{"title":"Line Managers' Perspectives and Responses when Employees Burn Out.","authors":"M Claeys, A Van den Broeck, I Houkes, A de Rijk","doi":"10.1007/s10926-023-10117-3","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>Little is known about whether burnout can be stopped at an emerging stage. To develop this knowledge, we focus on line managers' perspectives and responses when an employee who seems to be heading for burnout is still at work.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We interviewed 17 line managers working in the educational and health care sectors, who had been confronted with the sickness absence of at least one employee due to burnout in the past. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>During the period that the employee seemed to be developing burnout while still at work, line managers experienced three different, successive phases: picking up signals, role-taking, and re-evaluation. Line managers' personal frame of reference (e.g., having experience with burnout) seemed to influence whether and how they picked up signals of burnout. Line managers not picking up signals, did not take any action. When picking up the signals, the managers however generally took an active role: they started a conversation, changed work tasks, and - at a later stage - adapted the employee's job description, sometimes without consulting the employee. The managers felt powerless yet learned from the experience when subsequently re-evaluating the period during which employees developed symptoms of burnout. These re-evaluations resulted in an adapted personal frame of reference.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>This study shows that improving line managers' frame of reference, e.g., by organizing meetings and/or training, may help them to detect early signals of burnout and take action. This is a first step to prevent the further development of early burnout symptoms.</p>","PeriodicalId":48035,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10899266/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-023-10117-3","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/7/5 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"REHABILITATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Purpose: Little is known about whether burnout can be stopped at an emerging stage. To develop this knowledge, we focus on line managers' perspectives and responses when an employee who seems to be heading for burnout is still at work.
Methods: We interviewed 17 line managers working in the educational and health care sectors, who had been confronted with the sickness absence of at least one employee due to burnout in the past. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically.
Results: During the period that the employee seemed to be developing burnout while still at work, line managers experienced three different, successive phases: picking up signals, role-taking, and re-evaluation. Line managers' personal frame of reference (e.g., having experience with burnout) seemed to influence whether and how they picked up signals of burnout. Line managers not picking up signals, did not take any action. When picking up the signals, the managers however generally took an active role: they started a conversation, changed work tasks, and - at a later stage - adapted the employee's job description, sometimes without consulting the employee. The managers felt powerless yet learned from the experience when subsequently re-evaluating the period during which employees developed symptoms of burnout. These re-evaluations resulted in an adapted personal frame of reference.
Conclusion: This study shows that improving line managers' frame of reference, e.g., by organizing meetings and/or training, may help them to detect early signals of burnout and take action. This is a first step to prevent the further development of early burnout symptoms.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation is an international forum for the publication of peer-reviewed original papers on the rehabilitation, reintegration, and prevention of disability in workers. The journal offers investigations involving original data collection and research synthesis (i.e., scoping reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses). Papers derive from a broad array of fields including rehabilitation medicine, physical and occupational therapy, health psychology and psychiatry, orthopedics, oncology, occupational and insurance medicine, neurology, social work, ergonomics, biomedical engineering, health economics, rehabilitation engineering, business administration and management, and law. A single interdisciplinary source for information on work disability rehabilitation, the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation helps to advance the scientific understanding, management, and prevention of work disability.