There is a lot of discussion in the press about burnout, especially as it relates to the workplace and remote work. Much of the cause of this seemingly national outbreak of burnout is attributed to the ongoing effects of the COVID pandemic.
Somewhat surprisingly, workplace-related burnout is not a pervasive issue among the 18 credit professionals participating in the survey. There were 16 department heads and one credit analyst and one collection manager that took the survey. As the following graphic indicates, a majority (61%) reported burnout is not an issue and only 22% said it was a major problem.
Question: What is causing your burnout?
For the 39% that are dealing with some level of burnout, much of the problem stems from understaffing and the difficulty in finding qualified replacements, though working remotely also gets a few mentions. Here are the reasons given by those that are suffering burnout:
- It is not a minor problem and if there was just one cause it would be an easier fix. I manage several areas within the company so this is not just related to credit. Covid is a very large factor, which exacerbates the real issues: inability to hire qualified people, the work ethic of the younger generation, and inefficient and cumbersome computer systems, which waste employee time. Management is relying on great performers, giving them more work than they can handle. However, I will say in a way Covid has been a good thing as we have had to raise salaries to find workers.
- Not so much burnout; people are leaving for better pay or we can't find people to work at all.
- Working in 2 positions instead of my primary position.
- We have fewer human resources in credit & collections, resulting in an imbalance of work/life more than ever before. Plus, our company continues to go back and forth between in-office vs work from home.
- Work-from-home options. Competitive wages elsewhere.
- Working from home.
- There is not enough staff to cover the workload. We had this issue before the Pandemic and it continues to get worse. In 2020, management laid off a few in the Credit Department. This put us further behind. The Credit Department needs to always come in last.
The size of the survey participants' credit, collections, and AR organizations ranged from 1 to 25 staffers with the average number of employees being 6.4, with only two being one-person departments. When asked to assess how their coworkers were doing, the 16 survey respondents with multi-person staff painted a very similar picture compared to their assessment of their condition vis a vis burnout, but with one caveat. While 38% reported burnout among their co-workers being either a major or minor issue, as compared to 39% when assessing their condition, half indicated that burnout depended on the person. That makes a lot of sense because everybody brings to the job their own set of circumstances.
The good news is that for the most part working conditions are not deteriorating, and a significant number of survey participants are seeing improvement. Also, credit professionals are used to working under stressful conditions, so maybe it should come as no surprise that they are adapting so well to these transient times.
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