancing the workloads of their employees, shows authentic appreciation, and makes sure their team members have real control will never have to worry about employee burnout in the same way. There’s no better tool to help a manager like this in their pursuit than Clockwise. It’s more than just a quick fix for a dripping faucet, it’s the best way to optimize the entire pipeline. Sign up today to try Clockwise for free!

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