



The Burnout Challenge
Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
A Forbes Best Business Book
“Vital reading for today’s and tomorrow’s leaders.” —Arianna Huffington
“Burnout seems to be everyone’s problem, and this book has solutions. As trailblazers in burnout research, Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter didn’t just clear the path to study the causes—they’ve also discovered some of the cures.” —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Think Again
“A thoughtful and well researched book about a core issue at the heart of the great resignation.” —Christian Stadler, Forbes
“Provides the path to creating a better world of work where people can flourish rather than get beaten down.” — Marcel Schwantes, Inc.
Burnout is among the most significant on-the-job hazards facing workers today. It is also among the most misunderstood. In particular, we tend to characterize burnout as a personal issue—a problem employees should fix themselves by getting therapy, practicing relaxation techniques, or changing jobs. Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter show why burnout also needs to be managed by the workplace.
Citing a wealth of research data and drawing on illustrative anecdotes, The Burnout Challenge shows how organizations can change to promote sustainable productivity. Maslach and Leiter provide useful tools for identifying the signs of employee burnout and offer practical, evidence-driven guidance for implementing change. The key, they argue, is to begin with less-taxing changes that employees nonetheless find meaningful, seeding the ground for more thorough reforms in the future.
As priorities and policies shift across workplaces, The Burnout Challenge provides pragmatic, creative, and cost-effective solutions to improve employee efficiency, health, and happiness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A majority of American workers consider their jobs to be mediocre or bad, constituting a crisis in the workplace, according to this no-nonsense survey from Banishing Burnout coauthors Maslach, a UC Berkeley psychology professor, and Leiter, an organizational psychologist. They make a case that such bad feelings toward one's work manifest as burnout, a miserable trifecta comprising crushing exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and alienation, and a sense of ineffectiveness. Burnout, they write, is the result of "the increasing mismatch between workers and workplaces," and is not an individual problem but one that comes down to the relationship between an individual and their place of work. Solutions, therefore, must be systemic and structural. The authors break down how burnout affects workplace relationships (it can lead to workers "causing greater personal conflict and disrupting job tasks") and lay out how organizations can ensure an ideal job-person match, which they posit involves six conditions: a sustainable workload; ample choice and control; recognition and rewards; supportive work community; norms of fairness, respect, and social justice; and well-aligned values and meaningful work. With the Great Resignation looming large, this timely, practical guide is worth a look for business leaders aiming to foster a healthy workplace.