Posts Tagged ‘overwhelmed’

No wonder our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents talk so longingly about how much more relaxed life seemed in their youth. A quick Internet search reveals the term burnout didn’t go mainstream until about 1980. That’s when headlines suddenly began warning that health professionals, office workers, parents, priests, ministers, teachers, perfectionists, coaches, air-traffic controllers, child stars, and holiday celebrants were in danger of incinerating. Burnout, the papers proclaimed, was pandemic. People were even burned out on talking about burnout.

Three decades later things have gotten worse. A recent survey of British human-resource execs by Capital Learning and Development finds that two-thirds are worried about their employees burning out from added responsibilities following recession-based layoffs. And the outsourcing provider found more than half those HR execs are concerned extra duties have kept employees from learning new technologies. Their skills are becoming obsolete, which could impede them from fully exploiting any economic recovery.

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