The topic of burn-out is a recurrent subject in the news : people are over-invested in their work, thus leading to health and psychological risks in and out of their professional life. The recent demonstrations from the health services as well as the suicide of a headteacher last October shows us the global impact and anxiety that burn-out causes on a society level.
However, this rising term is not always well understood, and not even recognized as a professional disease by the occupational medicine. A common definition is that burn-out is an exhaustion due to work. Its symptoms are a physical, cognitive and emotional professional exhaustion, as well as depersonalization or cynicism and a feeling of an absence of self-actualization (INRS, 2017). The worker can feel stuck in his work, being unable to express his emotions and having suicidal thoughts to end up this situation ; even out of work, the person never stops processing his tasks and ends up being unable to achieve any task of his personal life.
Once the burn out is here, it appears that the only way of resolving it is changing the tasks and the managing frame. Collective prevention can help, by finding a new organization among the managers and staff members to raise attention to emotions and make a stronger and more self-aware collective.
But then, what about workers working independently, like freelancers or self-employed ? Indeed, the company is legally obliged to take care of its staff members, but the responsibility of a healthy work is diluted when one’s boss is oneself. With the explosion of crowdsourcing (platforms putting clients in touch with independent workers, like Uber or Deliveroo), there is an urgent need of researches around the risks of such new working manners and how to prevent them.
Casal, Dietrich and Weppe (2016), in their article about the benefits and risks of crowdsourcing, highlight the need of taking into account the deregulation that it causes, to think anew the company rules and duties as well as the institutional frames.
Bibliography :
Cazal, D., Dietrich, A. & Weppe, X. (2016). Le crowdsourcing au prisme du travail et de l’emploi : entre innovation et régression. RIMHE : Revue Interdisciplinaire Management, Homme & Entreprise, 23(4), 68-86. doi:10.3917/rimhe.023.0068.
INRS (2017). Epuisement professionnel ou burnout. Consulted on http://www.inrs.fr/risques/epuisement-burnout/ce-qu-il-faut-retenir.html
Vocabulary : occupational medicine, cynicism, self-actualization.