Psychologist magazine posted in August the farewell speech of Wilmar Schaufeli as Professor of Occupational and Organizational Psychology at Utrecht University. The 67-year-old, in my opinion, international frontrunner when it comes to research on burnout thus concludes his academic career.
What is striking are his next words, "There has been a waste race going on for years. There is a strong shift from physical to mental strain. Customer-oriented work is being demanded of more and more employees. Employees are also faced with cutbacks and flexibilization. Job advertisements increasingly emphasize the importance of social skills; being able to express yourself well, working in a team, and being able to take setbacks."
Only these are not Schaufeli's recent words, but words from his oration that the Volkskrant headlined on its front page 25 years ago.
Reading this, not much seems to have changed over the past few years. So what we call "burnout" has been around for a long time. Only now it is hyped. Schaufeli actually says as much in so many words. Thus, as a counterpoint to what is happening in the media often asserted, exposes the nuance that in principle there are no burnout epidemic prevails. While there is an upward trend in burnout symptoms among employees, this says nothing about the actual number of burnout cases.
Relative to other European countries, we are doing in the Netherlands not even bad. On average, 1 in 16 workers regularly feel exhausted at the end of the workday, compared with 1 in 10 in Europe on average. In addition, more than 18 percent of the Dutch labor force to be inspired against a European average of 11 percent.
