Team Burnout

Project can be very long, and deeply draining. In fact, some projects never end. Teams can become stressed, fatigued, and burned out very quickly if a project manager does not recognize and take actions to help eliminate these issues as they are arising.

In an article written by an author only known at Tom at Project Management Knowledge, he lists some things a person can do when fatigue or burnout is observed. I rather enjoyed this article, and wanted to share it with you because these are techniques I would use to take action.

Tom makes the following suggestions:

• Make a list of things that are going well but still have room for improvement. Clearly identify the areas that need improving then work in those areas. This provides some variety.

• Determine what is making people feel lethargic, stressed, paralyzed, fatigued, or burned out. Tom states that sometimes just identifying these areas is enough to improve people's attitudes.

• If the previous two steps do not do the trick Tom suggests changing people's duties, or giving time off.

• Get a team member transferred.

I believe Toms last suggestion is an extreme solution because it could get someone fired. This suggestion does make sense if a person is at the end of their rope because a change in scenery or culture could bring new life to someone who in burned out.

At techreplublic.com there is an article by Debbie Young who suggests other strategies for avoiding, or mitigating burnout. These are other techniques I would use to recover from burnout.

• "Leveling overwhelming workloads." The idea is to look at the responsibilities of team members, determine if there is an unbalance in the work loads of members, and make adjustments accordingly.

• "Improve communication." When I first read this title I could not imagine how communication played a role in burnout. Young quotes Dr. Jo Ellen Moore of the Department of Computer Management and Information Systems at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville Illinois as saying, "That’s because exhausted, burned-out IT workers, according to Moore, tend to connect their exhaustion to what they perceive as poor management decisions."

This makes a lot of sense to me. Young is speaking about project managers and a technique that could be used to help them with burnout. I would add this could be applied to team members as well. By communicating with and including project team members in the decision-making process, communicating project issues, project managers and add team members, may change their attitudes towards their work environments.

Tom. (2009, January 4). Project Management Knowledge: Identifying and Dealing with Project Management Burnout. Retrieved March 3, 2010 from http://www.project-management-knowledge.com/identifying-and-dealing-with-project-management-burnout/

Young, D. (2002, November 11). Communication, workload balance keys to averting staff burnout. Retrieved March 3, 2010 from http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1057738.html