We come across the term ‘burnout’ a lot these days. Whether its your colleague, partner, or yourself, many of us fall into the trap of being burnt out at work. We hear this consistently amongst the Executive Assistant community, especially when entering into a busy period of the year like September. So, to help you get through this busy time we wanted to share our tips on how to prevent and cope with a workplace burnout to keep yourself feeling healthy, happy, and successful!

In order to prevent and cope with a burnout, we need to discuss what it is and what causes it. A burnout is a three-component syndrome which occurs due to chronic stressors in the workplace. Burning out isn’t just feeling stressed, or a feeling sad, burnout makes your question things like the value of your work, how connected you feel to your colleagues, and whether you believe in your skills and abilities. It can make you physically unwell by causing stomach problems and headaches, as well as leaving you unmotivated and anxious for your workday.

The three main components of a burnout are:

Exhaustion
A blend of physical, cognitive, and emotional fatigue can lead to exhaustion. This can stem from a high demand of your time and energy.

Cynicism
Also known as depersonalisation, this is the side of burning out which represents an erosion of engagement between yourself and your work/colleagues/customers, etc. This can be due to work overload and high conflict/unfairness in the workplace.

Inefficacy
The feeling of lack of achievement or incompetence and productivity. This aspect of burning out will make you doubt whether you will be able to succeed.

There are many reasons a person may experience a burnout:

• Lack of clarity on what is expected from you within work.
• Office conflicts or a difficult boss.
• Too much or too little to do- you may burnout from boredom!
• Lack of support within your work and personal life.
• Problems balancing work and life.

The best way to manage a burnout is to prevent it! There are various actions you can take to avoid the feeling of burning out, including:

• Prioritising self-care.
• Shift your perspective- sometimes the workload will not reduce so you need to figure out a good system to manage it.
• Reduce exposure to job stressors- avoid the colleague who is causing tension, take your annual leave, and ensure you take up wellbeing benefits provided by your organisation.
• Seek out connections both in and out of work.

Sometimes it can be too late to prevent a burnout. Here we have listed our top tips below to help you cope with a burnout.

• If possible, take some last-minute annual leave. Allowing your mind and body to disconnect from work will do you wonders.
• Ensure your sleep schedule is in tip top shape.
• Incorporate a hard-stop into your workday to ensure a balance between work and your personal life.
• Ask for help- don’t suffer alone. Make sure you speak to the connections in your life to offload.
• Speak to your Recruitment Consultant at VLA to discuss alternative roles and companies where the working culture and role align more with who you are and what you require from your career.