Article by Laurent Polet, Professor in Management at Ecole Centrale Supélec.
Burn-out, bore-out ou brown-out are terms that we would eventually get used to in the world of work! They characterize these symptoms of ill-being at work which today affect a growing number of workers. Why ? These anglicisms – which avoid naming suffering at work – testify above all to structural trends in the evolution of organizations. Understanding these trends helps to decipher the causes of these unwanted situations, and can help to better extricate themselves from them. Here are 3 of the most regularly mentioned.
The malaise in hyper control
The growing weight of control procedures is the first of these trends. The excessive search for performance explains the invasion of control systems in the daily life of employees. Entering data, following a procedure or completing reports are some of the essential tasks. Organizations satisfy their thirst for measuring their activities there. The executives who are confronted with it experience it as a direct limit to their space of autonomy. Initiative-taking is thus prevented in order to scrupulously respect working procedures and standardized prescriptions. When it becomes omnipresent, the weight of these constraints results in employee fatigue or obvious demotivation. Ill-being at work regularly results from these perpetual injunctions – and often paradoxical – related to control.
Conversely, the weight of procedures can also have the effect of emptying the content of the professional responsibilities of employees. Many people find themselves in a situation where they only have to apply standardized processes, sometimes including the most qualified. Managerial positions are reduced to roles of executors of pre-established procedures. Emptied of their responsibilities, the latter then feel a deep boredom. It is the bore-out caused by the lack of real stimulation of their skills and personal contributions.
The ill-being in the emergency at all costs
Through computer tools, we now have the possibility of processing an increasing amount of information in an increasingly reduced time. But this progress is not without consequences on our working rhythms. They bring out a cult of immediacy that is particularly damaging on the cognitive level. This pressure of urgency is spreading as digitization invades our workspaces. This speed becomes an obsession and a source of exhaustion for many workers.
These two trends related to the work environment – which will be amplified by the deployment of Artificial Intelligence – obviously have repercussions on psychic balance. All levels of qualification and responsibility are concerned. The pressure at the speed of processing requests amply explains the stress of employees. In addition, the latter are often forced to process information through essential digital interfaces. Which then feeds the weight of the hyper control that we described above. These two organizational phenomena therefore operate in a closed loop, to increase the risks associated with ill-being at work.
Ill-being in the management mode
At the same time, these trends reflect on the managers themselves. Obviously, they are not spared by the control systems. Carried away by the cult of urgency, they also come under the full force of pressure from their own organizations. And some managers do not resist this pressure of control or the stress associated with their responsibilities. This has repercussions on their behavior and on their management style. With effects that are transferred to their direct collaborators. This “hierarchical” spiral therefore explains the deterioration in relations between managers and their teams.
We sometimes talk about toxic management, or narcissistic perverse profiles. However, these are more widely the damage of a state of ill-being on their managers which explain the relational tensions experienced by employees. These frequently suffer from degraded interactions with their direct managers, due to the business climate. Without this excusing the excesses, some teams experience a context of unease due to their relationship with their hierarchy. It is in a way a transmission of pressure. Some managers do not know how to regulate it. They pass it on to their subordinates, lack of mastery of their function or lack of training.
Ill-being at work: analyze these 3 root causes
The words of demotivation, loss of meaning at work, even suffering at work, therefore result in part from the evils of organizations. The fashion for happiness at work is also a form of avoidance of these evils by certain companies which do not want to regulate them. In this regard, certain professional sectors are more affected by these trends. But, some corporate cultures outbid these practices and then fuel the psychological damage of discomfort that we have commented on. The question would therefore be to know how the people who suffer from these contexts can Do part of it.
In this matter, reality proves that iThere is no general rule. It is wrong to consider that the private sector would be more at risk than the associative sector. Wrong to think that large groups would be more concerned than start-ups. Nothing makes it possible “a priori” to detect whether a particular type of sector or type of society would be more prone to generating situations of unease. It is therefore necessary to take a step back to do this analytical work before making decisions to leave your employer, or to retrain! And risk reliving the same contexts elsewhere …
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