Burnout at work? It is a device that increases mental well-being in the organization

The war in the North and the South and the never-ending rounds of reserves only reinforced what we have learned since October 7 about the difficult and almost impossible return to the workplace in a state of mental exhaustion, either after returning from the battlefield or as a result of dealing with the difficult security situation.

There is a lot of talk about dedicated recovery programs to prevent burnout among male and female workers during the war and the importance of psychological assistance and support for workers, and a new international standard, adopted in Israel, but not yet sufficiently implemented in the labor market, may provide a more effective and long-term solution.

In 2021, the international standard ISO 45003 – Occupational Safety and Health Management came into effect, and it has been implemented in recent months also in Israel through the Israeli Standards Institute. The standard defines the steps to prevent unusual stressors at work and the actions to improve aspects of the employee’s experience as part of the primary goals of organization managers.

“The new standard created a serious earthquake all over the world,” explains Dr Iran Diamant an expert occupational psychologist, who serves as the head of the committee for dealing with stress and burnout at the National Council for Employee Health, the head of the professional committee accompanying the adoption of the standard at the Standards Institute and the head of the occupational psychology major at the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College.

“This is the first time there is a standard that refers to the mental experience of the employees. Most standards relate more to physical or bureaucratic aspects of work management. Here the emphasis is on the emotional experience of the employees and this is a major breakthrough”.

In Israel, Dr. Diamant explains, the standard was adopted at lightning speed. “We convened a professional committee that dealt with the whole issue of translating and adapting the standard to Israel, and now it is in Israel and there is no better time than this – although it is not yet activated in all organizations.”

A sense of loss of meaning

Burnout at work is much more than what we think. Congestion, long working hours, continuous availability, time pressure, multiple tasks at the same time, uncertainty – these are occupational risk factors that most of us are exposed to.

Such continuous exposure may create for some of us symptoms of burnout, which is a spiral of resource depletion defined by the International Health Organization as a morbidity syndrome that has many forms of expression, whether physical or alienation from the workplace and a decrease in the sense of value.

How serious is the phenomenon in Israel in terms of crises? From surveys carried out in Israel on a wide sectoral scale, it was found that 49% of salaried employees suffer from burnout at a high level.

Although this estimate is similar to the estimates obtained in surveys in various European countries, the surveys carried out during the war months showed a significant increase in the level of occupational burnout experienced by workers.

This burnout includes a feeling of loss of strength, lack of resources, the feeling of ‘everything is futile’ and a loss of meaning. Global studies that examined reactions of the world of work after catastrophic and traumatic events, such as war, ongoing terrorism, epidemics and natural disasters, found that in the years following these events there is a significant increase in the extent of burnout and its health, mental and economic damages.

How much did the mental burnout index of the workers in Israel rise in the past year?
“Extremely, and not surprisingly. These are some of the mental and emotional reactions we all feel. This thing has been greatly strengthened in Israel since the beginning of the war, and we examine each organization independently. This is actually the correct way of working with the current standard: we check what an organization in a specific country and in a specific sector is experiencing, and adjust the tools accordingly.”

Dr. Diamant adds that the adaptation of the standard to the Israeli reality emphasizes aspects that do not always exist in Europe, although the standard as a whole pushes organizations to treat employees in a slightly different way. “It’s a big transformation, that we are leading in complex assimilation. Why complex? Because organizations, and in particular large organizations, take time to implement a change of attitude.”

This surprises me, because in recent years more and more large organizations are talking about the “well being culture” and holistic thinking. It’s even a trend.
“It does not exist in all organizations, and even those who did significant work on the subject did not always do it accurately. Studies published in recent years show that much of what is done in the wellness culture does not necessarily produce the results that the organization and its employees need. They bring lectures, workshops and training days, but when these things are not accurate for the employees themselves and the organizational problems in the workplace – there are no results.”

The new standard gives a certain Torah, she explains. “There are certain tools that need to be followed in order to make a suitable plan. For example, it is very important to do an organizational measurement, to understand the risk factors that create attrition in the organization, and according to these results to correct, and not to order a workshop, however good it may be, that is not relevant to the employees.

“The standard emphasizes the importance of the organizational diagnosis,” adds Dr. Diamant, “it basically says that you don’t start a program before you understand what the story of your organization is. There is an organization where time pressure is a major factor. There is another organization where lack of promotion at work, which is meaningless, is the main factor.”

“Each organization has different conditions and a different way of working, that’s why it’s important to diagnose the organization through an accurate survey, which refers to all the aspects that the standard talks about. Not a satisfaction survey that makes a “V” and moves on, we do an in-depth survey that is the basis through which we understand where the problem is and what is needed to be precise”.

Emotional boot for employees

So how do you do it in practice? The person who creates the connection with the organizations and helps them in assimilating the rules of the standard is Dr Dvir Pelegreviewer from the Standards Institute. Peleg testifies that the standard is intended for human resource managers as a significant organizational tool to assist in all issues of employee integrity, well-being, etc. The activity takes place below the surface and is accompanied, among other things, in cooperation with the Anush association.

“I want to go ahead and say that at this stage the standard is voluntary. This means that in fact an organization decides whether it wants it or not. To the extent that the organization decides that it is interested in it, it first of all sets a policy, training the managers and defining the psychosocial risks that they wish to reduce,” continues Dr. Peleg and says that after October 7, work was done in certain organizations, but mainly in the health system.

“The natural challenge is obviously the health system which is experiencing a lot of pressure and the awareness of this is very high. In the hospitals and health funds, for that matter, very significant work is done on the mental health of the employee. Unfortunately, in many government offices that I survey, they talk about integrating the standard, but the system is not yet ready for that, which is a shame.”

This does not surprise anyone, but in Israel, as mentioned, there is no regulatory obligation for organizations to meet the requirements of the standard. However, there are a number of organizations that, following the war, use the standard to meet the criteria for creating optimal conditions for employees, mainly in the areas of health and security.

“I hope there will be a regulatory requirement in this matter,” says Dr. Peleg. “In Britain, for example, in organizations that employ contractor workers, there is a regulation according to which they are required to carry out an emotional ‘reboot’ for their employees in order to make sure that they do not suffer from various hardships, such as abuse, violence, coercion, employee mobility, etc. The organizations in the UK use the global standard to meet the requirements of the law In Israel there is another way to do it.”

If the standard is so effective, how do you explain the fact that organizations still need to be convinced to adopt it?
Dr. Diamant: “It is very heterogeneous. There are organizations whose door is already open to this. Those who are aware of the importance of wellness and quality of life and perceive themselves as organizations that work in this direction – then the door is wide open and we are only correcting their actions.”

“There are organizations that are not in the right direction at all. I sometimes have conversations with managers who say, ‘Leave me alone, I am responsible for livelihood, safety conditions, and for the employee to have the necessary equipment, and his mental experience is not my problem. If he has a problem, he should contact a psychologist.’ We need to do more thorough work so that they understand the holistic approach, that there is no separation between the aspects.”

The way to convince organizations that oppose change may be through legislation. “There are organizations that oppose, and there are organizations that need a little convincing. One of the important things to say to organizations that object is that there are also legal aspects to this,” says Dr. Diamant.

“Since burnout is currently defined as a sickness syndrome, the employee may sue his organization for working conditions that caused him to burn out, which caused sickness. In Israel it is not yet quite settled, but in Europe it is already happening. In the Netherlands, you can get a 30-day sick leave for burnout. If not adopt the standard, the organizations may not be legally protected in the future.”

The results, Dr. Peleg explains, can already be seen in the field. “I’ll give you an example from a London organization I covered: after a period of working under this standard, we first saw the awareness among the employees who know how it works and what needs to be done.”

“In a certain organization where there was an intervention program, we found no change in attrition in the first year,” adds Dr. Diamant, “but we definitely found a change in the employee’s perception regarding the organization that works for his mental well-being.”

“This is when before the intervention and implementation of the program, the employees claimed that the organization was blind to the issue of their mental well-being. From our point of view, this is a great achievement, even though the burnout itself has not improved. Sometimes it requires longer processes.”

“What is most important to me these days, and certainly in Israel,” concludes Dr. Peleg, “is not to deal only with stress and burnout, but also with a significant episode that until a year ago we thought was small: the employee’s return to work after a long period.”

“It has already happened that in a certain institution an employee was called to the VP of Human Resources, after serving 145 days in the reserves, and was told that he did not ‘stand out’ in the last six months. This is a blindness that creates enormous frustration in the employee, if not more. Using the standard can benefit the employee’s well-being , and ultimately also for the well-being of the organization itself.”