Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Beating Burnout, Via Design – Part 2

Before our holiday break, we published the first of a two-part series on beating burnout. This article is the second in that series, regarding designing to decrease the likelihood that employees feel burned out.

In the last article, we talked about the fact that burnout is bad for employee wellbeing as well as their professional performance, and that a range of factors influence whether people feel burned out, or not.

Two issues that can contribute to creating a relatively negative atmosphere, one that’s consistent with burnout, according to scientific research, were discussed in the previous article. People can feel burned out when the demands of their work are greater than their ability to do required tasks well. Workplace design that aligns with the jobs that people do (for example, that supports concentration during periods of focused work) and that streamlines cognitive refreshment makes it less likely that workers will be burned out by job demands. People are also more likely to feel burned out when they lack control over their professional experiences, and workplace design, by providing a comfortable number of workspace and ambient condition options, can make that less likely as well.

There are additional ways that workplace design can reduce the likelihood of burnout, opportunities that weren’t discussed in the prior column.

People are more likely to become burned out when they feel they are receiving insufficient reward for their efforts. Rewards can come in multiple forms, including the design of work environments, the assortment of workplace options available, etc. Working with employees to identify valued rewards is crucial – as is apportioning them appropriately. Experiencing conditions that seem unfair has also been linked to feeling burned out.

People are less likely to feel burned out when their own values seem to align with those of their employer. So, someone who is concerned about social justice-type issues will feel a value-related, burnout bashing, positive emotion when they perceive a similar concern for social justice conveyed in corporate artworks and other design options in use. Communicating corporate values via design is powerful; research consistently shows that individuals “read” physical investments made by their employers to learn what the group’s true values are. Written mission statements are easy to write/change, and messages pulled from physical environments are perceived to be franker, more powerful representations of corporate values than those texts.

Future columns will discuss additional options for combatting burnout via design and ways that design can encourage employee engagement. Design is not magic; many forces can contribute to negative employee experiences. But design can definitely create conditions that make burnout less likely to occur. The design of the physical environment is a viable way to squash burnout, boosting wellbeing and performance – all while letting employees know that the contributions they make to their employer are valued.

Sally Augustin, PhD, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com). Research Design Connections reports on research conducted by social and physical scientists that designers can apply in practice. Insights derived from recent studies are integrated with classic, still relevant findings in concise, powerful articles. Topics covered range from the cognitive, emotional, and physiological implications of sensory and other physical experiences to the alignment of culture, personality, and design, among others. Information, in everyday language, is shared in a monthly subscription newsletter, an archive of thousands of published articles, and a free daily blog. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.