When people think of burnout, self-care is often suggested as the means to treat it.
But self-care misses the mark.
Why?
Taking care of yourself is important. In fact, it’s vital. However, burnout will not be cured with a bubble bath or a spa, although those are nice in the moment and are essential in maintaining well-being. They aren’t enough to fully address burnout, because they are short term fixes instead of long-term solutions. Here are five reasons why self-care isn’t a cure for burnout.
1. **Systemic Issues**: Burnout is frequently rooted in systemic issues within the workplace or broader environment. These may include excessive workloads, lack of autonomy or control, toxic work cultures, and inadequate support systems. While self-care can help individuals cope with these challenges to some extent, it doesn’t address the underlying structural issues that contribute to burnout.
2. **Limited Scope**: Self-care strategies primarily focus on individual well-being and stress management. While they can be effective for reducing immediate symptoms of burnout and promoting resilience, they may not address the broader systemic factors that perpetuate burnout over the long term. According to our research, there are two components to burnout prevention in the workplace. An individual and an organization. Self-care might help with some of the individual aspects but doesn’t address any of the organizational factors that contribute to burnout.
3. **Misplaced Responsibility**: Relying solely on self-care to address burnout can inadvertently place the burden of responsibility on the individual, rather than acknowledging the role of organizational and societal factors in contributing to burnout. An individual can do everything correct in terms of burnout prevention, but if the company doesn’t have specific tools and processes in place for burnout, then it’s only a matter of time before employees are experiencing burnout. This can lead to feelings of guilt or inadequacy when self-care efforts fail to alleviate burnout symptoms.
4. **Complexity of Burnout**: Burnout is a complex phenomenon that encompasses emotional, physical, and cognitive dimensions. While self-care strategies may help alleviate some of the symptoms associated with burnout, they may not fully address the underlying emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced sense of accomplishment that characterize the condition. In addition, many self-care rituals tend to be limited focused, which feels good for the here and now, but they aren’t enough to combat the long-term, daily struggles of burnout.
5. **Need for Systemic Change**: Ultimately, addressing burnout requires a multifaceted approach that combines individual efforts with systemic changes in leaders, the workplace, and society at large. This may include initiatives to promote work-life balance (or what we call life-work alignment), improve organizational culture, provide adequate resources and support for employees, and address the hustle mentality.
Partner your people and your company to create the best solution to burnout. It takes both groups working together to keep burnout at bay in the long-term. For the best long-term solution to burnout, go here.
