Say Goodbye To Burnout- How Exercise Can Help With Workplace Stress

In the USA, nearly 50 million workers spend over one-fifth of their time in office settings. Research shows that office workers have increased risks of physical inactivity compared to other professions and don’t tend to engage in exercise outside of work hours. Low levels of physical activity in the workplace have been linked to higher levels of perceived stress, which in turn lead to symptoms and experiences of burnout.

How prevalent is burnout in today’s society?

Let’s talk about burnout in the EU for a moment. Findings from a recent study in Austria reported that 44% of employees within the general population were affected by symptoms of burnout. In the UK, 51% of fulltime employees had experienced burnout in their current job. A national survey reported that 19% of the Norwegian working population reported mental exhaustion (a symptom of burnout) at least once per week. Let’s not forget that Norway was ranked for 15 years consecutively as the best country in the world to live in by the United Nations Human Development Report.    

What is burnout?

Burnout is a chronic state of job stress where employer expectations and employee workload exceed the individual’s perceived physical capacity. Burnout can be characterised by feelings of negativity towards work, emotional exhaustion, and a lack of personal accomplishment.

The global impact of burnout when looking at decreased productivity, retention, and absenteeism in the workplace totals to a loss of $300 billion annually. If we think about this on a smaller scale, how many absentees due to symptoms of burnout has there been in your workplace this month? What about this week?

Research suggests that emotional exhaustion and heightened workplace stress (symptoms of burnout) underpins the onset and likelihood of burnout. Emotional exhaustion can be described as the depletion of an individual’s emotional resources. This is typically communicated as “I feel emotionally drained from my work and have nothing left to give at the end of my workday”.  

Does physical activity help to relieve workplace stress and burnout?

According to research, yes it does! It has been reported that exercise is inversely related to the onset of psychological distress, perceived stress, and emotional exhaustion. On the contrary, participation in regular exercise has been associated with reports of positive well-being and personal accomplishment in the workplace.

A study by The University of New England determined exercise to be an effective intervention for reducing workplace burnout. In the sample used for this research, reported experiences of burnout was reduced by more than 50% after regular exercise was implemented; 37.6% was reduced to 14.9%.

Let’s talk about the effect of exercise on stress

Exercise aids as a behavioural distraction from stress evoking situations and minimises the psychological impact of a situation. Engagement in physical activity also fosters the ability to diminish sensitivity to negative stimuli often derived from the workplace. These psychological changes derived from exercise can assist in the reduction of a person’s physical sensitivity to chronic stress and burnout. Such changes could enable employees to better manage stress at work without being psychologically overwhelmed by it. This could lead to faster physical recovery after experiencing a stressful situation, and therefore reduce the risk of burnout.

Research also suggests that aerobic exercise reduces the onset of anxiety in an occupational context. These studies have proved the positive relationship between exercise and emotional well-being. Another study also looks at the positive effects of exercise and work-related fatigue and employee wellbeing.

What should I do now?

There are numerous strategies that can be implemented to prevent the occurrence of burnout. As addressed in this article, participating in regular physical activity has been proven as an effective method to prevent burnout. Alongside exercise, here are some other strategies that have been suggested by Monique Valcour from the Harvard Business Review Health and Behavioural Science department:

·      Identify early recognition of burnout and related risks.

·      Cultivate an ability to self-reflect if your personal needs are being met. This can include realigning and revaluating personal goals and expectations. Sleep is a big one (I’ll get into that in another article very soon).

·      Make sure you’ve created a professional and personal support system

• References

  Bischoff, L.L. et al. (2019) “The effect of physical activity interventions on occupational stress for Health Personnel: A Systematic Review,” International Journal of Nursing Studies, 97, pp. 94–104. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.06.002.

  Bretland, R.J. and Thorsteinsson, E.B. (2014) “Reducing workplace burnout: The relative benefits of cardiovascular and resistance exercise.” Available at: https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.659v1.

  Chu, A.H. et al. (2014) “Do workplace physical activity interventions improve mental health outcomes?,” Occupational Medicine, 64(4), pp. 235–245. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqu045.

  Hamer, M., Endrighi, R. and Poole, L. (2012) “Physical activity, stress reduction, and mood: Insight into immunological mechanisms,” Methods in Molecular Biology, pp. 89–102. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-071-7_5.

  Hamer, M., Endrighi, R. and Poole, L. (2012) “Physical activity, stress reduction, and mood: Insight into immunological mechanisms,” Methods in Molecular Biology, pp. 89–102. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-071-7_5.

  Lindberg, C.M. et al. (2018) “Effects of office workstation type on physical activity and stress,” Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 75(10), pp. 689–695. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2018-105077.

  Merom, D. et al. (2019) “Effects on exercise and fitness outcomes of workplace physical activity interventions targeting older employees: A systematic review and meta-analysis.” Available at: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.2.17006/v1.

  Stults-Kolehmainen, M.A. and Sinha, R. (2013) “The effects of stress on physical activity and exercise,” Sports Medicine, 44(1), pp. 81–121. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-013-0090-5.