Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hello there. I'm John Ryan, and you're very welcome to the latest edition of the Work Healthy podcast, where we'll be discussing the subject of burnout. Clinical psychologist Diana Pyens once said that many people she knew who complained about burnout had never actually been on fire in the first place. And while that may be true, it is a very big issue with employees across the world. And as we head into recessionary times, it'll probably become more prevalent. There are few people more qualified to talk about this subject than Professor Wilmar Schoffeli, organizational psychologist with Utrecht University in the Netherlands. And in a really fascinating interview, we discussed the definition of burnout. How many people actually cope in the wrong way with burnout, and why your personality might make it more probable that you may suffer burnout. However, I started by asking Wilmar, who's been researching the topic for 50 years and has published a seminal document in 2008, whether we have now finally solved the problem of burnout. And if not, why not?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah, well, a huge question. We now know that when we are talking about burnout, we are actually talking about different things. And that was not so clear in that paper in 2008 because. And it has also to do with the way the original concept was designed in the US and it is used in the US in the US context versus the context in Europe. And what you see that in the U.S. and this is the tradition of Bernard Research, that Bernard is something like, yeah, it's a kind of crisis that people have with their, with their work, but it not necessarily means that they are sick and that they are at home and that they have a kind of mental disorder. They just don't feel right at the job on certain dimensions. And this is the way it's still used in the US and then you get numbers of 40%, 60%, 80% of some kind of samples, they are burned out. But then you are talking mild burnout complaints. On the other hand, you have a practice in Europe, and I know a little bit in the Netherlands and I know in Sweden, where burnout is also considered a disorder that is defined in guidelines that are used by occupational physicians. And that means that people have burnout as a disorder. So severe burnout, severe burnout symptoms, that they, according to these guidelines, are on sick leave for over six months or six months or more, and that they have all kind of grave symptoms that they are not available, that are, that they have cognitive dysfunctions, etc. Etc. But then you are talking about different things and these are mixed up all the time and most of the people who have burnout complaints that either they learn to live with it. We did a study, for instance, on these complaints in occupational physicians. We followed them 10 years after Pfizer. And after 10 years, and what you see that within five years about one third sees a kind of spontaneous recovery. But still two thirds of the people still have these very high or very relatively high symptom levels.
But they are symptoms and they are not disorders. So that means that these doctors still function, they still work, but they have complaints and they feel tired and they are not feeling optimal. I think this is something very important. I came to see this as a more important thing than I saw it when it was 2008, when I wrote this paper. So I think that companies focus very much on the first part and probably they should do. They do it with questionnaires, etc. But on the second part, the more severe. We don't know so much about that. We don't know what you can do about this. Because the burnout complaints you can work with preventive measures. And this is done in companies very often. But the severe burnout is something that sometimes people think that you're talking about severe burnout. But they mean question, they mean that these are these symptoms. And then you get there is a Dutch working, what is it?
A working condition survey, an annual survey. And then they say 16% of the Dutch people has burnout complaints. And then it's in the news that 60% is burnout. And all people think that burnout is a very big problem. And these people are as they have a kind of disturbance and occupational injury or occupational disease, but it's not. They have these complaints and that's a little bit fooling the public, so to say.
[00:05:12] Speaker C: Yeah, it's confusing.
And I suppose just in that article you talk about the evolution of the definition nearly of burnout. And so now like nearly 50 years on, what is kind of the working definition of burnout?
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Well, there is this strange phenomenon that there is a parallel with, with intelligence. So nobody exactly knows what intelligence is. And then we end up by saying that, well, it's what the intelligence test is measuring. And it's the same with Bernard, whether Bernard is what the Maslow Bernard Inventory is measuring. And this is a questionnaire that has been developed in 1981 as a research instrument, not as a diagnostic tool. And it there are norms or not norms actually reference values based on non representative groups that stem from the beginning of the 1980s and they are still used. So it's A little bit of a mess there. And that's the reason why I developed with my colleagues at Leuven University, a new tool that also includes cognitive and emotional impairment. So cognitive impairment, meaning a lack of concentration, lack of memory, decision making, and all this cognitive function and emotional impairment, meaning that people feel irritable, that they are very. They burst out in kind of hostile behaviors, and they start crying when they don't want to cry. So it's a more updated definition. And what we also do is having patient samples that have been identified based on these clinical definitions of burnout that are present, for instance, in the Netherlands, but also in Sweden, you have occupational physicians that label people burnout according to these criteria and then have them fill out a questionnaire so that you know what the score is, and then you can compute a sensitive kind of cutoff score. And so this is the way we are approaching it now, which is way better than it used to be. So I would say burnout. The definition is still, it's. It's a. You can say it's a kind of mental.
Mental exhaustion, that this is the key issue of it. And then you have this impairment, cognitive and emotional, which in a way result from this mental exhaustion, because when you feel so exhausted, you're not able to manage your emotions and your cognitive processes, and there is this mental distance, that cynical attitude and being not involved and not empathic and so on. So these four issues. And I think this is a better definition, although I must say that I'm having. I'm in a kind of battle against the MBI shooting in my own foot, because I'm also. I was one of the persons, actually. I had the idea to change the original MBI that was focusing exclusively on human service professionals to make it More general in 1996, a more general questionnaire, so that burnout can also be assessed in all other kind of professions like managers and IT professionals, etc. So I did that, and now I'm saying it's the wrong measure. So, yeah, okay, But I am developing in that sense. So the ICD 11, now the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization, they included burnout in this classification system. And the interesting thing is that it is called International Classification of Diseases. But in the definition, they say, well, burnout is not a disease, but it is an occupational phenomenon. And then I ask myself, okay, when it's an occupational phenomenon, why do you list it in a list of diseases? But anyway, they do so, and then they define it in terms of the mbi. So they say, it's exhaustion, it is mental distancing, and it is lack of reduced personal accomplishment or something like that. So you see that this questionnaire is used. It's a questionnaire and it's used to define the phenomenon, which I think it's not in hindsight, it's not a sound way to, to think about these kind of phenomena.
[00:10:11] Speaker C: I'm just interested because oftentimes, you know, you look at the last 24 months and the sector of society that was under most pressure and completely overwhelmed was the healthcare systems of every country deal with COVID And in a lot of cases, sometimes consultants and doctors can actually come across as lacking a degree of empathy when oftentimes they're giving a really tough prognosis to a particular patient. I'm just wondering, you know, based on what you're saying there, could those two things go hand in hand? The sense that they're completely burnt out and overwhelmed and that leads to a sort of disattachment and this sense of sort of depersonalization and a lack of empathy.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's that lack of empathy or that depersonalization or that cynical attitude and mental distance, which is a kind of higher order concept.
That's a way of coping. That's a coping attempt. So you try to cope with a very difficult situation by when you are in a very emotionally demanding or mentally demanding situation, what you do is you withdraw yourself from that situation. It's a kind of restoring the balance in a way by keeping that distance. So when I'm getting sick and tired for my job, I try to get away from it, at least mentally, but it is not working because it's actually increasing because the patients are still there and you still have to do your job, but now you have to do it in a more detached way, which makes it even more difficult. So it's the wrong way of, of coping with stress for caregivers.
That's the old idea of detached concern. This is the professional attitude that they should have detached concern. But when people are in this process of burning out, then what they actually do is to have more, less concern and more detachment. And that's not actually what, what they should do. So it's an overreaction, it's a wrong way of coping. That is implied there.
[00:12:34] Speaker C: It's interesting because, I mean, when you talk about, let's say, engagement in a general sense, you mentioned that some people are more prone to it than others. From a personality point of view. Is that the same for burnout? Do you think some people are Prone to it?
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, There is a lot of research and some of the research is kind of trivial as well, because the strongest relation, when you talk about the big five personality traits, then the strongest relation is with neuroticism or stability.
What is it? Emotional instability, Which, I mean. Yeah, what is emotional instability? It's, it's that you are actually prone by definition to sadness, to anxiety, and also to burnout. So. But there is also research showing that it has to do with lack of optimism, lack of self esteem, lack of self efficacy. So there are, is a whole bunch of internal, or, sorry, external locus of control. So there is a whole set of personality characteristics that are related to burnout. But as usual, it's the result of a complex interaction between person and environment and that results in burnout.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: One of the things I think that's brilliant about you is that you manage to bring all the theories and the science and the like and simplify it in a way that it gets cut through and people can kind of go, I get it, I see now what you're saying and I can act on that. But does it disappoint you that it just concepts like self efficacy and optimism and the like. I mean, these can be learned and developed, but yet you don't hear very often of people doing coursework on developing those things. Why do you think that is?
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I mean, when you look at interventions for burnout, for instance, then if there are interventions, then usually they are at these individual level and they are not where I would like to have them in the organization in terms of job design or in terms of job control or whatever. Because this is more difficult. It's more easy to send people on a course for assertiveness or for self efficacy or whatever or optimism than it is to structure your job, your work processes or your management style or whatever.
But you're right. I mean, it's still not common practice to do so. But when organizations are having interventions on burnout, it is usual the individual related things and then it's about resilience or stress management. Then it is about how to acquire social support and collaboration and how to, to, well, to be more optimistic. This kind of the glass is half full or half empty, this rational emotive therapy, changing irrational beliefs of people that are burned out because they are afraid of making mistakes and they always want to do everything right, etc. So it is done. But usually it is with larger companies that are doing that. I mean, larger companies, they have a Huge staff. They have also courses in place, trainings in place, consultants that are doing their job and small and medium sized companies where more people actually are employed there it is not. So that's also the problem. In the beginning you said about, well, what do companies do? But I mean, if you have. I was also in a jury of the kind of.
It's called Crown of the Work, literally translated, it's a Dutch initiative of organizations that have a good HR policy, sustainable, etc. And what you see there is that especially let's say startups, small scale ICT or technology driven companies where young people live, where young people work, that they do these kind of things. And so it's very difficult to say about the organizations because you have small, you have huge organizations, traditional organizations, you have startups, so it's.
You have private and you have public organizations. Very difficult to say something about all organizations.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: So in terms of trying to chart a course for organizations to get better in this space and to kind of do things from an organizational point of view. It's funny, we talk about job crafting now as if it's something new, but you've been talking about it for many years.
Job design and job enrichment, I think was another term I heard.
Could you kind of talk into the importance of those things and why do you think organizations aren't dedicating more time to that?
[00:18:15] Speaker B: I think it is difficult for them to grasp how to do that.
Because when you talk to organizations, they all are, they all agree that this occupational health is a very important issue, but it's important, but it's not urgent.
So that means that they, well, they just don't do it because there is no sense of urgency. And they think, well, it is difficult to change your processes for organizations. This is my experience. Because when you want to rotate jobs or when you want to do job enrichment or this kind of classical job redesign or job design approaches, then, well, that's not so easy. We have to go to your.
You have to structure your workflow in a different way. People actually do not really know how to do that. And when there is not an urgency. So what you see is organizations when the sickness absence is 10% or more, or when people are. The good people are leaving the organizations because they don't like it anymore and they find a better alternative, then organizations start doing things, but from their own. So basically we're talking about prevention. And this is very difficult to do because prevention is always seen from the perspective of costs and not from the perspective of investment.
So that's I think the issue that people think, well, it costs money, it's out of pocket costs and it costs attention. And it's not an investment in a better future that pays off later. Although the empirical evidence suggests that there is a small. But there is a positive return on investment.
[00:20:24] Speaker C: Sorry, my apologies. But for you, if you were to identify maybe the top three things that you'd like to see organizations do differently for that idea of improving the performance of the organization because their people will be healthier and more engaged and the like, what would those three things generally be for you?
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Yeah, well, there's one more thing, if you allow me. This is the. It has to do with organizational culture. Yeah. This is that in many organizations there is a kind of.
There's not an open culture to. To talk about, to discuss problems that you have at work because people fear that it's bad for the promotion, for the reputation, etc. So what they do is they hide and they don't talk about their problems. And they are in, let's say, in progress of burning out over time, but they don't talk about. I was with an international law firm and a very interesting case, and they had young women that came from law school, excellent young women.
They started their career 25 or so, and by 35, many of them, they were either burned out or they left. And the organization said, well, what can we do? And we did interviews and it turned out to be that many of these women, they actually pretended that they had something else, although they were burnout, because they were afraid that it would harm them for their future career. And one of the things that came out as an intervention was to try to change the culture. And in order to do that, one of the senior partners stood up and was having a speech to all the people and saying that he also suffered from a burnout and blah, blah, blah, etc. Etc. So what they try to do is so management by example and giving the good example, showing the weakness and saying, okay, when you work here, it's hugely stressful, demanding work and it's a professional issue. When you burn out, that can happen to everybody, but you should address it early. And we have counsellors and psychotherapists and all kind of people in place that can help you again, and it's no problem at all to do that. So I think this very first step of recognizing it and of being open and taking away all kind of barriers to people to talk of this is one thing, but it's more about the culture. And then what I think Is autonomy is very important.
And what you see now is that many professionals, like teachers and doctors, nurses, they have to deal with all kind of protocols that their professional autonomy is increased. Although this very interesting, the general level of the workforce, education level is going up or going up, going up. And the job control is also going up. And one of the reasons, I think, is that it is very easy with the modern ICT technology to administer everything, to put everything in spreadsheets and to observe people so that you can control people. And so this, I would say, is really necessary also for workers to have much more say and much more autonomy and participation in the work process. And then the issue of collaboration, of groups, of support, of good teamwork, working together, connecting people. This is extremely important as well, I would say. And if I would you, would you say three things.
One is the autonomy. Two is the connection between people. That's very important. And the third one that is that the task and responsibilities of people should be very clear because very often this is not. And then you get all kind of role conflicts and also work home conflicts and this kind of conflicting situations are also extremely stressful for people.
[00:24:59] Speaker C: I was just interested, I mean, like, also, you know, is it a case that people now talk about it more and that's why we hear more about it, but this whole area of mental health, there seems to be like an explosion of everybody talking about it. Now the question I have is, is it new?
Are people struggling today like they've never struggled before, or is it a case that they always struggled but they're just able to talk about it now? I mean, do we have a problem now that we didn't have before, or is it just that people are okay.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: To talk about it? Yeah, yeah. Well, I am now retired and I thought, well, when I'm retired I want to write a book about this because this is a very interesting. No, but yeah, I mean, I think it's both ways. I mean, if you look at the literature in the 19th century, there was the concept of, what is it?
Neurasthenia. Neurasthenia, nervous weakness. And when you look at the descriptions, the case reports of these neurasthenic people, then it's similar to burnout. And then the reasoning was that, well, it's because of the hectic pace of life because we have telephones, telegraph, artificial lights, steam trains, and it's going all too quick, too much sensory input, and therefore our brain is not able to handle this. And we are actually exhausted by these weak nerves. And now we are saying well, we have Internet, we have social Media, we have 24, 7 economy. And there is so much information we cannot handle it and we get burnout. I mean, this is the same narrative of being overburdened by all kind of changes that are actually demanding for our mental processing. So there is a kind of continuity here. So in that sense you can also see burnout as a. As a modern affliction, as a kind of affliction of modern and modernity.
The society in the 19th century was changing from an industrial, sorry, from agricultural to an industrial society. There were all kind of different changes there. And now we are changing from an industrial to a service or a post or digital economy, which also means that, right? So there is this kind of, well, very general historical parallels. So from that perspective, you could say, well, it's nothing new, it was already there forever. But maybe there was a different name.
On the other hand, there are some true, let's say more or less objective indicators like the work intensification. People work more hours, they work more intensely than they did before.
There is more individualization so that people have to solve their problems of their own and there is no church and blah, blah, blah. So there are all kind of this kind of things that are more special for our time.
So there is also a case to make and to say, well, maybe we are now living indeed in a bit more strenuous time. But there is no ultimate answer to this question. Because what I think is playing also a role is expectations of people. People have now very high expectations. If I ask my students who is working for the money, then nobody says yes, because they are all working because they want to have nice colleagues, they want to have meaningful work, they want to contribute to society, they want to learn something from it, they want to develop themselves, which is all legitimate, of course, but when you have that high expectations, then, well, there is a huge risk of failing and a huge risk of being disillusioned. So there is also something in our collectively in the expectations we have about life and about work. And when these expectations are not met, then we feel very bad about that. So that's also something that is playing a role. So I tend to see burnout really as, at least in part as a kind of.
You should be very careful by saying that, because I made it clear before that there are some group of people who really have a kind of disorder and really function and really very, very serious problems. And you should not think very lightly about that. On the other hand, if you look at people with burnout complaints which is more, well, mind complaints about not feeling well at work, feeling a bit exhausted, but not so much that you can do. You, you work and not anymore being disgruntled and. Well, this is increasing. But probably there is also this dynamic because it's a lot in the press, people have high expectations. There are a lot of psychologists around. So that in part also the supply is actually influencing the demand and not the other way around. So there are different processes going on. It's difficult to, it's a lot of words. But what I'm actually saying is, I don't know, it works both ways.
[00:30:40] Speaker C: I'd love you to deliver that paper on that because I think it's so interesting. I mean like you talk about, you know, the church and whatever, you know, things that maybe people rebelled against and suddenly you're going to go, well, have you replaced that with anything in your life? Or is this just a life full of uncertainty and too much choice?
[00:30:59] Speaker B: Many people are now looking for meaning and they follow all kind of courses and doing meditation or sweating in a tipi or whatever they do to find any kind of meaning.
[00:31:13] Speaker C: Just turning to leadership, obviously it's such an important role in any organization. And it's funny, like the data that we're finding is that oftentimes the sickest people in the organization are actually in the C suite under massive pressure and suffering from being burnt out and the like. So I'm just interested to know when you're interacting with leadership, what are you telling them that they should be doing so that they can actually get this elusive, you know, higher performance from their organization?
[00:31:50] Speaker B: Yeah. You mean towards their leadership, towards their followers or towards the other people or for themselves, I suppose.
[00:31:57] Speaker C: Two sides to that, isn't there? You know, there's a degree of self care too and that's kind of where they are.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, of course there is the well known principle that, the Peter principle or how you call it, that people get promoted until the level that they are not performing well. And so, and what you still see in companies that people are promoted to a leadership position not because they are leaders per se, but because they are good craftspeople or they are technically good. And so in my opinion it's very often, therefore it's very often not that leaders are unwilling, but that they are not, not able to do that. They do not have the skills to address issues that they actually should address when people.
So they have to care for their people in a psychological sense in a way that the people feel well, that they are motivated that they collaborate with each other, that there are no conflicts, that they are connected together, that you have them grow and develop, etc. So it's people, it's kind of managing people and managing their mental state, including their emotion is very important for the performance. And this is not. People know how to drive performance. At least they think they know, but they feel very insecure about how to address these, the psychological aspects of their managerial role. And that's what I said. In my experience it's not so much that people actually don't know that, but they know it, but they don't know what to do about it. And that's what I said. In my experience it's not so much that people actually don't know that, but they know it, but they don't know what, what to do about it. And then you see that supervisors find it extremely difficult to have that kind of dialogue with their team. Okay, this is what the data are telling us. So what do we think about it and how can we, and what is my role in changing this? When there is the communication is not good or the tasks are not clear or, or there are conflicts in the team, there is a lot of bureaucracy, there is no work. Home balance is not working. So how can I address this as a team? This is indeed for many people is very difficult to do. And of course they have many reasons why they are not performing in that way very well because they are under pressure very hard. They have also to care for diversity, for sustainability, for they have a budget that they have to take care for. So this is coming as one of those things that they also have to do.
Some of them, they are natural talents and they do it very well.
And I developed this concept of what I've called engaging leadership, which is about inspiring, strengthening, connecting and empowering people. And when leaders are doing this, this, these kind of leadership behaviors, well then they are on the right track.
But yeah, how to get them there, that's not so we know what to do.
[00:35:43] Speaker C: It's amazing how some of the old style management techniques of power and control and kind of pressure just seem to be still the norm within. Okay, there's a couple of organizations out there where, you know, very progressive leadership. But in the main, as you said in the SMEs, in the, you know, the medium sized organizations, it seems to be the order of the day, you know, still the old way of leading.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: In The Netherlands, about 60, 70% of all people were working from home in financial services, almost 100% public administration, almost 100% and they. Well, the role of leadership completely changed. Actually, they were not so relevant anymore. And now this Covid is over. And now these workers are saying, well, some of them, they want to go back to their office, but many of them say, well, working home for three days is not that bad because I have a lot of autonomy. There is no commuting time. I'm more flexible.
I can work here without interruptions or my. My work performance is very well. And now you see the unease more or less by the leaders. They say, well, yeah, okay, it works at home, but I'd rather have them here so that I have some kind of control. So you see that. And what I think is also that this whole Covid thing was very threatening for many managers and many leaders because suddenly the whole show was run without them. Or at least they had not that important role that they thought they had before because now they were more on the distance and people were able to work from themselves. And we did some small research and also in this consultancy firm, we noticed that the problem is more that people work too much because they can always work and so forth. And especially when you have a little bit workaholic, for instance, then they work tendency is more that they work too much than they work too little. So on balance, it is actually a very good deal to work at home. But for managers and team leaders, this is a very hard thing to do. Probably also because they fear that they might. Might lose their jobs because they made redundant, because we can do without them. Yeah.
[00:38:22] Speaker C: And I'm just interested because this old.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: Idea of control and of layers of still, it dies very easily.
[00:38:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
You talk about workaholics.
Could you talk a little bit about that? Because, you know, the factors that might actually just, you know, when you say them, that people might actually kind of go, wow, maybe. Maybe that's me.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, workaholics is. This is more of a.
There is a very strong personality component here, I think, because it's a kind. It's defined as a. As a.
To work very hard in an obsessive way. So it's. It's an uncontrollable need to work excessively hard. And this uncontrollable thing is the personality to a very large extent. I mean, there are a lot of people that work excessively hard.
Managers do this, entrepreneurs do this, artists do this.
People have a conflict with their wife. They'd rather spend at their office than being at home, so. Or they want to have a second mortgage or a bigger car, so they work Very hard. But then you are not a workaholic. The defining part is this obsession and this is tied to a personality that is, let's say, has problems in delegating, is very controlling, is very perfectionist. What you also see is that people have sometimes a history like it runs in family, because there is an example of especially the father who is like that. So it's also a matter of upbringing this nagging voice in your head that's saying, well, you shouldn't stop, you should continue.
And here is a very interesting kind of mistake that's very often made because on the surface, burnout, sorry, engaged and workaholic persons seem to be similar because also engaged persons, they work very hard and they spend a lot of energy in their work and blah, blah, blah. But there is a motivational difference because the engaged people, they are intrinsically motivated and for them work is a kind of appetite. So they have an approach motivation. And with workaholics they have an avoidance motivation and they want to avoid the negative emotions that are associated with non working. So when a workaholic is not working, then he feels very bad and therefore he feels guilty, restless, jittery, etc. Nervous. And in order to avoid these negative emotions, he's working. So he's driven by his negative emotions and not by the positive emotions of being intrinsically motivated.
[00:41:36] Speaker C: Sorry, that deep insecurity.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: There are some indications that this also has to do with what in certain motivational theories is called interactive motivation. So that you have interjected a kind of norm that you should always work, that you should do your best, that you should never fail, that you should not make a mistake. And this is interjected in your head, so to speak, by your social environment. So you have interjected a norm that is so high that you can only reach this by working and working and working and not letting loose.
So there is this strong connection with personality and with the learning behavior in the. In the past. And what makes it especially difficult is that it is also a kind of rewarding because when you look at the literature, you see that people are engaged or who are workaholics, that they earn more and they make faster progress in their career.
And leaders also like their people who are workaholics, because they always work colleagues, not so much because they are a bit bossy and they never delegate and they always know it better and they want to do it themselves. It's difficult to collaborate with. But for bosses they are very, very useful, but only in the shorter run. In the longer run they have a High risk of burning out. So that's, that's a mixed blessing, so to speak.
[00:43:21] Speaker C: So the worst case is to be a burnt out workaholic.
[00:43:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That's what you very often see is that people, they have this kind of personality structure that they, they have to work and they have to work. They cannot let loose, they cannot enjoy, they cannot kind of recover or do something else. They only have to work. And that's. Well, if you do not recover, recuperate or replenish your energy, then finally we're not. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:43:54] Speaker C: And so for you, kind of coming to the conclusion of the interview, I mean, you probably have been a bit of a workaholic all your life. Have you?
[00:44:05] Speaker B: Well, I, according to my wife, According to my wife, I'm a workaholic, but according to my own logic, I'm a kind of mixed type that I engaged with. A workaholic.
Yeah, I mean, there is some, to be honest, there is also some kind of.
Yeah, some workaholic tendency, but it's not that I can also let loose completely. And when I'm on holiday or when I'm making a business trip, I have two days extra and enjoy all kind of things without feeling guilty or whatsoever. So that's true.
[00:44:41] Speaker C: But you're actually retired now from the university, are you?
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:46] Speaker C: Listen, Wilmar, thank you so much for being generous with your time today and for talking and taking through your great work, and thank you for your work because your work has been, you know, hugely instrumental in a lot of improvements in workplaces and our understanding of many of the concepts and that art you have of making the complex and scientific or whatever real and easy. It'll never be easy to implement, as you say, but we won't stop trying. And that's the, that's the main thing.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: Well, maybe you might have recognized some of the symptoms that Wilmar discussed there about burnout, and maybe you'll be able to recraft your job to try and ensure that you're not going to suffer from it in the future. Our thanks to Wilmar Schoffeli, who, as usual, brings great clarity to that subject.
So if there are any topics you'd like us to discuss on the Work Healthy Podcast, please feel free to drop me a line to johnealthyplacetowork.com and we'll do our very best to cover them. Join us for more Work Healthy podcasts coming up, where we'll be joined by Chief Diversity office with the IIA group, Deloitte's global head of. Well, being and well being, thought leader Ron Gotzel. See you soon.
