Can burnout, will burnout?
While the causes of burnout are a mesh of different stress vectors, to understand newer likely causes of burnout employers must comprehend how the expectations placed on their engineer workforce have intensified since Covid – and will probably continue to do so. This pushes engineers toward a larger risk of burnout becoming accepted as yet another post-pandemic ‘new normal’.
“Engineers, particularly experienced ones, are increasingly expected to have a broader skillset and adapt to rapidly changing technologies and project demands,” says Dr Jo-Anne Tait, principal lecturer, School of Engineering, Robert Gordon University. “The rapid pace of advancing technology means engineers are having to get to grips with new tools – AI or otherwise – and evolving ways of working.”
Tait adds: “[They are] often being expected to lead from the front by non-engineering senior management. I imagine that this expectation to be the eternal ‘expert in the room’ just adds more pressure.”
Heightened expectations of what engineers will ‘deliver’ has arisen in line with developments in technology that were accelerated by the response to Covid. Engineers in 2024 have to maintain a wider range of practitioner skills and competences than they would have needed in 2014, for instance.
Furthermore, their leading role often requires them to come up with innovative solutions to the challenges each successive project brings. This can mean they must regularly upgrade their professional competences in order to get a project completed as required.
Causes and effects
With a swathe of new technologies entering engineering practice, and completion deadlines being made tighter as organisations are wanting shorter time-to-value, engineers’ customary ‘can do/will do’ professionalism is, across an axis of complexity and scale, being painfully overstretched.
“The sense of problems being just too big to handle is naturally another key factor in burnout,” according to Brian Dow, chief executive of Mental Health UK. “With global challenges around issues such as climate change, AI, population change and migration, economies will need to make seismic shifts to prepare for their impacts. The prospect of these factors together is a potent cause of anxiety.”
There is also a growing awareness of the implications of burnout from an organisational perspective. Employees stricken by debilitating burnout might be inclined to give up and step away from their current roles, and even leave engineering altogether. Naturally, this is bad news for companies in the engineering sector that are already struggling with skills shortages and constrained resources.
While there may be multiple causal factors behind instances of burnout, three seem to feature through surveys and studies of the condition: workload management; economic uncertainty; and occupational isolation – feelings of being detached from project teams and colleague interaction.
Skills shortages have long been pervasive across engineering and technology disciplines, says Paul Gibbens, director of engineering at Hays, and show few signs of improvement. “As a result, many existing engineers are feeling the pressure of increased workloads. Plus, due to the demanding nature of the role, it’s very important for engineers to have a strong team around them while working on projects.”
Projects are increasingly complex, requiring more interdisciplinary working, agrees Tait: “Collaboration across fields isn’t always easy. If non-engineering colleagues dismiss an engineering concern out-of-hand, it can be a source of stress that they are not being heard.”
Tait adds: “While it’s important that people on a project have an understanding of the wider context they are working in, this can be seen as a distraction to the engineering activity they have worked so hard to be qualified to do.”
“Due to current skill shortages in engineering, some engineers are taking on extra tasks and covering for gaps,” reports Gibbens, “which increases the risk of overworking.”
An additional stressor for an engineer may be being required to make informed decisions that go beyond a specific engineering challenge, explains Tait, and applying emotional intelligence in approaching complex problems, actively listening to and influencing stakeholders, and using enhanced adaptive leadership skills.
“This is not to say engineers are unable to do these things,” she emphasises. “[It is] more that this is not necessarily what they signed up to do when joining a company as an engineer.”
Today’s inflationary economic climate also feeds concerns that fan feelings of burnout. As rising prices hit household budgets, 38% of respondents to Mental Health UK’s Burnout report say they have experienced stress due to taking on additional paid work because of the cost-of-living crisis.
At least they are receiving some recompense for their lost leisure time. Working more for no extra remuneration is a different matter. When asked about the additional factors that have caused them stress and may have contributed to burnout in the past year, the majority of adult workers agreed that ‘a high or increased workload or volume of tasks at work – unpaid’ (54%) and ‘regularly working unpaid overtime beyond contracted hours’ (45%) were contributory factors.
