The Association Blog

What’s the cause of staff burnout? This week’s tip covers where to start looking for the answer to that question.

We talk a lot about burnout in animal welfare. Yes, the work is stressful in itself—dealing with life-or-death situations on a regular basis, dealing with animals who have been horribly treated, dealing with other humans who are often mentally, physically or emotionally exhausted as well.

How do we make sure folks don’t get to the point they’re ready to walk out?

This question was posed in last month’s roundtable, Help Your Team Thrive, and Brother Wolf Animal Rescue’s Executive Director, Leah Craig Chumbley, offered some straight talk on the topic. “You can’t just say, ‘There is burnout here, so what do we do about it moving forward?’ You have to look at how you got there—what brought your team to that point,” she says. “Yes, there are going to be hard days—but we need to pull back and look at what are we doing to create this, and how can we change things to create something different?”

To that end, Leah Craig poses an important question that organizational leadership might reflect on:

If your employees are physically or mentally or emotionally exhausted, there are things that you are doing within your organization that lead to those results. What different things could you do to lead to different results?

If this tip resonates, you’re in luck—your colleagues in the field shared a wealth of insights and strategies in The Roundtable discussion. Listen to the recording

More Tips

Tip of the Week: Lead By Example
Tip of the Week: Three Good Things
Guest Voices: A Place Where All Beings Thrive

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