Noticeable Absence: Vacations.

A continuation of Burnout and How to Treat it.

Vacation is commonly considered the treatment for burnout, however one of the most consistent findings in my research is that the reduction in burnout following a vacation dissipates very quickly — in less than three weeks.

This is one of those times I feel a struggle between what I “know” anecdotally, what research demonstrates, and my personal experience. I’ve seen people in very demanding jobs go on vacation, clear their head, and come back thinking more strategically. But this has never worked for me personally: when a job is unpleasant, it’s unpleasant, and leaving for a week doesn’t make it more pleasant. I conjecture that there are really two forms of burnout — “this job is terrible” and “this great job is very demanding”, and there simply aren’t enough of the latter to show up in studies. This is unfortunate, given that I expect it to be overrepresented among people reading this. But at a minimum, you should not count on vacation to fix a bad work environment.

What Can Organizations do?

Ultimately burnout is prevented by individuals, not companies. The warmest, fuzziest company in the world can’t prevent people from working themselves into burnout if they’re truly determined. At the same time, organizations are setting the incentive structures that determine whether preventing burnout is an uphill fight or not, and I think this makes them the correct place for most interventions.

Clear Roles and Norms

Ambiguity as to goals or social norms leads to stress and thus burnout.

Clear Feedback

Unfortunately nothing I read went into what constituted good feedback or how to give it. However in general reducing ambiguity is good and reduces burnout.

Achievable Goals

It has become popular to set “stretch” goals. Google’s quarterly evaluation process says that if you regularly achieve more than 60-70% of your goals, you’re aiming too low. This has the advantage of never leaving someone under capacity, but also means they never get to feel like they’ve “won”, which leads to burnout.

As a bonus, keeping goals modest leaves people with enough reserves and capacity to sprint when you really need it.

Facilitate Social Support

Feeling socially supported is one of the few demonstrated protectors against burnout. The literature is mixed at describing specific interventions — some studied deliberate interventions like peer support groups, others merely counted the number of positive and negative interactions. I report the peer review supported interventions below, and leave the anecdotes to the comments.

Peer support groups (studied only in client-facing, emotionally demanding professions like nursing and social work, my instinct is that this will not transfer directly to office positions)
Strong onboarding programs that make people feel socially situated (as well as giving them clear goals, and the resources to do their job).
Explicit mentorship programs (which can also reduce ambiguity).

A warning: workers often recognize attempts to facilitate group cohesion and feel obliged to fake feelings of connection when they can’t feel it authentically. My belief is that this demand for emotional labor can make burnout worse. You can mitigate this by providing a bonding budget for the employees themselves choose how to spend — although even then, not everyone will love the same things, and people may feel pressured to participate or left out if they don’t. You can also make explicit in the interview what kind of social expectations you have, and let people who aren’t compatible opt out.

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Tags: Noticeable Absence: Vacations.