How the Pandemic Exacerbated Burnout

Michael Leiter and Christina Maslach have been at the vanguard of burnout research for over three decades.

They are the coauthors of The Truth About Burnout and a forthcoming book on burnout and work for Harvard University Press. Maslach is also a coauthor (with Susan Jackson) of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, a widely used assessment with variants tailored for a range of populations. Leiter is a coauthor of the version of the assessment used most often in organizations.

Their research shows that burnout is a workplace problem, not a worker problem. It happens when there is a bad fit — they call it mismatch — between an organization and its employees in one or more of the following areas: workers’ amount of control, fair treatment, a sense of community, workload levels, the doling out of rewards, and organizational values.

Of course, there are plenty of burnout factories where employees are underappreciated and treated unfairly. But in most workplaces, under normal circumstances, employers and employees usually manage to find a healthier balance. This past year, the pandemic disrupted all of that.

We invited Leiter and Maslach to share their thoughts and observations about burnout in the era of Covid-19. What follows is an edited conversation.

How has the pandemic changed your thinking about burnout?

In our view, 2020 did not change what burnout is — it remains a syndrome of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. If someone is experiencing high rates of all three of these at work, that indicates they are burned out, while low rates of all three indicate they are engaged. But although Covid hasn’t led to a redefinition of burnout, it has certainly aggravated it and the related forms of workplace distress. Many people are seeing an extreme intensification of their workloads and experiencing rising emotional difficulties and feelings of unfairness.

Does working from home put people at greater risk for burnout?

The risk varies, because people have been having so many different experiences. Remote work may have been a boon to introverts, people who thrive on long periods of uninterrupted work time, and those who hated their long commutes. But for most people, losing contact with colleagues and their day-to-day routines was distressing in itself, putting them at higher risk for exhaustion. Shifting into new modes of work and communication — say, suddenly being forced to teach a class online — can weaken one’s sense of efficacy as well.

What types of workplaces are being hit the hardest by burnout?

Health care is probably the industry suffering most disproportionately from burnout, for a few key reasons. Among people helping Covid-19 patients directly, an intense increase in workload has led to exhaustion. PPE shortfalls and an overall lack of preparation for this public health emergency have undercut confidence, contributing to cynicism. High rates of mortality and suffering have prompted people to withdraw emotionally. The lack of good evidence-based treatments has weakened people’s ability to feel effective. And to top it off, these conditions have persisted for months in many places and have reasserted themselves after a respite in others.

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