Unhappy Workers and Employee Burnout

Jane is the chief medical officer at a large regional hospital. It’s a role she’s wanted since she was in college, and she worked hard to climb the corporate ladder. She began as a provider, but because of her desire to impact more people than those she saw in her clinical office, she began to work her way up through the ranks.

Now in her early 40s, she’s attained a position of responsibility and prestige, with a generous compensation package, a corner office, a designated parking spot in the hospital garage, and the respect of her professional colleagues and community. Her home life, too, is what she always wanted, with a devoted spouse, two kids in school, and a nanny to help in the afternoons until she gets home from work.

If you asked her how she felt about her life, she’d say, “It’s great! I’m living the dream. Couldn’t be better. By the time I hit 50, I’m aiming to be a CEO and leave my footprint on the healthcare field.”

When she was having lunch with her dad one afternoon — a retired manager at a company that made medical prosthetics — that’s exactly what he asked her and what she replied. But her dad, who knew her better than most, sensed there was something deeper going on. He leaned in a little and said, “From the moment we sat down at this table, you’ve yawned half a dozen times. Are you getting enough sleep? What’s going on, honey? You’re not the same.”

“C’mon, I’m fine, Dad,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Who needs sleep? Between the kids and my job, I’m lucky to get five or six hours a night. And at the hospital, my boss is always talking about how he sleeps four hours a night and how anyone who requires more than that is a slacker.”

Her dad looked her straight in the eye. “I’m only going to say this once: I don’t know your boss, but he’s either telling a tall tale to impress you, or he’s headed for an early grave. Chronic sleep deprivation is no joke. Are you happy with your lifestyle?”

Jane shrugged. “To be honest, at work, we’re all in the same boat. We’re expected to attend breakfast meetings at 7:30 in the morning, and when we leave at 6 in the evening, we need to keep our phones handy in case we get a text or email from the overnight manager. I’ll admit it’s a little bit stressful. I wish I could shut off my phone when I get home.”

“How about your husband, Peter?” Dad asked.

“He’s fine, I think. The kids have all sorts of activities — recitals, sports games, theater — and I’m sure that keeps him very busy!”

“Sweetie, you also need to be present at these activities, don’t you?”

“Of course, I go when I can!” She paused to open her purse. After rummaging through it — her dad was astonished at how much stuff she carried in there — she pulled out a small bottle of acetaminophen. She opened the bottle and tapped out two tablets. Her dad watched as she took the pills with a swallow of water. Then she put the bottle back in her purse.

“Got a headache?” he asked.

“It’s very slight,” she replied with a wave of her hand. “Just some tension, I think.”

“How often do you get them?”

“Oh, a few times a week. It’s nothing serious.”

“When did they start?”

“I don’t remember. Really, Dad, it’s not a big deal. I survived getting COVID, didn’t I? I got the vaccines just like you told me. Two shots and two boosters. I like to say I’m vaxed to the max!”

“Yes, and those shots made a huge difference to your well-being. I remember when you told me you tested positive. You spent one or two days in bed, and within a week, you went back to work.”

“I would have liked to have stayed out a few more days,” Jane said, “but my boss is one of those. If you’re feeling ill, he doesn’t want to hear about it. He insists he never got COVID or gets sick, but there was a week when he looked and sounded pretty awful. To be honest, I have a feeling I got it from him, because I got sick the next week.”

“The more you talk about it,” her dad said, “the more it sounds like your work environment is a real pressure cooker. Are you really happy there?”

“Happy? I don’t think much about being happy. Who’s supposed to be happy at work?”

“You are.”

“Really, Dad, things are a lot different than when you were working at the medical prosthetics company.”

“Yes, they were different. At five o’clock, you walked out the door and went home. Managers stayed later, but not much. Every year you got your two weeks’ vacation. No one took their work home with them. And the work was very satisfying, because every time we helped save someone’s life by getting them the device they needed, we — all of us — could point to it and say, ‘We helped that person.’ Let me ask you a question: If you could change anything about your job, would you?”

“Of course, I would change many things! Sometimes I have to drag myself to work. Most mornings, when I’m sitting in my car during rush hour, listening to a motivational podcast, I feel like I want to get off the highway and keep driving until I’m far out in the country where I can hear myself think.”

“You listen to motivational lectures in your car on the way to work?”

“Yes. They get me revved up to face the day.”

“That and your double espresso coffee.”

“Well, I need my java to get going.” Jane glanced at her phone. “Oh my gosh! I’ve got a meeting in 15 minutes. I know it’s a complete waste of time; we never accomplish anything useful in these endless meetings, but I’ve got to make an appearance. Love you, Daddy.”

She got up, gathered her things, and hurried away from the table. With a sigh, her dad handed the server his credit card. He didn’t want to say it, but he thought his daughter was heading for a bad case of burnout.

THE CREEPING MALAISE

Across America and the healthcare industry, employee burnout is emerging as a challenge to be reckoned with.

Employee burnout is defined as a state of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion brought on by one’s experiences in the workplace. If you’re suffering from burnout on the job, you have difficulty engaging in activities you once found meaningful. You may no longer care about the things that are important to you, and you may experience an increasing sense of hopelessness. You feel like you’re juggling as many balls as you can handle, and then life adds another ball and another until you start dropping them.

Burnout on the job is caused by excessive and prolonged stress in an environment that may once have been attractive. Burnout doesn’t happen overnight; it creeps up on you, just like it’s creeping up on Jane. At first, the signs and symptoms are subtle, but over time they become worse. As the stress continues, you begin to lose the interest and motivation that led you to take on a certain role.

When Jane was first hired by the hospital, she was overjoyed. It seemed like a dream job with a cutting-edge facility. She soon discovered the competitive culture was palpable. Her boss encouraged the employees to score at the top in various key performance metrics, including Leapfrog, CMS Star Ratings, and, of course, patient satisfaction! The winners were celebrated while the also-rans were made to feel like losers. It almost seemed as though her boss was trying to emulate “Neutron Jack” Welch, the CEO of GE in the 1980s who pursued the so-called “rank and yank” employment policy. Each year, Welch would fire the bottom 10% of his managers while rewarding those in the top 20% with bonuses and employee stock options.

Over time, Jane found herself increasingly dreading going to work. She felt exhausted and she got sick more often. The headaches started, and her family noticed that when she got home, she was tense and would snap at them for no apparent reason. “You guys don’t understand,” she would say. “Business is tough. You do what you have to do.”

Her husband went so far as to suggest that Jane was suffering from a form of Stockholm syndrome. This condition got its name from a 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, in which the criminals held a group of bank employees hostage for six days. After they were set free, some of the employees refused to testify against the bank robbers in court and even raised money for their defense. As a coping mechanism, these employees had developed an affinity with their captors and had lost the ability to view their situation objectively. So it was with Jane. She was so committed to succeeding in the toxic environment of her workplace that she had lost the ability to recognize what it was doing to her.

Excerpted from Working Happy! How to Survive Burnout and Find Your Work/Life Synergy in the Healthcare Industry by Roger Kapoor, MD, MBA.