Occupational stress is one of the greatest challenges to well-being and safety, and the number of incidents is rising rapidly. The thing is, if we understand burnout we understand that it must happen for some reason, which could be the leading cause of characteristics of jobs that these people work in. If you are looking to decrease burnout and potentially even turnover in organisations. To reduce burnout you need to design changes in jobs. To do this, you must employ your management and the people that work inside your company. If you know, what job characteristics contribute towards burnout of the employees you may also know how to help them to perform better at their jobs and to reduce their burnout.
We must consider the following characteristics.
- Autonomy may decrease burnout. In our study on students we have seen that increase in autonomy may decrease burnout. But to what extent is implementing autonomy good and are we as humans good to employ our own discipline to achieve the desired goals. Can we work autonomously. Or does too much autonomy also increase burnout, lack of motivation and creativity.
- Desirable job characteristics may decrease burnout. The more interesting your job is the less you may be burnt out of it.
- Diversity. The diverse job characteristics may also decrease burnout. The more monotonous job characteristics are the more burnt out the employees may become over time. Implementing diversity may reduce burnout. But the question looms is too much diversity also a good thing?
- Emotional characteristics. In environments that are very emotionally draining. We must also consider that the emotional characteristics of jobs may contribute towards burnout. Research suggests that emotional stability may decrease burnout. Emotional demands are related to exhaustion. We may look into wether the emotionally draining jobs contribute towards burnout and how to overcome the problems in emotionally draining jobs.
- Workload. To some extent the workload is also related to emotional exhaustion. The physical workload can also influence the level of burnout.
- Empowerment of employees is related to lower burnout. Allowing your employees to be empowered on the job and providing their own input may decrease burnout.
- Possibilities for advancement in jobs. If there is a glass ceiling in jobs then the employees may become unmotivated and burnt out. The employees may need a chance to be able to achieve the possibilities of what they may want or dream towards. If you allow your employees to dream and achieve their dreams you may decrease burnout.
- Possibilities for contribution. The possibility for providing the contribution in the jobs may also motivate your employees more than when your employees aren’t allowed to contribute.
Job design is understanding the content of jobs and roles, their duties and responsibilities and the relationships that exist between job and role holders and other people in the organization. This is where with the appropriate design for the change in specific job roles we can change the outcome of the organisation. While high levels of job support were protective for emotional exhaustion, high demands, low job control, high work load, low reward and job insecurity increased the risk for developing exhaustion. How to design jobs for your organisation may be more of an art than a necessity. But for effective job design, you must consider organisational design, technology and leadership.
Change-design.org 