Causes and Prevention of Burnout Causes and Prevention of Burnout in Human Services Staff Paper CherrishTyler University of Phoenix BSHS 432 Latera Davis December 23, 2011 Causes and Prevention of Burnout in Human Services Staff Burnout is most common in individuals that are motivated and dedicated in his or her field of services, including among human services professionals.This discussion will included the definition of burnout, describing some of the individual, cultural, organizational, supervisory, and social support factors that cause burnout, describing various individual, job role, and organizational methods to prevent burnout, examine your own personality and share how you react and respond to personal and work-related stress, and what should human services manager do be alert and ready to assist with staff burnout. According to MayoClinic (2011) states the definition of burnout as, “a state of physical, emotional or mental exhaustion combined with doubts about your competence and the value of your work. Burnout maybe caused by a combination of organizational, cultural, and individual factors.
Situations of feeling emotional and exhaustion demands on the workers are the result of leading to a burnout occurrence. In the case of working in mental health agencies, the demands are crucial toward the staff employed. A variety of issues is apparent to be concerned by the lack of attrition at the workplace. This includes, stress on the job, job dissatisfaction, lack of promotion opportunities, and conflict with supervisors and administration as contributing to workplace attrition.Staff of mental health agencies is very likely to experienced burnout circumstances related to attrition. There are several ways to prevent methods of burnout in human services staff.
One way to find out if indeed a staff is suffering from signs of burnout; one will need to figure out the reason for the burnout. Reconstructing the task and responsibilities on the staff can reduce stress leading to be burnout, pairing up staff in teams to balance out a heavy workload, getting outside help, such as volunteering, apply feedback on staff feelings and concerns. The organization as a whole can provide a more or less stressful work environment depending on whether all organizational members share a sense of excitement and strong purpose and clear goal and objectives. ” (Lewis, Packard & Lewis, 2010) Having every staff employed on the same page with reaching goals to give to each of his or her clients is essential to the organization and the client involved. If one should lack in providing services to the clients and the effects do appear to be seen, there is a chance that problems will surface back to the other staff and/or client.
Many accomplishments will be beneficial to everyone involved only if he or she is motivated enough to complete each task effectively towards helping his or her clients. “Clarity of purpose in an agency and commitment to ongoing learning and development of staff and the organization can help in providing such a supportive climate. ” (Lewis, Packard & Lewis) Another method into relieving burnout in staff of human services is Employment Assistance Program (EAP).This method is extremely helpful if a staff suffers from emotional effects on the job; which can affect the organization. Such as, lack of interest in helping the client, loss of motivation, feeling like he or she could not help out the client and feels remorseful of letting the client down, and personal issues. To better serve his or her clients, a human services organization need to have a strong staff to build resources in the community; without this it can lead to serious problems for the organization.
Lewis, Packard & Lewis (2010) states that, “Employee Assistance Programs and burnout preventions strategies can help mitigate the effects of these pressures and effective practices in the areas of hiring, training, and appraising staff can have a major effect on creating an environment conducive to effective and satisfying work. ” I find my personality to be of a people’s person, because I love working with people that has some challenges. My own personal experiences lead me to get into the field of human services.I work with intellectual and developmental disabilities and with this job does have its challenges.
Some of the consumers also have behavioral issues as well as his or her disability. Although I have been on the job for four months, I do feel lucky to not have any reaction to feeling burnout. If I should feel burnout on the job, the ways I can deal with my emotional effects are through self-care. I relieve my tension through music; music helps me release my emotions and it’s a healer when I am done.I love doing exercises to relieve stress and it helps take away the tension in my muscles to prepare me for a new day and I also would try to take some time alone like a day off or use my vacation to reprocess everything I am experiencing at work. Also, writing is one of my passions and it allows me to help smooth my feelings inside.
Human service managers should be on the lookout for its staff suffering from burnout. It should be his or her duty to want to be involved with his or her staff and want he or she to be healthy enough to perform task on the job.One effect will affect everyone involved including the human services manager. Human services manager should get to know its staff, know whether he or she has weaknesses or strengths which can be a clue into the staffs minds about his or her feeling about what he or she is serving.
Human service managers should indeed offer Employment Assistance Programs for its staff, if the problem consists. Burnout on the job is a major concern and should be dealt with accordingly. Human service organization should continue to be aware of the effects burnout has on its staff and the organization. They cannot afford to lose the productivity of their most valuable resource: the people who make the program work. ” (Lewis, Packard & Lewis 2010) Human services organization main goal will need to be to reduce burnout as much as possibly, although it may be tough, it still never too late to put in the effort. Reference Lewis, J.
, Packard, T. , Lewis, M. (2007). Management of Human Services Programs. Retrieved from the University of Phoenix Online. MayoClinic.
(2012). Job Burnout: Spotting it and How to Control it. Retrieved from http://www. mayoclinic.
com/health/burnout/WL00062
