Unrealistic expectations put
millennials at risk of burnout
Ambitious graduates are under immense
pressure to succeed
YESTERDAY by: Andrew Hill
Like share options, a corner office and a company car,
burnout used to be something executives had to work for years to achieve. But,
as in so many other areas, millennials are getting there sooner than their parents
did.
Dreaming of fulfilment, autonomy and progress at work,
graduates are putting themselves under immense pressure to succeed and be
content — often in junior roles that are, by definition, sometimes bound to be
dull and unrewarding. Such pressures are surfacing even during the race to
accumulate internships, increasingly a springboard to formal offers of the most
prestigious jobs in consulting, banking and accounting.
The death of Moritz Erhardt in 2013, while working as a
summer intern at Bank of America in London, prompted soul-searching among some
of these employers. Erhardt suffered an epileptic seizure. But a coroner’s
inquest found that working a long nonstop shift could have triggered the fit.
BofA and others tightened their rules about interns’ weekend
and evening working in an attempt to force them to rebalance their priorities.
A more profound adjustment is needed, though. Clearly, employers should ensure
enthusiastic would-be masters of the universe do not overdo it in their zeal to
impress. But they also need to stop promoting unrealistically lofty
expectations of what work may involve.
In 2012, Bogdan Costea of Lancaster University Management
School and colleagues analysed recruitment advertisements in The Times Top 100
Graduate Employers, an annual guide. Employers urged students to “invest in
yourself” (Herbert Smith, the law firm), “See more, be more” (Barclays) or “Be
the one who never stands still” (PwC). In a later paper, Prof Costea set
Erhardt’s tragedy in the context of this “culture of work focused intensely and
unremittingly on the self, a culture which becomes obligatory from the very
early stage of careers, so much so that internships themselves become a kind of
testing ground for the mettle of individuals”.
Pursuing a similar line of inquiry, Kira Schabram of the
University of Washington and Sally Maitlis of Oxford university interviewed
current and former workers at animal shelters for a new study in the Academy of
Management Journal. Burnout and dropout were real threats for those who saw
their work as an intense calling. For instance, these employees struggled to
cope with being forced to witness and carry out animal euthanasia (“Kittens
were being, you know, put down,” recalled one, lamenting “the sheer numbers” of
animals involved).
When I was a graduate trainee, I remember telling my parents
I would never be that colleague who seemed to work late into every night. But
youthful ambition, peer pressure and accepted work practice have a way of
shaping recruits, however much they may think they are carving their own path.
Within months, I was on a similar schedule to my colleague, driven by an urge
to get on and the sheer excitement of the new job.
You may also say that if people are more engaged with their
work, that can only be a good thing, and I agree — up to a point. For every
advertisement seeking “passionate” and “committed” employees, there are new
hires wondering why they aren’t feeling the sense of self-realisation and
contentment they signed up to.
This is a version of what new chief executives sometimes
experience when they finally reach the pinnacle of their careers. Globetrotting
consultant Ram Charan, whose latest book is The High Potential Leader, told me
such people are usually “very good at selecting what to devote their time to
and very good at saying no”. Some of these high-flyers still crack, even so,
and companies are starting to recognise the value of supporting their
high-potential managers to avoid breakdown. Johnson & Johnson surrounds its
leading executives with a team, described by Bloomberg as “like the medical
crew around an astronaut after splashdown”, that includes an executive coach
and a dietitian.
Employers should take similar care with high-potentials at
the start of their careers. Young workers are aware of stress and how to offset
it with exercise, meditation and proper sleep, according to surveys, but they,
too, should step back and consider how an all-or-nothing devotion to workplace
success can be a shortcut to ruin.
That study of animal shelter staff found that the workers
who avoided burnout tended to be those with more modest aspirations. These
realists did not put work at the centre of their identity, or treat their job
as a world-changing mission. As a result, they kept their zest for the job
alight long after others had had their spark snuffed out.
Andrew Hill is the FT’s management editor
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