How many of you head into work each day feeling less-than-enthused, bone-tired before you even get to the office, and anxious about having to face both your boss and that endless pile of paperwork on your desk? If that sounds familiar, don’t fret; you’re not alone.

According to study after study, workplace stress has become something akin to an epidemic in our fast-paced society. And where there’s stress, there’s the chance you might be looking down the barrel of the burnout gun.

The cold, hard stats

Some of the most recent numbers made available on the subject are staggering. One analysis showed that nearly six out of 10 Canadian workers report being overly stressed on the job. This stat crosses the private and public, for-profit and nonprofit sectors, lest you think it’s limited to one realm.

A 2000 Statistics Canada survey, titled Sources of Workplace Stress, found that 34% of Canadians – that’s a full third of the workforce – cited “too many demands or hours” as the most common source of stress in the workplace.

In the 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey, Statistics Canada revealed that “high job strain, that is, when the demands of a job outweigh the freedom to make decisions or apply skills, was reported by 19% of male workers and 27% of female workers.”

The same study showed that “just over one million adults aged 18 or older had experienced a major depressive episode in the year before the survey. More than 70% of these people were employed in that year.”

And some experts believe the stress may be a lot harder on those in the voluntary sector due to the nature of the work.

Alan Kearns, founder of Careerjoy.com, bills himself as Canada’s career coach, and has spent the last 15 years advising clients about their livelihoods. He knows a thing or two about career burnout and stress in the nonprofit sector.

“Part of the challenge in the charity sector is that you’re dealing with more limited budgets, resources, groups of people,” he says. “I find a lot of the time that people are drawn into [the sector] by personal need or desire for change. They’re passionate about it…maybe more so than in some of the other sectors, which is great, but sometimes that passion can be dangerous in that it can sometimes be overwhelming.”

But Kearns finds that usually people don’t just go from being happily employed to a state of burnout. It’s not that black and white.

“Before burnout there’s a thing we classify as ‘brown-out’. If you think of it [analogously] to our power systems, in a brown-out we can shut down pieces of the electricity grid. So in your career, you may be finding you’re feeling really tired a lot of the time. You’re able to function, but you’re not able to function at the level you’d like to. You might be sicker or taking more sick time,” he says.

Some pre-brown-out/burnout indicators Kearns suggests you look out for include: working long hours, feeling like what you’re getting out of work is less than what you’re putting in, and noticing that the balance between your physical, emotional and spiritual well-being is completely thrown off.

“You may be struggling with depression or find that you’re very reactive and confrontational. These, to me, are some indicators that you’re on the path to burnout,” Kearns states, adding that stress “costs [organizations] over $300 million a year in North America. Every employer I deal with says this is the foremost issue.”

Managers suffer more

The Statistics Canada survey also turned up another interesting finding. Namely, that the further up the organizational ladder one climbs, the more stress is involved. Managers and professionals were the ones most likely to report stress on the job. This was as a result of, yet again, too many hours and too much demand on their time, pulling them in different directions.

Mario Siciliano, president and CEO of Volunteer Calgary, sympathizes with the findings.

“I have at various times felt burnout creeping up on me,” Siciliano admits. “All work in the nonprofit sector can feel overwhelming when you are passionate about trying to make a difference and when there are so many challenges facing society; whether it’s volunteering, homelessness or a whole host of important issues. I too, like many others, find it challenging and demanding work.”

Echoing Kearns’ observations above, Siciliano also laments that it’s been his experience over the past 20 years working in the sector, that voluntary sector employees are being driven off by excessive work requirements.

“Turnover in the nonprofit sector is very high. Lately in Alberta, it is estimated to be between 30% and 40%. We also know that the nonprofit sector has one of the highest rates of applications for long-term disability because of stress. [There is] no doubt it is there,” Siciliano says. “When you combine a critical lack of resources with people who are so passionate about the work they are doing, they don’t want to stop. It is a recipe for stress and burnout.

“Increasingly, we see employees in the sector trying to achieve some work-life balance, which is odd, since work-life balance used to be one of the selling features of working in the nonprofit sector compared to the corporate sector. But not any more. Time with families, keeping fit, and taking up hobbies that force you away from work are strategies people use to cope, but mostly people are just leaving the sector.”

Maria-Lynn Johnson, volunteer coordinator with Centrepoint Non-Profit Management, is sensing much of the same thing.

“The one aspect of volunteer burnout I can comment on is the increased desire on the part of [our] volunteers to be engaged in shorter volunteer opportunities,” Johnson says. “The majority of CentrePoint volunteers are professionals in the Calgary community, willing to contribute time to build capacity within nonprofit organizations, through consultations, mentoring, training and knowledge sharing. Our volunteers have, in the past, found it quite manageable to undertake a consultation of 30 to 35 hours spread over three or more months. Recently, the feedback I get is that more volunteers are simply too busy with their work and other volunteer commitments [to help] unless the consultations are shorter.”

Extinguishing the burn…out

While burnout is a very real issue, it doesn’t have to be something that’s unbeatable. At least, so say the experts. Kearns suggests that while it’s tempting for many people to feel that the only way to stave off burnout is to leave one’s career, that’s often not necessary.

“I advise clients to try and stay in the same career if they can. Because the cost to change careers is a lot higher than the cost to change companies,” he says. “You could be a finance person in a not-for-profit and [also] be one in the private sector.”

Another thing to keep in mind, says Kearns, is one’s relationship with the supervisor. “People join companies, but they leave people. That’s not to say the boss is bad, but the relationship [and personality styles] could be a bad fit,” he says.

For Siciliano, it’s all about maintaining the line between personal and work space.

“I have found it critically important to make sure I take my vacation and get away for periods of time, get regular exercise, and rest and relax. It’s really all about remembering to put as much conscious attention on managing our work-life balance as we do in managing our day to day work,” he states.

Enjoy your work and pre-empt burnout

As a last word, Kearns suggests you take stock of your current work/life situation in order to properly evaluate your career needs.

“The question is what is the core issue, what’s not working in the career? If we want to get to the root [of the career problem] we need to look at the big picture, at your values, passions, lifestyle, talents and environment. You want to look at each of those elements separately and evaluate them separately,” he counsels.

With any luck, that will lead to a more satisfying job and a healthier you.

Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf is president of WordLaunch professional writing services in Toronto. He can be reached at andy@wordlaunch.com.