Addressing Burnout Across Multiple Levels: The Person, the Work, and the Organization

The Perspective of an Organizational Psychologist

When the acceleration of work demands no longer allows the psyche to process information, let alone make sense of it, particularly in environments driven by urgency and structured around competition, an imbalance and a loss of synchronization emerge. At that point, the body, treated as a machine that must be constantly optimized, eventually overheats, with the risk of breaking down or going off course (Rosa, 2023).

At a certain moment, which is predictable yet always experienced as unexpected, one simply cannot go on. A radical and painful deceleration sets in, sometimes to the point of creating the impression that time itself has come to a standstill. The living connection with oneself and with the world is lost. Everything continues to accelerate around the individual, but it is no longer possible to keep pace (Rosa, 2018, 2023).
 
Burnout, however, is not inevitable. Evidence shows that it can be reduced, but only if we intervene intentionally (Panagioti et al., 2017).

As an organizational psychologist, I approach burnout not only as a personal experience but also as an organizational phenomenon, resulting from the interaction of three levels of reality:
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• The person, with their unique qualities, current motivations, memories of their past, and visions of their future;
• Their professional role, with its associated responsibilities and expectations;
• The organization within which the person enacts that role, including its culture, processes, constraints, and managerial practices.

I pay particular attention to the impact of organizational factors on both personal and collective experience, as these can significantly increase the risk of burnout.

A Systemic Approach to Burnout

A recent systematic review (Panagioti et al., 2017) evaluated the impact of controlled interventions aimed at reducing burnout among physicians, a population in which burnout is widespread and threatens both caregiver well-being and patient safety.

The key findings are as follows: interventions fall into two categories, those focused on the individual (such as meditation practices, development and training of communication skills, etc.) and those focused on the organization (such as schedule changes, redefinition of teamwork, etc.).

Both approaches demonstrated positive effects, but organizational interventions led to larger and more sustained reductions in burnout. In conclusion, the evidence supports a dual strategy: strengthening individual coping capacities while rethinking the systemic conditions of professional practice (in this case, medical practice).

The results of this meta-analysis support the idea that burnout is an issue affecting the organization as a whole rather than isolated individuals, and that priority should be given to fostering healthier relationships between individuals and organizations.

Unfortunately, experience still shows that interventions aimed at reducing stress and preventing burnout rarely combine both individual and organizational measures. Most often, they are limited to individual-focused strategies delivered through so-called “health programs.”

Six Key Factors for Intervening Against Burnout

In both my individual coaching practice and my work with leadership teams in organizations facing burnout, six key areas, drawn from the work of Leiter and Maslach (2004), serve as reference points:

• Workload: When an imbalance between job demands and available resources persists over time, typically for several months, and without sufficient recovery, stress can become chronic. This prolonged strain exhausts adaptive capacities and can damage psychological health, potentially leading to burnout. Prolonged exposure to high job demands combined with low work resources may even constitute the primary trigger of burnout (Demerouti, 2024).

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• Control: A lack of control over one’s work, its organization, and the decisions that affect it and their consequences, in other words a deficit of autonomy in one’s professional role, fuels frustration and feelings of powerlessness. Over time, this can lead to demotivation, loss of energy, and even sadness when personal investment in a cause repeatedly fails to yield the expected results.​

 

• Recognition: When an imbalance between effort and reward, both financial and symbolic, sets in and persists, it can generate feelings of injustice, devaluation, resentment, and discouragement. Gradually, this leads to professional disengagement, mistrust toward the organization, and over time can erode the very meaning of work.

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• Social Relationships: When competition outweighs collaboration and mutual support—especially in a climate of constant urgency, and even more so when threat, whether explicit or implicit, is considered an acceptable management tool, conflicts tend to multiply, trust erodes, and isolation increases. The early onset of burnout in a career has also been widely associated with a reduction in interpersonal exchanges within the company. (excerpt from Le Monde, October 30, 2023, cited by Hamant, 2025, p. 197)

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• Fairness: A sense of injustice that is neither acknowledged nor addressed, particularly when it persists over time and relates to the distribution or allocation of resources, generates irritation and cynicism, thereby deteriorating the work climate.

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• Values: A discrepancy between personal values, the values officially promoted by the organization, and those actually experienced on a daily basis, especially through managerial practices, creates confusion and moral tension, negatively affecting engagement.

In my experience, addressing imbalances related to these organizational factors is often far more effective, both in recovering from burnout and in preventing it, than investing in resilience awareness training, which may, in practice, translate into injunctions to be “agile” and to “bounce back,” thereby shifting all responsibility onto the individual.

These six factors also help individuals become more aware of their unique relationship to work, both in practical and emotional terms, and to regularly assess its quality, particularly when they begin to feel they are “in the red.”

Developing Robustness

Whenever possible, I encourage integrative work at the intersection of the individual and the organizational, as these two dimensions are interdependent and inseparable. In the face of burnout, the first objective is to regain short-term stability, necessarily temporary. The next step, over the longer term, is to develop and strengthen a sustainable capacity for adaptation and transformation despite the constant and unpredictable fluctuations of the professional environment.

In other words, the aim is to cultivate robustness, to use the term proposed by biologist Olivier Hamant (2023, 2025), that is, to create conditions that make it possible, as much as possible, not to “fall,” both at the individual and organizational levels.

Leveraging Multidisciplinary Collaboration

I would also add that, when addressing burnout, I prioritize multidisciplinary and network-based collaboration whenever possible, involving both internal and external stakeholders. This approach values complementary expertise and allows for perspectives drawn from diverse experiences, enabling the implementation of practical and sustainable solutions.

Through this process, we also affirm, through action, the importance of connection and relationships in overcoming burnout.

It is not uncommon for individuals experiencing burnout, as well as the organizations concerned, to describe themselves as “stuck.” Restoring “movement” then involves rebalancing relationships, with others, with oneself, and with work. Gradually, boundaries are clarified and reaffirmed, allowing individuals to reconnect with their freedom and rediscover both the capacity and the pleasure to act.


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References

Delbrouck, Michel. Comment traiter le burn-out ? : syndrome d’épuisement professionnel, stress chronique et traumatisme psychique. 2ᵉ éd., Bruxelles, De Boeck Supérieur, 2021.

Demerouti, Evangelia. Burnout: a comprehensive review. Zeitschrift für Arbeitswissenschaft, vol. 78, pp. 492-504, 2024.

Hamant, Olivier, Olivier Charbonnier et Sylvain Enlart. L’Entreprise robuste : pour une alternative à la performance. Paris, Odile Jacob, 2025.

Hamant, Olivier. Antidote au culte de la performance. Paris, Gallimard, 2023.

Leiter, Michael P., et Christina Maslach. « Areas of Worklife : A Structured Approach to Organizational Predictors of Job Burnout ». Dans P. L. Perrewé et D. C. Ganster (dir.), Research in Occupational Stress and Well-Being, vol. 3, Oxford, Elsevier, 2004, p. 91-134.

Panagioti, Maria, Evangelia Panagopoulou, Peter Bower, et al. « Controlled Interventions to Reduce Burnout in Physicians: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis ». JAMA Internal Medicine, vol. 177, no 2, 2017, p. 195-205.

Rosa, Hartmut. Le grand entretien avec Hartmut Rosa [documentaire], réalisé par Anne Flaux, ARTE, 2023. Disponible à l’adresse : https://share.google/0qM6u6FJPmsRWljs4