New model provides a ‘smart’ way to tackle employee burnout

Managers are often at a loss about how to increase morale and reduce burnout for their employees, but a University of Queensland researcher has helped develop a framework that could be the perfect tool.

The SMART Work Design Model was created to provide employers with guidelines on the five key work design characteristics they should consider when designing work: stimulating, mastery, autonomy, relational and tolerable demands.

The research was published in MIT Sloan Management Review.

Dr. Caroline Knight from UQ Business School worked with Professor Sharon K. Parker from Curtin University to develop the framework and said good work design is often overlooked by organizations and managers who often try to fix the employee rather than the work.

“Managers play a pivotal role in shaping work for their employees, but many roles aren’t designed to foster a positive and healthy workplace environment,” she said.

“Offering an already overworked and burnt-out employee productivity tips and ways to assert healthy boundaries isn’t helpful when it’s clear the job entails long hours and unreasonable workloads. The SMART framework encourages managers to think more broadly about how they curate work that allows their employees to thrive.”

The framework was validated by a series of studies involving quantitative surveys. In one core study, the researchers measured employee job satisfaction in a variety of industries as well as the five characteristics and looked at relationships between the two.

“Employees can often face high demands or feel as though they are not challenged, stimulated, or even supported enough in the workplace and this can have an impact on their overall job performance,” Dr. Knight said. “We find that intense workloads, coupled with low autonomy and support, can lead to a high risk of employee burnout.”

Dr. Knight said the digestible nature of the SMART framework meant it can be easily implemented in the workplace.

“It can be implemented to redesign teamwork, align people management systems, guide and evaluate operational change, or encourage and support employee job crafting,” Dr. Knight said.

“Managers can use the model to have regular check-ins with their employees using the model as a basis for conversation about their work. Ask them if their work is stimulating enough. Does it offer opportunities to showcase their craft? Does it offer them enough autonomy? At a higher level, the framework can be used as a guide when designing roles before the recruitment process begins.”

The framework has already been implemented in hospitals, government organizations and universities in Australia.