12/ The COR model takes a slightly different tack. It observes that people feel stress when they lose 'resources' — which in this case is loosely defined and can include time, energy, status, or even things.
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13/ The COR model is useful because it takes into account the salience of loss. This is different from JD-R!
So: if you have a lot invested in a project and management decides to kill the project, you are likely going to need a period of recovery in order to offset that loss.
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14/ Where does this leave us?
Well — now that you have these ideas, you can take any story of burnout and read them through the lens of JD-R or COR.
I'm willing to bet that in most cases, the demands of the work environment outstrips the 'resources' or the 'loss'.
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15/ If you want to prevent burnout, the research argues that you need to change the work environment.
And I think this is where things become the most surprising.
Burnout prevention really boils down to: do you have autonomy? Do you have control over your work?
Wait ... what?
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16/ But this makes sense! If you have autonomy, then you can CHANGE YOUR WORK ENVIRONMENT! You can increase resources by changing culture, or providing support systems, or giving feedback, or creating pockets of recovery from 'loss'.
OR you can reduce demand on your team. 😉
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17/ In fact, Maslach came up with a model for org change in the mid 2000s that is built around exactly this insight.
She calls it the 'Area of Worklife Scale' and it tells you which factor to tackle in which order.
Read left to right:
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18/ Ok, time to wrap up.
How do you recover from burnout? The research on this is spotty, but there is one big recommendation:
Quit.
Leave. Change teams.
Leave the work environment that caused the burnout.
Recovery is guaranteed if you do.
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19/ Remember, burnout is a stress experience in a SOCIAL context.
If you can't change the social context, you can't stop burnout.
And you can recover ... but only if you leave.
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20/ If you'd like to dig into this in any more detail, click here: commoncog.com/g/burnout/
Or follow me or , who wrote most of this guide.
Research DOES have useful things to say about burnout.
Who knew?
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Freudenberger original research from the 1970s is pretty interesting too.
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The word burnout was coined in the 1970s by Herbert J. Freudenberger from his observations of workers in free health clinics. His original work focused on the "helping professions" but then moved on to high achievers
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Yeah for some reason the current literature doesn't really draw from Freudenberger — perhaps because the entire field seems to be more org psychology these days. (Ahh, the tyranny of specialisation)
And the fact that it was usually single author! None of the academicalese we get today!