Enterprise Careers

SAN MATEO (02/21/2000) - Job burnout is a problem for which most IT managers and consultants have a pet solution -- some of them common-sense and some more drastic measures.

Sometimes quitting can be a positive step toward solving a burnout problem.

"As an employer, you never want to say this," says Mike Natan, CIO at Reliance National Insurance Co. in New York and Reliance Insurance Co. in Philadelphia.

"But I think getting another job in another atmosphere in another company can be an energizing experience for most people. You are going to be put in new circumstances and meet new people, and that is energizing by itself. And if you get into a different industry, you can learn a bunch of new IT things."

Bob Becker did something so drastic once. Becker, director of hospital information systems at the Sinai Health System in Chicago, simply walked away from a job where he felt burned out.

"I think it solved my problem. You have to have courage, though. Some people can't walk away," Becker says. "The IT person who is feeling overwhelmed needs to have the courage to tell his or her boss that an overload situation exists, and [say], 'Don't give me anything else to do right now.' "Less severe, common-sense remedies include giving employees more flexible hours, avoiding constant 60-hour workweeks and responding to employee pleas for help.

In some ways, the booming economy actually has made IT burnout less of a problem than it used to be.

"As the scarcity of IT professionals has increased, so has their ability to dump a job that overworks them," says David Hume, manager of permanent placement at Bradford & Galt, an IT staffing firm in St. Louis.

But short of bidding farewell to workers, IT managers can do several things to deal with employee burnout. Hume believes that managers have begun to address the problem by no longer expecting workers to put in 60 hours a week. In addition, more managers are protecting their employees by declining to deliver new projects as fast as internal business unit customers want them.

A stitch in time

Natan believes that often just a little more flexibility in work hours may be enough to prevent burnout.

"I had a situation where a person was really stressed out, primarily because of a confluence of work and home pressures. We worked out a flexible work arrangement where the person was able to reduce the time spent in the office.

That in turn allowed that person to deal with the issues at home. I noticed a remarkable positive influence on that person's work life," Natan says.

That kind of flexibility goes a long way toward preventing burnout, says Lee Anderson, a former IT project manager turned recruiter. Anderson, an IT career development coach for recruiting firm Career Guarantee Network, in Tampa, Fla., says his former company saved him from burnout by shifting him to another project.

"I was a project leader on a project to build a rental truck reservation system. I was working 70 to 75 hours a week and it started to take a toll on me," Anderson recalls. "I had to approach management and say I did not have enough time with my family, my children. While they could have given me more money, that definitely was not the way to relieve my burnout." Management listened to Anderson and shifted him to another project. "It was a lateral move," he says, "but it helped me out greatly."

Becker also favors burnout prevention through flexible work arrangements, such as allowing people to work from home and approving vacations even when it isn't convenient. Another preventive measure is to avoid forcing people to do the same work over and over. "People don't want to have the same year of experience three years in a row," he says.

One way to help workers avoid mind-numbing repetition in their work is to use outsourcing, Natan says. If outsiders are brought in to handle repetitive tasks it will free the IT staff for more challenging new assignments. "Let somebody else worry about keeping things running, because that's just more of the same kind of work," he says.

Repetitive experiences contributing to burnout tends to be worse for employees than for consultants, says Denise Ruebsam, general manager at Oakwood Systems Group, an IT consultancy in St. Louis. Burnout affects consultants less, she says, because they change assignments frequently.

There are also some new ways to avoid burnout in workers. For example, Natan says, the increasing need for IT professionals to learn business skills and interact with business units can be turned into a burnout prevention strategy.

"Burnout is a combination of a lack of change, a lack of opportunity to learn new skills, and a lack of opportunity to interact with new people," Natan says.

"But, increasingly, IT folks are being given the opportunity to get deeper into business because IT is the enabler of every major component of business nowadays. An opportunity to do these things helps to slow down burnout or recharge people who feel burned out."

Take control with time management

At first glance, using time management techniques to improve worker efficiency seems to have little to do with burnout. But some experts claim that burnout stems largely from a feeling that one's job is spiraling out of control. In those cases, time management can combat burnout by restoring a sense of personal control.

Don Wetmore, president of Productivity Institute, a time management consultancy in Shelton, Conn., recommends personal planning the night before work. "A lot of burnout comes from feeling out of control," he says. "We tend to become better time managers when we've planned things, and we feel a greater sense of control."

Wetmore's advice: Use a personal time management plan to "take control of your most precious resource, the next 24 hours. Build an action list, not only of all the things you have to do, but of the things you want to do."

Diane Middlebrooks, president of The Business Coach, a career consultancy in Chicago, says people who feel burned out should keep a diary so they can learn what things are gobbling up their time. Once that's identified, some time-consuming activities can be eliminated. "IT people need to see if there is a creative way to manage those interruptions," she says.

Denise Ruebsam, general manager of Oakwood Systems Group, an IT consulting firm in St. Louis, is a believer in daily planner books that become the user's constant companion. In addition to helping to schedule work, the planners help IT workers make time for family and personal life. "It makes you think about things that are important to you so that you will make time for them," she says. "It's a preventive measure for burnout."

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