Would you recognise burnout in your team?

Working in aged care is one of the most rewarding jobs, but also one of the most stressful.

The aged care workforce is suffering from the effects of employee burnout after decades of influence from an under resourced and underfunded aged care system, adding pressure onto the already demanding job of caring for our older people. 

While burnout skyrocketed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, health workers and providers have always grappled with long hours, high workplace demands, staff shortages, and limited resources.

While its prevalence is high, providers need to become more equipped at supporting a workforce under pressure, so we ask – can you recognise burnout?

There are signs to look out for as well as strategies you can use to help look after your staff.

Signs of burnout

We all have an ‘off’ day every now and then, when it’s harder than usual to motivate ourself and get through the day. In burnout the problem is much more serious and can present in a range of physical, emotional and behavioural signs and symptoms. Look out for the following indicators of employee burnout in your team:

Physical signs could be:

• Feeling drained and tired
• Frequent headaches
• Stomach pains
• Increased illnesses 
• Change in sleep routine/appetite

Emotional signs could be: 

• Negative attitude and loss of motivation
• Feeling detached 
• Sense of failure and self-doubt
• Feeling helpless, trapped, and defeated.

Behavioural signs could be:

• Getting angry or frustrated easily
• Procrastinating
• Reduced performance
• Isolating from others
• Coming in late, leaving early or skipping work altogether
• Use of substances to cope

What does a burnt out workforce look like?

Employee burnout is a specialised type of work-related stress that can leave you in a state of complete mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion. You may find it difficult to engage in activities you normally find meaningful, may no longer care about the things that are important to you, or experience an increasing sense of hopelessness.

Professional services firm, KPMG Australia, outlined some common areas where burnout may occur for aged care workers and how that may present.

Burnout can be caused by:

• A persistent and unsustainable workload with no opportunity to rest
• An actual, or perceived, lack of time to complete work tasks
• Conflicting demands from management
• Unreasonable job pressures 
• A lack of training and/ or resources
• Having to display an emotion that is not actually felt, or suppressing emotions in order to do their job
• A lack of support and feedback opportunities with their employers

The impact of a burnt out aged care workforce

Poor staff retention, skill shortages and workforce gaps in the sector have posed challenges for providers and a lot of those problems can be partially attributed to burnout. 

Kathryn MacMillan, Managing Director at HR firm, Circle HR, has worked with the aged care sector for almost 15 years and said the effects of burnout causes workers to take more days off and eventually leads to them seeking less demanding work elsewhere – further compacting issues for stretched staff who do turn up to shift.

“Burnt out employees leads to an increase in absenteeism and when there are more people off work, there’s more stress on those that are existing in the workplace and the ratios of patients to  carers go down,” she explained. 

“Even when those staff that are burnt out are in the workplace, there’s often a high number of injuries to themselves because of their psychological state from being tired and burnt out.

“Being an aged care worker has a huge emotional impact too and our older Australians need carers who are emotionally available to them – someone who can speak to them on a deeper level and provide emotional care as well as physical care.”

If aged care workers reach the point of burnout, they often become very dissatisfied with their job – a crucial element of staff retention that often sees providers experience a high turnover of workers because they leave for better jobs or better industries. 

Strategies to prevent burnout

Working towards a preventative system instead of one that fixes burnout is a strategy all providers should work towards, and it is important to understand what advice to personally take on to prevent you from becoming burnt out too.

There are a few ways to do this.

Communicate

The first step is to foster healthy communication and practice active listening before any strategies are put in place. 

Ms MacMillan said providers communicating with staff, other members of their management team and their board can offer a “light at the end of the tunnel” to help stop the feeling that the situation is going to go on forever. 

Outside of regular professional meetings that may touch on strategy or compliance, engaging in conversation that shows genuine care and consideration about each other’s well-being is equally important to build camaraderie and is important to promote job satisfaction among workers. 

“If people know that they’ve got to stick to the tough time for a period of time but then there is going to be something coming, that can be a great help.

“Build that team environment because talking and listening to each other and building that team around you makes you feel like you’re not alone in this.”

Offering appropriate flexible work options

To help alleviate that feeling of never ending dread, providers should look at giving workers more flexible work arrangements to accommodate burnout, job pressures and other life demands. 

This could look like giving staff the opportunity to change shifts and duty rotation to offer some respite and variety in their roles. 

Job satisfaction

As previously touched on, job satisfaction will be a make-or-break factor for your workforce and if they are not feeling fulfilled or adequately supported in their role, they are likely to seek new employment elsewhere.

Establishing a strong culture of recognition and support through a strong open door policy can allow workers to feel satisfied and get on with what they do best – looking after our older Australians.

Utilising multidisciplinary care

Multidisciplinary care has been a topic discussed in the sector for a while which would see older people receive care through a treatment plan led by a care team of doctors and other health care professionals from different specialties. This would ease the workload for aged care workers and allow them to spend more time caring for residents or clients. 

In its 2022-23 Budget, the Federal Government outlined the intention to assure “access to multidisciplinary care and maintaining effective quality audits” and $22.1 million was allocated to delivering trials of Multidisciplinary Outreach Services.

This care model has also looked at utilising remote working care and medical staff to take on low-risk tasks such as administrative duties for workers on the floor. This remote workforce may even be able to do basic observations by checking in with older people via phone or video call in the near future.

A structured approach

KPMG Australia has a template providers can use to figure out the source of burnout within their organisation and how to fix it. 

When trying to identify reasons for burnout, consider asking questions such as:

• Where and why are employees experiencing burnout in my organisation?
• Which job demands are placing the greatest risk to workforce resilience and how many resources do they have?
• What resources can be provided to protect employee resilience?
• What kind of research-validated questionnaires can I give staff to understand the presence, severity and location of burnout within the organisation to inform focused action?
• What qualitative techniques can and unpack these questionnaire findings?

Some interventions may include job redesign, capability uplift, process review and improvement, and channels and tools for social connection. When trying to identify the right interventions for your organisation, pick ones that address the root causes of burnout instead of ones that may just treat the symptoms.

While burnout is clearly a common problem in the aged care industry, we are still trying to figure out the best way to combat it. 

Outside of having responsibilities to look after yourself and your staff, there are some tried and tested strategies to help you establish a culture that avoids burnout as much as possible.