Nelson and Quick (2013)

Some refer to burnout as a student whom frequently skips class or maybe a car roasting its wheels on the pavement. In this paper, however, when I mention burnout I am referring to the form of burnout that Nelson and Quick (2013) define as a psychological reaction to work stress. In this paper I will dive into a time that I faced the feelings of burnout, the types of burnout that were prevalent, the affects it had on my work performance, and lastly how the feelings of burnout could have been prevented. Now that I’ve given you a small outline of what this paper will entail, I start with a glimpse into my life.

After having a weak financial performance in 2011, Kress Corporation [my employer] was able to make a comeback with a large sales spike in the middle of 2012. In response to the increase in sales, it was strongly recommended that all production employees put in the necessary overtime to meet the expectations of customer demands. Being that Kress Corporation manufactured extremely large coal hauling machines, one of the biggest concerns was delivery date. My position as a production clerk was to support the production workers and keep the manufacturing system running smoothly. I was informed that I would need to work ten to twelve hours a day in order to ensure that this objective was met. Previous to sales spike that my employer experienced, I had decided to continue my education with online courses and as these were already underway I encountered a dilemma with time. The months following were extremely taxing on me both physically and mentally due to the constant work demands and lack of sleep. This went on until I felt as if I were defeatedand was reluctant to continue my work load and had to make changes to my life style.  Furthermore, I will dive into what types of burnout I experienced and how it affected my performance and work environment due to multiple factors.

As previously mentioned, I felt stressed both physically and mentally due to constant work demands and lack of sleep. These feeling of physical and mental stress are directly related to one of the three main dimensions of burnout that Christina Maslach (2008) refers to as exhaustion or individual stress. Because I lost sleep frequently over a period of time, I was seemingly operating at a sub-par level and could not perform tasks at the same rate. This exhaustion led to a poorer performance in course grades and in daily responsibilities at work which originated from one of the six factors that Maslach (2008) mentions as over demanding work load. I also experienced another dimension of burnout that has to deal with professional efficacy (Maslach, 2008) or reduced perception of personal accomplishment (Nelson and Quick, 2013). Due to non-satisfactory grades in my online courses, I developed a self-conscientiousness ^[a]in my ability to further my education. In response, I was very irritable because I had spent money to enroll in these classes only to come out poorly. My irritability was noticed among my peers at work and ultimately resulted in a lecture from my direct supervisor. After receiving the lecture from my supervisor, I realized that I had not been the laidback happy individual that I normally was and I had to address burnout with my own means. Before I conclude with my reactions, there are strategies and decisions that Kress Corporation could have done in order to prevent my feeling of burnout. First of all, in order for Kress Corporation to realize that I was facing burnout, they would have had to understand that factors of the work environment directly correlate to the main dimensions of burnout (Maslach, 2008). Next if they applied the job demands-resources model (Walsh, 2014) and took a study on how much it took for me to continue working at a consistent rate, it may have dawned on them that the department required more staff prior to the increased work load. Also, Maslach (2008) proclaimed to organizations that it pays to perform check-ups on employees. If Kress Corporation had shown that they were interested in preventing burnout, they could have done a survey or even communicated to middle management to assure that supervisors were in contact with all of their employees during the spike in workload. Honestly, my supervisor was too busy to have daily conversations on my individual conditions but him and other management definitely knew that I was continuing my education.