Employee Burnout According to Lewis, Packard, and Lewis, (2007) “burnout can be defined as a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion resulting from involvement with people in emotionally demanding situations” (Lewis, Packard, & Lewis,(2007), (p., 132). Another concept to burnout According to "Job Burnout: Job Factors That Contribute To Employee Burnout" (2010), “The extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one's devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results” (What Makes Some Jobs More Stressful?). Burn out can have a bad affect on the agency, the employee, and worst of all on the clients. Employee burnout is not limited just to staff, burnout can also affect upper management. Studies have shown that the causes for burnout stem from three important issues. The first is emotional exhaustion. When a HSW deals with the problems his or her clients have day in and day out, there comes a point where the HSW can no longer deal with the problems and becomes emotionally exhausted. The second issue is a sense of a lack of personal accomplishment. The HSW starts to think that they are making no difference. He or she has the sense they are making no difference in helping their clients with the problems and issues he or she have. The third issue is the most damaging to the agency, the employee, and the clients. Depersonalization can affect a HSW without their knowledge. The HSW may never know they are doing it until it brought to their attention. Depersonalization is described as a lack of caring in attitude toward the HSW clients, fellow employees, and upper management. It also can be seen as the clients are visualized only as numbers pushed through the system and not as human beings with their own special needs and problems. There are several contributing factors that can lead a HSW to a point of burning out. There is never totally just one factor that leads a HSW to burning out. More times than not there are several factors each taken independently may not seem like much but when working together these factors create a larger problem. Some of these issues may be the individual personality of the HSW. The employee may have an Alpha personality and set goals and objectives for him or herself that may be unobtainable. Other HSW may become burned out because of the management. If upper management is not supplying the supportive information needed by the HSW in the form of feedback this can give the HSW the impression of lack of caring by upper management. The other side of this is upper management making the work environment overly competitive. If this type of work environment is created the employees will start to mistrust upper management. When any form of mistrust occurs in a workplace a hostile environment erupts, and there is the possibility of conflict between the employees. Any combination of these issues can lead to employee burnout. To help in the prevention of burnout management can do a verity of preventive actions. Providing employees with a challenge or a change are two important ways of overcoming the effect of complacency burnout. Changing what a HSW does every day allows them to take a break and learn a new task, thus focusing their attention on a different thought process. Also by offering the employees a challenge it helps to stimulate the thinking process altering the mindset and perhaps moving the employee out of his or her comfort zone. An additional method of reducing burning out is running contests for the employees to earn extra time off helps to change the standardized routine of the agency. Everyone to some degree will suffer some form of burnout. People may simple get tired of the job they are doing or the company they are working for. As the only bartender in a high volume restaurant there are nights when seven severs are working and each server is ordering two or more drinks at the same time. This can be very stressful, especially to a new employee. One approach is to keep in mind as a bartender only one drink at a time can be prepared and only one server can be taking care of at a time. This is one method of avoiding stress during a busy shift. To help in the avoidance of burnout doing other various duties closely related to the specific job have proving to be successful. These can be getting out from behind the bar and providing water to the diners, running food, clearing tables, resetting tables, and even helping the dishwasher with his or her job. As a manager it would be very important to be aware of the causes of burnout and to be on the lookout for warning signs that may be causing burnout within the agency. When a staff member is starting to show signs talk to him or her. Ask the employee if everything is alright. Ask the employee what a manager can do to help relieve the factors relating to his or her burnout. Managers can also hold weekly meetings to aid in the reduction of burnout by allowing the employees to vent their frustrations about the agency. Burnout is not incurable it can be reduced or even avoided so long as management is aware that the possibility of its existence can occur. Watching for causes of burnout such as overwork, complacency, a lack of interest in the job by the employees, and the way employees treat each other, and his or her clients are good indicators of the onset of burnout. One of the best ways for management to help his or her employees to overcome or avoid burnout is keeping a watchful eye for signs of burnout and talking to the employees about burnout.

References
Job Burnout: Job Factors That Contribute to Employee Burnout. (2010). Retrieved from http://stress.about.com/od/burnout/a/job_burnout.htm
Lewis, M. D., Lewis, J. A., & Packard, T. (2007). Management of Human Service Programs, Fourth Edition, Chapter 6: Developing and Managing Human resources, Chapter 7: Building Supervisory Relationships, Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.