SLP burnout: Not my circus, not my monkeys, still my juggling act

If you're burned out, you have probably already been handed the standard advice. Take a bath. Set a boundary. Protect your lunch break. Cry in your car.

We’ve spent recent months reading burnout literature to provide better, more evidence-based tips than that. The first thing to know is that burnout is caused by conditions at work, and it gets fixed by changing conditions at work. That makes it your employer's problem to solve, while you put temporary fixes in place. We wrote two employers articles first:

• The SLP Burnout Problem, Part 1: The Definition Contains the Solution

• The SLP Burnout Problem, Part 2: What Can Employers Do?

   

Please go read them. Even though they’re written for employers, they will change how you think about what's happening to you. Part 1 in particular reframes burnout in a way most SLPs have never heard, and takes about ten minutes.

Here's the TL;DR if you'd like:

• Burnout is not a personal shortcoming for you to fix. It's a response to chronic workplace conditions, and it shows up in six places: workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values.
• Because it comes from those conditions, the interventions that work are organizational. Interventions aimed at the individual (resilience training, mindfulness, self-care) perform poorly by comparison.
• This means the fix is mostly not yours to build. It's your employer's job to audit workload, clarify decision-making, and address the other four domains.
• If they do all of that and you're still struggling, there are three explanations: the organization didn't actually fix it, the job and you aren't a fit, or what you're experiencing isn't burnout.

Here's the awkward part: this article (below) still gives you things to do. While you didn’t create these conditions and you certainly can’t change them alone, your employer also can’t fix what they can’t see, and you're the only one who sees your work as an expert on the inside.

The fix to burnout is primarily organizational

… which makes it not your circus, not your monkeys! Most of the fixes need to be things the employer puts in place. Because while some individual factors inside and outside your control (work habits, personality, mental health) do impact the likelihood of burnout, they aren’t the main place to look for solutions. When talking about burnout, the solutions are mostly with the employer. Let’s take workload as an example:

We know that unreasonably high workload increases burnout

• Step 1 is to audit this within the organization—across and within roles. Put simply, it’s the employer’s job to keep workload reasonable. Your only role as an SLP is to raise the flag if workload gets out of control (more on that next).
• Step 2 is (in theory, ha!) that it’s “fixed”—at least mostly, to the best of the organization's ability. Because if the organization is holding up their end of the deal to keep workload reasonable, it fixes the workload factor enough that it should no longer be a significant driver of atypical burnout levels within the organization.
• Step 3 would occur only if burnout still exists within the employee(s) after solving for it organizationally. And then it’s considered:
  • Organizational failure to actually keep workload under control (they'd go back to Step 1—try again),
  • Or, a job–person mismatch, meaning, the person and the specific job just aren’t a fit. This is when separation occurs, initiated by either the employee or employer.
  • Or, it’s not burnout. And when it’s not burnout, it’s no longer a workplace issue problem-solved as burnout (e.g. it could be a broader mental health thing going on, which shifts responsibility from managers and requires referral out to appropriate professionals).

Notice how the solutions to overwork here aren’t: the SLP grins and bears it, the SLP changes their mindset to be able to withstand more pressure, or the SLP engages in more self-care outside of work. None of those solutions belong anywhere near an evidence-based article on burnout.

Your employer isn’t a mind reader; they can’t fix what they can’t see

This is the one thing that does fall on the individual, at least in partnership with their employer—you must communicate with your employer about what’s going on. Recall from our employer article (and Maslach’s model) that these are the primary burnout domains:

1. Workload: An unreasonably high workload increases burnout.
2. Control: Perceived lack of control, micromanagement, or lack of autonomy over how, when, or where work gets done increases burnout.
3. Reward: Feeling under-rewarded or under-acknowledged increases burnout. This applies to both monetary and non-monetary rewards, as well as opportunities for advancement.
4. Community: Toxic workplace culture, feeling left out, lack of psychological safety, and unsupportive colleagues increase burnout.
5. Fairness: Favoritism, unequal pay, unclear career paths, and arbitrary decision-making increase burnout.
6. Values: Being forced to do work that conflicts with personal ethics or that feels meaningless increases burnout.

Look at those carefully. Do you notice how easy it would be for the employer to be unaware that one of these could be a problem in their company? Your employer often can't see what happens inside your role, and there are only two ways they find out: 

• The first is how it's supposed to work: they ask, which is their job, and you explain, which is yours.
• The second is that they never ask, and you speak up anyway. Not the way it's supposed to work but in the real world of imperfect people, which we all are, it often comes to you needing to say something first.

Then once you settle the, “I have to actually tell my employer this is an issue” piece, a few more things to consider:

Clarity is key

The clearer you can be about the issue, the better. Every employer has had the experience of an employee showing up in their office describing stress or discomfort that they can’t quite describe the source of. Your job is to do your best to identify the source of the problems; their job is to listen the best they can. Communication breakdowns at this stage are incredibly frustrating for everyone involved, but you avoid that by always ending with a follow-up question, either live or via email: 

"Can I check what you took away from our conversation, so I can fill in anything I left unclear?"

For what it’s worth, most situations in which employers think they’ve done a good job of burnout-proofing their workplace already, while employees think things are still wrong and need fixed, are entirely due to lack of information clarity between the two parties. 

Another thing to be said here—sometimes you may be stressed and don’t know why. That’s ok, and there’s nothing wrong with that! While it’s ok to disclose this to your employer if you want to (e.g. “I’m not feeling myself lately and am extra-stressed”), that won't typically trigger effective solutions. Instead, a good employers will recognize you're human, appreciate the transparency, and implement whatever temporary accommodations they can for you, but most of those fixes will be just that—fleeting and (likely) ineffective until you both can identify modifiable workplace sources for the stress.

Bring solutions (if you have them)

A lot of literature on being a top employee (look into the topic “managing up”) suggests that you never show up to your boss with problems alone, but always problems + solutions. We’re here to tell you that while this is ideal, it’s also unreasonable and sometimes pointless.

Take the workload example.

• You might be able to propose a solution to your boss that reduces your workload and works well within their priorities and barriers. That’s one of those happy situations in which you bring the problem + solution to your boss, they say, “Wow you’re right—let’s do it!” and the problem is fixed.
• Realistically though, bosses are often working with barriers you can’t see. So it doesn't make sense for you to put a ton of work into building a solution without access to all the moving pieces, bringing them something impossible to implement for the business at-large.
• In general, your move is this: If you see a solution, offer it! If you don’t see a solution, it's probably because you don't have access to the information needed to build a solution, and may want to ask questions instead. In those cases where it's not obvious, build the solutions with partnership with your employer, which is usually what they want most.

It won’t always be fixed by your employer

Burnout is a reason people leave jobs, and want to leave jobs. While none of us want burnout to occur, sometimes it just doesn't get fixed. It's helpful to have a framework for what to do or conclude next:

• The organization can’t or won’t fix it. Cutting ties may be the only next solution if the problem is significant enough for you, and outweighs the downsides of switching jobs.
• The organization has fixed it the best they possibly could, and it’s a person–job mismatch, instead. This is a common. Not all jobs are a fit for all people, and that’s ok! It’s ok to walk away saying, “This may work for some, but it doesn’t work for me.”
• It’s not burnout. Sometimes things look like burnout that are something else entirely (e.g. depression). And when it’s not burnout it can’t be solved with burnout solutions inside the organization, beyond reasonable accommodations. Instead you may need organization-external support (like a mental health professional) instead. Or sometimes it's temporary—there's value in having a whole-picture view of how your life is playing out and what is contributing. When you go to the boss with a solution, consider if you think you need a permanent change or accommodation, or if you just need some slack while you're dealing with x, y, or z.