At the conclusion of the long week of boring P.E. classes where I watched my gangling limbs fail to meet the expectations for kids half my size, everyone in my class was herded onto the school baseball field to see how fast you could run “The Mile.” It was always hot without a single cloud for shade, and the precarious route shifted between grass, gravel, and field track intermediately. But when you’re ten, your physical prowess is a direct factor in your popularity, and every year without fail, I would psych myself up just before it was my turn, and when the coach finally yelled go, I would fire off like a rocket at a dead sprint.

And inevitably, I always did. I’d pump my legs as hard as I could and since I was the tallest in my class, I could always manage to get a good head start. But before I’d even finished my first lap my lungs would be on fire, I’d be wheezing like a dying giraffe, and one-by-one, everyone I had left in the dust at the starting line started to pass me.

Workplace burnouts are not typically something most people associate with a millennial generation that hops from job to job every couple of years. If someone spent 20+ years at a job, doing the same task over and over, then yes, we would all understand if that person one day told their boss, “I’m just really feeling burned out.” But how can someone in their twenties or thirties, who has already had three to five jobs, comes to work in their pajamas, and works in a beanbag chair, possibly be burned out?

While loyalty within corporate America is an increasing rarity, we actually still maintain several of the cultural norms that were prevalent in the baby boomer era. It used to be that showing up early, putting in long hours, and staying late, insured a career of 30-40 years that left employees retiring in good shape. But while employees are much more mobile than they used to be and have many more jobs throughout their career, we are still holding onto some of the same workplace burnout stigmas that no longer make any sense.

“If I’m the first one in the office or the last one to leave, my managers will see how valuable I am to the company and promote me.” And if that sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’ve thought that way yourself even if you didn’t realize it at the time. In many organizations, there are not clear or relevant metrics for managers to measure their employees worth and so they begin to associate value with observed face-time. “Oh, Janice. Well, she’s usually the first one out the door at five o’clock, so I don’t know about her….but Olivia is here till almost seven every day. I think we should make her the new supervisor.”

And while that kind of conversation may or may not be happening in your organization now, they’ve been happening in other organizations for years, so much so that millennials are still equating hours with value. In our last post “Trust Me” we discussed the growing trend of employees working remotely, but just because millennials are out of the physical office, doesn’t mean the pressure is off to work more hours. Far from it! And furthermore, according to Ty Tucker, CEO of REV, a company that designs performance management platforms, that pressure is part of a growing, harmful shift in how millennials work.

“In too many workplaces, millennials aren’t challenged to meet specific, defined goals, so they spend time on busyness that doesn’t improve their standing, but consumes a lot of time.”

In several of our previous posts, we’ve addressed the fast-paced work attitudes of Gen-Y and Gen-Z and how both generations have a strong tendency to take off running their first day on the job. Add in cultural pressure to put in long hours, and it’s easy to see how long energy drink-fueled days and nights can start to take their toll pretty quickly. And even big name companies with cultures of comfort can actually increase this problem by making it far too easy to spend long hours on the job. When competing for promotions in highly-competitive environments, it’s a very real fear to be heading home when your co-workers are still at work.

However, spending two hundred late-night hours to finish a non-essential piece of code or complete a minor project a few days in advance doesn’t really help your standing with managers or the company at-large. In reality, that kind of behavior’s only effect is to drain you. And if this behavior becomes a pattern, you run the risk of winding up like me running The Mile: sprinting for little gain and then huffing and puffing to catch back up as everyone else passes you by.

Burnouts are on the rise. According the American Psychology Association, 39% of millennials say their stress increased last year, 52% report lying awake at night from stress at some point in the past month, and 44% report feeling irritability or anger because of their stress. And while it might be easy to simply attribute feeling burned out as just being “really stressed lately,” in reality, burning out is a fast-track to being considered a hiring bust. Once you reach the point of being burned out, it is incredibly difficult to restart your internal drive, and from there, your value to a company will decrease rapidly.

The answer to combating burnouts is not millennials’ common remedy of shaking it off, sucking it up, and trudging back to our 14 hour grinds. In order to stand-out at work and improve your performance, millennials need to know what is important to an organization. What does your company value, prioritize, reward, stray away from etc?

A career is a hopefully a marathon rather than a sprint, and taking the time to invest in your own development by understanding your company’s and your manager’s values will keep you from falling into time and energy traps. If your company prioritizes and rewards speed over quality, okay, maybe it makes sense to pull all-nighters and keep a sleeping bag at the office. (But do you really want to work in that kind of environment?) However, chances are that your company values more than just time spent on the job, and understanding that will help keep you from burning out and turning into a hiring bust, which leads to workplace burnout.

Workplace Burnout: Workplace Burnout Is Not Just About Long Hours

Long hours can contribute to workplace burnout, but the number of hours is only part of the issue.

Employees can also become exhausted when priorities constantly shift, responsibilities are unclear or the organization treats every request as urgent employees and leaders will experience workplace burnout.. A manageable workload becomes much more difficult when people cannot determine which assignments matter most. This inevitably will lead to workplace burnout.

Uncertainty consumes energy. Employees spend time trying to interpret expectations, protect themselves from missed requests and demonstrate that they are working hard. They may remain constantly busy without feeling that they are accomplishing meaningful work.

That distinction matters. Activity and progress are not the same. This all ties into workplace burnout.

Workplace Burnout: When Busyness Becomes a Substitute for Progress

Many workplace cultures still associate visibility with value. The first person online, the last person to leave or the employee who responds immediately may be perceived as more committed.

But time spent working is not always a reliable measure of contribution.

When organizations reward visible effort without defining meaningful outcomes, employees learn to demonstrate busyness. They attend meetings that do not require them, remain available outside normal hours and accept work without discussing competing priorities.

The result may look like dedication while creating very little sustainable value.

Leaders can change this pattern by defining what success looks like. Employees need to know which outcomes matter, what can wait and how decisions will be made when priorities conflict.

Workplace Burnout: How Unclear Priorities Contribute to Employee Burnout

Consider what happens when a manager adds another assignment to an employee’s workload without discussing the work already underway.

The employee may assume that everything remains equally important. Instead of renegotiating expectations, they try to absorb the new responsibility by working faster or extending their hours.

A more useful leadership conversation sounds like this when it comes to workplace burnout.:

“This new request needs attention. Let’s look at your current priorities and decide what should move.”

That sentence communicates two important messages. The new assignment matters, and the employee is not expected to create unlimited capacity. This is true for workplace burnout.

When priorities change, leaders should make the tradeoffs visible.

Workplace Burnout: The Role Managers Play in Preventing Burnout

Managers cannot eliminate every source of workplace stress. They can create greater clarity around expectations, workload and performance.

Effective managers regularly ask:

• Which priorities require the employee’s attention now?
• What can be delayed, delegated or discontinued?
• Does the employee have the authority and resources to complete the work?
• Are deadlines realistic?
• Is after-hours availability truly necessary?
• Does the employee feel comfortable raising a concern?
• Are we rewarding results or simply visible effort?

These conversations should happen before an employee reaches a breaking point and experiences workplace burnout..

A manager who says, “Let me know if you need help,” may believe the door is open. An employee worried about being perceived as incapable may never walk through it. Specific questions make it easier to discuss workload honestly.

Workplace Burnout: How Employees Can Raise Workload Concerns

Employees also have a role in communicating when expectations become difficult to manage.

Instead of saying only, “I have too much work,” provide the manager with a clearer picture of the choices involved:

“I am currently focused on the client proposal and the quarterly analysis. If the new request needs to be completed by Friday, which existing priority should move?”

This approach does not reject the work. It asks the manager to help establish the order and avoid workplace burnout.

Employees can also explain:

• What is currently underway
• Which deadlines conflict
• What risks the workload creates
• What support would help
• What decision the manager needs to make

Clear communication gives the manager something actionable to address.

Workplace Burnout: Sustainable Performance Is Not Lower Performance

Preventing workplace burnout does not mean removing challenge or lowering expectations.

People often find demanding work meaningful when the purpose is clear, the priorities are understood and the effort leads somewhere important. The problem begins when an unsustainable pace becomes permanent or when employees expend significant energy without understanding what success requires.

Sustainable performance allows people to recover, learn and continue contributing over time. It protects the organization from the loss of judgment, engagement and capability that can occur when employees remain depleted.

The goal is not to avoid hard work. It is to apply effort where it creates the most value.

Workplace Burnout: What Leaders Should Do When an Employee Is Struggling

When a manager notices declining energy, missed deadlines, withdrawal or changes in performance, the first response should be a conversation rather than an assumption.

Begin with an observation:

“I’ve noticed that your workload has increased and that several deadlines have become difficult to manage. How are you experiencing it?”

Listen before offering a solution. The problem may involve workload, unclear expectations, team dynamics, insufficient resources or circumstances outside the manager’s knowledge.

Managers should not attempt to diagnose a medical condition. Their role is to address workplace factors, clarify expectations and connect employees with appropriate organizational resources when needed.

Do you have experience with feeling burned out? Have you ever left a job because you hit a wall you couldn’t move beyond? We want to hear about it! Head back to Base Camp and join the conversation!