From Where I Stand — “Burnout occurs when you avoid being human for too long.”
Michael Gungor
The word on everyone’s lips this year is “burnout.” ILCA has had in-person committee meetings for months and the most frequent topic of conversation isn’t covid or supply chain shortages or labor issues or weather — it’s burnout. Landscape workers, at all levels, are just exhausted. The impact of client demands, labor challenges, soaring sales, and a chronic, seemingly endless pandemic have brought down even the most motivated and chipper of employees. We need to ask if burnout is avoidable or inevitable. Is burnout simply the result of choosing an industry that compresses its workload into eight breakneck months? We all know landscaping is not for the weak, but in late June, even the toughest struggle to pop out of bed when that alarm clocks says 5:00 am. This column will examine what burnout is, how it can destroy productivity, and finally, how it can be tamed. First, what is burnout? One would think the concept of burnout would trace itself back to when Edison invented the lightbulb. In reality, the term is less than 50 years old. It was first found in a book by Herbert Freudenberger entitled Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement. Freudenburger succinctly described burnout as, “The extinction of motivation... especially where one’s devotion to a cause fails to produce the desired result.” In other words, our incentive to work diminishes when the results of our work fail to please us. That really nails it. That moves beyond simply being tired which is a common feeling on Friday after a 60-70 hour workweek or three-months in the grinder. Burnout can occur on a Monday morning. It can occur on a Thursday night. It is the palpable feeling that what we are doing is not worth the cost of doing it. The author goes on to identify three main characteristics that manifest with prolonged job stress: exhaustion, cynicism, and finally a feeling of reduced professional ability. No one would watch a landscape company work and be shocked if the employees said they felt exhausted. The work is physically demanding. The days and hours are long. There are long drives and traffic jams. Landscapers are dependent on a supply chain, subs, permitting officials, and each other just to complete a day’s work. The weather is unforgiving. People eat and sleep and drink like crap. Personal relationships suffer. And I haven’t even mentioned clients yet. The stress that comes from exhaustion and the exhaustion that comes from stress are both intertwined and inevitable. The landscape season is grueling and unforgiving and stress begins to build up in the body like plaque deposits in our arteries. This exhaustive stress leads to step two towards professional burnout; cynicism. As stress levels grow, we begin to take a harsher, colder attitude to our jobs, clients, and professional responsibility. Our elevated stress makes us misinterpret normal interactions through a negative prism. If a client makes a demand that three months ago would be brushed off as normal, it is now widened to be, “clients are changing” or “it didn’t use to be this way.” A mistake by a younger coworker is chalked up to millennial
laziness and entitlement. Oversight by field staff makes us doubt their ability and acumen. Problems with a supplier means they don’t care about you as a customer anymore. We go wide with everything and start every assumption off on the negative. We also conclude that everything has changed and it will never go back to the way it was. Our jobs and industry have eternally changed for the worse. This is all a result of failing to check our stress levels. Once we create our blast radius of cynicism, we enter the final stage — feelings of reduced professional ability. The stress started within, was sent outward, and has now looped back around to be internalized once more. Doubt in our acumen does not mean we forget how to design, build, sell, or negotiate. It means we don’t know if we can cut it anymore in an industry that we have concluded has changed for the worse. We wonder that if clients and coworkers and vendors and the industry’s culture have changed, if we even fit in anymore? If the grass is greener somewhere else. Some employees actually quit and leave. Others stare at ceilings fantasizing about getting out for good. Of course, the feeling of being trapped in a job we are no longer good at is a depressing and terrifying prospect. Most of us lack the stupidity/courage to actually leave, so we just sit and internalize our struggles. The burnout has become a perpetual motion machine — stress has arced to create more stress. So, now that we know why and how we burnout, what can we do to actually avoid it happening. Pulling out of the death spiral is easier at some points than at others. The simplest way to avoid eventual burnout is to avoid stress in the first place. I mean, that’s simple enough, right? Just don’t have stress during a 75-hour workweek filled with labor, client, and personal demands. Stress in the landscape industry is not going to be eliminated, but it can be managed. In an industry that is always racing the clock, salvation lies with slowing down. The worst part of anyone’s day is that feeling of a truckload of work beginning to pile up. This usually happens about 20 minutes after morning coffee and pleasantries are exchanged. All of a sudden the calls, texts, emails, and questions come bursting through the door. The next 8-15 hours are critical... but not every one of those hours is the same. The most stressed out people I know are the ones who never stop working out of fear that stopping working will lead to more stress. This mindset is as illogical as it is common. It would be like a person trying to avoid a hangover by drinking more. Eventually, we all need to stop and the stress cascades down like Niagara Falls. Thinking we can outrun and outwork stress is the wrong way to handle it. Instead, the trick is breaking our day into smaller, more manageable chunks. Let’s say a 12-hour day awaits. The sheer thought of a meandering, overloaded, and triple-booked day is enough to get anyone stressed out before 6:00 am. Instead, break that 12 hours into four- or three-hour chunks. In each segment, formally schedule time to externally communicate with clients, externally communicate with coworkers, internally work on short or long range
The Burnouts
The Landscape Contractor September 2021
5
