This risk factor is inherent in social impact work. Social justice or human rights workers are especially vulnerable to burnout, usually because of strong feelings of personal responsibility, chronic exposure to issues and threats most people prefer to ignore, a deep connection between work and identity, and intense emotional labour. Organizations should be proactive in creating support systems and rituals to limit the impacts associated with this type of work.

Caregiving work, such as nursing, is recognized around the world as one of the most stressful forms of work. Burnout rates are high, leading to high levels of turnover and absenteeism. Organizations in caregiving fields need to create working environments that recognize the challenges inherent in caregiving work and help mitigate the impacts on workers’ mental health.

Coping skills and emotional regulation can be taught that help people manage some of the stress inherent to caregiving and social impact work. They are core competencies for this sector, but they are not a substitute for a safe, well-resourced, and equitable environment.

Organizations need to understand the inherent dangers in social impact and caregiving work and proactively support staff well-being. If problems are identified early, steps can be taken to prevent lasting harm to individuals, organizations, and movements.

When an organization focuses on an important issue, there is often a sense of urgency in the work. Staff who are responsible for developing or delivering urgent messages that emphasize serious problems should have healthy support and recovery routines built into their workdays. Your donors or clients may only be seeing these messages a few times. Your staff is exposed to them constantly, and this chronic exposure can fuel alarm, nervousness, and stress.

It is important for leaders to create a sense of purpose and meaning for their teams. At the same time, motivating people through fear or creating a culture of chronic stress will do more harm than good. Numerous studies show that people are more creative and productive when they are not afraid, and they remember information more accurately. Teams are better-able to handle stressful situations when they have recovery periods to “reset” to a healthy baseline. If an organization has been relying on negative messaging to motivate staff, leaders should look for positive, healthy alternatives to inspire its team instead.

Even sporadic messages that come “only” once a week or once a month can create a culture where people feel a need to be on all the time. It’s a phenomenon known as intermittent reinforcement. Off-work hours are crucial periods for employees to rest and reset. If your team works asynchronous hours (i.e., not at the same time), be sure you give people explicit permission to log-off or use email scheduling tools to deliver messages at appropriate times. Try to avoid using text messages, phone calls, or other intrusive channels.

There are legitimate reasons why an employee might contacted outside of normal working hours, but if it happens often then check to see if there is a deeper problem with your systems or culture. How often does it happen? Could the issues ever wait until the next work day? Are team members given time off later to compensate for the intrusion? Are team members paid enough to be able to afford after-hours work, or are they using that time to earn extra income? If staff are expected to be “on” at all hours, they may feel a lack of control or stress that contributes to burnout.

Researchers suggest healthy teams offer 5 positive comments for each negative comment when communicating with each other. Because work may involve exposure to difficult topics, people, or experiences, organizations should devote significant attention to nurturing and maintaining positive communications habits.

Financial stress is a risk-factor for burnout. When wages are low, employees need to take on extra jobs to help cover bills — this means they have less time to recharge. When someone is a low-income earner, they often lack cash reserves for unexpected expenses — this means that relatively common challenges can lead to major stress and a need to work longer hours. Low wages also lead to high turnover, because even the most dedicated employees need basic financial security. Their departure, in turn, creates more work and stress for the staff who remain.  If you haven’t already done so, you should check the living wage for your region and ensure that all employees are compensated at or above this benchmark.

Below-market salaries contribute to feelings of financial stress, unfairness, and lack of control. They may reinforce discriminatory wage gaps, including gender or race-based discrimination. They contribute to high turnover rates, creating additional work and stress for others in the organization. They also put downward pressure on other nonprofit organizations to keep wages artificially low and to mask the problem from foundation and grant funders. These are all risk factors for burnout.

Long-term financial security is very rare for independent nonprofits, so this risk is common. When staff are worried about their personal financial security, it fuels stress and turnover. Organizations can reduce feelings of uncertainty and inefficacy by communicating a clear and deliberate path to reasonable financial stability.

Unpaid overtime is a critical issue for the nonprofit sector. It fuels turnover, burnout, and what experts call the “nonprofit starvation cycle”. You can read more the unpaid overtime problem in this Atlantic article.

Being able to offer competitive, non-discriminatory salaries to all employees is important for their financial security and sense of well-being. The more that salaries appear to be artificially low or not linked to merit, the more likely employees are to feel that the organization operates unfairly. There are many annual salary benchmarking reports available if you have never used one. Try a quick Google search for “nonprofit salary” reports and surveys and you’ll find one for your area.

Just like salaries, the process by which bonuses, raises, and benefit increases are awarded needs to be consistent and transparent. If financial rewards appear to be arbitrary or not accessible to some staff members, feelings of mistrust and unfairness may grow.

Anyone trying to execute a project without enough people, money, time, or equipment will experience stress. Over time, this takes a toll. When people feel like they are constantly under-delivering, they will start to feel inadequate or cynical. If your organization is always trying to do too much with too little, you may need to scale back. If you do have to push forward with a project that isn’t properly resourced, it’s important to talk openly about the limitations you face and set realistic expectations for the team. Be sure to recognize and celebrate the progress you are able to make, and keep an eye on morale.

Talent and passion will go a long way, but you also need enough bodies to get the work done.  If you don’t assign enough people to your projects, you are creating the perfect conditions for stress and potentially even exploitation. There may be moments when small teams have to rally together to achieve an important goal, but these should be rare. If an organization is understaffed under normal conditions, then expect high turnover, feelings of resentment, and the inability to survive a crisis or achieve a stretch goal. If an organization doesn’t have enough people to do the work it plans to do, then it has to change its plans.

Burnt out workers sometimes feel their jobs are impossible, and they are correct — no one can succeed in a poorly-designed role.

If someone’s job description is too complicated, they will never be able to fulfil all of their responsibilities. If the job description is too diverse, then they will always be yanked between mission-critical tasks. If the skillsets are too disparate, organizations will struggle to find people who can serve their roles effectively. Uncertainty and conflict are two major contributors to feelings of inefficacy and cynicism and lengthy, complicated job descriptions lead to both.

Job descriptions should provide staff with clarity, focus, and motivation. They should also create a sense of narrative consistency that gives workers a sense of purpose and accomplishment.

Competence matters. Even talented people struggle when they are not in the right role. Organizations should hire and promote people with the skills to succeed in their roles. They should provide training and support. Organizations should not hire people just because they are willing to accept a low salary or have relationships with staff or donors. Funders should allow adequate time for organizations to staff-up on new projects.

A skilled person in the right role will struggle with feelings of exhaustion, inadequacy, or cynicism if they are expected to achieve project goals without enough time. Organizations that push for results too quickly end up aiming too low to create meaningful change, celebrating mediocrity, or burning out their team and having to start all over again. Organizations should set project timelines that reflect the amount of time required to complete work properly and equitably. Funders should support realistic project timelines.

There are a lot of reasons people might not be able to access the information they need to do their work. If there are operational issues, like lack of cloud storage, organizations should invest in administrative tools to solve the problem. Within an organization, information is often power. If information doesn’t flow freely within an organization, then leadership needs to work to create a culture of transparency and openness. If an organization is chronically unable to find the time to share information with employees they need to perform their work, it is also a sign that the workload is too high. In extreme cases, withholding of information can be a form of harassment.

Outdated tools make work harder than it needs to be and take more time than it should. Nonprofit organizations are often pressured to use secondhand or outdated tools, but this is sometimes “penny smart and pound foolish”. If you’re spending a lot of time fixing and repairing equipment, working around the quirks and bugs of outdated tools, or find that the act of doing the work is harder than the work itself, it is time to take a look at the tools you use.

Long hours lead to physical exhaustion, but the lack of control that comes from being unable to set a reasonable schedule also takes a mental toll on workers. To prevent chronic exhaustion, people need to have input on their own hours.

One of the most important ways organizations can ensure staff feel engaged and empowered in their work is to respect their input on responsibilities and workloads. Often, the people doing the work know more about what is required than managers know, so their experience should be included in decision-making.

People are motivated by a sense of progress. When a project ends, it is important to reflect back on the experience, learn from it, and then incorporate lessons into future projects. This review should be done as a group, so that the entire team works from the same “lessons learned”. Reviews also give members of the team an opportunity to recommend changes to address workload, communications, or equity issues.

When the same problems persist from project to project, staff start to feel like things will never change. This feeling is the root of cynicism and frustration. When organizations continually improve from one project to the next, they demonstrate a commitment to continual learning and growth. These attitudes help to retain and motivate talented people.

It is always a bad practice to criticize or penalize employees for things that happen (or don’t happen) outside of their control. It is especially important in caregiving and nonprofit environments where staff already feel a great sense of responsibility. When people are held accountable for situations beyond their control, it often leads to cynicism or feelings of inadequacy. It also creates a culture of unfairness, which will fuel cynicism even more.

When funders do not represent the community or an organization’s constituents, there is an increased risk that funding practices, donor relationships, and/or program design will fail to meet the community’s needs. When an organization finds itself in this situation, it should ensure that its priorities and programs are being determine by constituents’ needs (as explicitly stated and requested by them).

When leadership does not represent an organization’s community or its constituents, there is an significant risk that its strategy, operations, and communications will fail to meet constituents’ needs. When an organization finds itself in this situation, it should create ways for the community to set priorities and provide feedback on programs, and it should develop a succession plan for recruiting and supporting the next generation of leaders.

Hiring practices are an important part of an organization’s culture. They also have a profound impact on what it will do and how it will operate in the future. Most organizations recruit new staff members more frequently than leaders or board members, so the hiring process is a good indicator of an organization’s commitment to representation.

There is a reason every team sport broadcast begins with the player lineup. People understand the strategy better when they know what players are on the team. People perform better when they understand how their role fits into a larger strategy. An organizational chart is no different. It’s a visual representation of an organization’s team, showing how different roles fit together and creating a sense of “us” so that people can collaborate effectively.

When people feel like promotions are reserved for a specific “type” of person or that they are excluded from growth opportunities, they will disengage from the work. To maintain a healthy culture, organizations need to offer equal opportunities and fairness to everyone on the team.

Caregiving and social change work is challenging enough. If some employees are compensated more generously than others, a sense of unfairness will take root, increasing cynicism and the risk of burnout.

This kind of communications leadership isn’t easy or mandatory, but it goes a long way to helping employees feel seen and understand how their work contributes to a bigger picture. Not everyone will read an organization chart or a strategic plan and immediately understand how their day-to-day work contributes to the vision. Leaders can connect the dots so that each individual understands their value and so that other members of the team value and respect others’ contributions.

When recognition and appreciation are given to some staff and withheld from others, cynicism will breed quickly. It’s easy for someone to wonder “Why bother?” when their contributions aren’t recognized, especially if they are already working long hours, or doing stressful work, or earning low pay. Organizations need to recognize effort as well as performance, since caregiving and social change work don’t always produce feel-good and lucrative outcomes.

Leadership in the social impact world is often about ensuring people’s efforts translate into something meaningful. When organizations have a clear purpose and constantly connect the big dream to day-to-day work, they demonstrate that persistence and hard work are worth it. When organizations can’t articulate a clear purpose, when that purpose changes constantly, or when it gets lost in daily tasks, people start to disconnect from the work. Disconnection and alienation are early risk factors for burn out.

When priorities are constantly changing, staff inevitably start to feel like their efforts don’t matter. They will wait before acting, to see if priorities shift again. They will withhold creativity and energy. They will see time and resources wasted and feel frustrated. All of these attitudes are precursors to burnout. If your organization’s priorities legitimately need to change often, make sure the reasons for the change are communicated to everyone involved.

If managers don’t have enough resources to do their jobs, it’s unlikely that their teams will either. Staff who don’t have the instruction, training, and feedback they need to do their jobs don’t stand a chance of succeeding. You can usually spot “busy-ness” and time constraints long before symptoms of frustration or alienation set in.

If employees are working on public holidays, it means they aren’t celebrating with friends and family. They are not able to participate in common social rituals. They are not recharging. These are all risk factors for burnout. If your organization does work that absolutely must be done on a public holiday, make sure staff have time and encouragement to connect with their communities in other ways.

Vacation isn’t just a legal requirement. Vacation time is important for ensuring staff get enough rest. It is also crucial time for people to connect with friends and family, to spend time outside, to engage in play and other pleasurable activities. If your organization is operating in a way that makes it impossible for staff to take any time off, it’s a sign that you have systemic operations problems.

Most labour laws require breaks in the workday for a reason. They give people a chance to reset, eat, run errands, and move around. If your team members aren’t taking any breaks during the day, check for other burnout risks like workload issues and stress.

Movement and a healthy diet are important parts of physical health. Lunch breaks are simple ways an organization can reinforce the importance of rest, health, and social connection. If people are chronically working through lunch or don’t have time to eat, look to see if there are other burnout risks such as long hours or chronic pressure.

Physical exhaustion is a risk factor for burnout. Any job that requires repetitive movements or long periods of inactivity increases people’s risk of health problems. If these are common in an organization, care should be taken to provide the right equipment and to find opportunities for movement.

Physical exhaustion and strain are risk factors for burnout. If the environment people are working in is demanding, then programs should be in place to ensure staff have time to recover and protect their physical health.

Physical exhaustion is a risk factor for burnout. When an organization’s work is demanding, they should have programs in place to help staff recover, rest, and remain healthy.

Shift-work is unavoidable in some workplaces, but it is a risk factor for burnout. Shift work often contributes to loss of sleep and physical exhaustion. It also makes social engagement outside of work difficult, contributing to feelings of isolation. If an organization relies on shift-work, it should bolster other health, safety, and well-being programs to help staff stay healthy and connected.

Chronic stress is a key contributor to burnout. The “chronic” part is important, because it means that people don’t feel any relief or break from stressful situations. In order to balance the normal stress of social impact work, people need to have frequent breaks to reset.

Chronic stress is a key contributor to burnout. The “chronic” part is important, because it means that people don’t feel any relief or break from stressful situations. In order to balance the normal stress of social impact work, people need to have frequent breaks to reset.

Chronic stress is a key contributor to burnout. The “chronic” part is important, because it means that people don’t feel any relief or break from stressful situations. In order to balance the normal stress of social impact work, people need to have frequent breaks to reset. When hours exceed normal the normal work-week, organizations also increase the risk of workers being tired and experiencing conflict with their social and family needs.

Overtime pay is great, but it can’t buy people time with friends and family. It can’t buy them sleep. And it can’t buy them relief from work stresses. If an organization can’t afford to give people lieu time after working long hours, it’s a sign that workloads are too great, projects are poorly planned, and/or the organization doesn’t have the resources it needs to do its work effectively. These are all burnout risk factors.