A Crisis of Purpose: Confronting Morale Issues and Burnout in Our Firehouses

By Benjamin Martin

The battalion chief sat at the head of the firehouse kitchen table, surrounded by ten pairs of eyes, all seemingly staring daggers at him. He had just finished reviewing the staff notes from the top brass’s latest meeting, which featured yet another round of significant changes to the department’s operations. It was abundantly clear through their body language just how upset the group felt about the proposed change. Playing his part, the chief sat stoically at the head of the table, hoping his own body language wouldn’t reveal just how much he shared in their angst. He remained ready to engage the unmistakable discomfort and anxiety emanating from the firefighters, but no one spoke.

Undeterred, the chief again attempted to solicit questions or comments from the group, only to be met by uncomfortable silence. Even the members who usually relished any chance to stir the pot remained quiet. The frustration in the room was palpable. Finally, feeling stuck, the chief excused the firefighters from the table and asked the two lieutenants to accompany him on his way out. As they walked together, he begged them to trust him enough to open up and convey any concerns about the plan so he could try to begin to address them. By the time they arrived at the chief’s vehicle, they finally decided to voice their primary concern: Nobody in this department believes that anything we have to say will make any difference to the direction this organization is heading, so why waste everyone’s time discussing it?

Unfortunately, the lieutenants’ grim assessment of the situation was well supported. Many in the organization felt in the dark about where the organization was headed, including the battalion chiefs and shift commanders. Members were exhausted from their mental efforts attending to the many iterations of disjointed and insufficiently thought-out communication memos and presentations. Many of the more recent changes were born out of the need to fix what many saw as blatantly foreseeable issues created by the first few rounds of change. The changes gutted normal communication pathways, performance expectations, and feedback loops. Many throughout the organization were clueless about how to help support the changes and which ones were the priority on any given day.

People throughout the organization were empathetic and attributed the frequent missteps to the scenario that the administration was feeling overwhelmed and overworked, a likely explanation for the chaos. Still, people’s patience was running increasingly thin due to the perception that the executive leadership had fallen in love with their own ideas, regardless of whether they were working, essentially inflicting pain and frustration on themselves and everyone else in the department. For example, there were many instances where well-intentioned messengers ended up paying the price for attempting to offer valuable feedback on how the changes were playing out in their respective assignments in the department. In addition, each week, a new administrative investigation seemed to pop up, concurrent with an increase in the number of people receiving unexpected and unwanted transfers to positions outside of their expertise or passion, written reprimands, or the denial of previously front-running candidates to promotions.

Many of the leaders in the organization’s usual stable of go-to folks now found themselves on the outside looking in–siloed from the opportunity to act in their regular roles as positive ambassadors for change. Senior leaders found themselves increasingly relaying their concerns and the mounting evidence of anxiety, confusion, and distress occurring within the workforce to their bosses, only to have their attempts to provide awareness and feedback of the organization’s current direction rebuked. The executive leadership team was well known for their position that it was an individual’s job to manage their own morale by the repetitive use of it’s your own fault if you’re not happy at work. Much of the organization’s leadership found this stance woefully inaccurate, knowing that many factors affecting employee engagement and motivation occur due to the organization’s culture and climate—forces well beyond the complete control of individuals alone.

It Matters How Employees Feel About Their Work and Workplace

This story is fictional, inspired and informed from the dozens of e-mails and phone calls that I have received over the past year from people serving in various roles and ranks of departments throughout the country. Perhaps you recognize an aspect of your own department’s operations and leadership in one or more parts of the story. The conversation typically revolves around identifying strategies to navigate interpersonal issues in the firehouse, which seems to most often involve how to help others and ourselves maintain positive morale when confronted by things we feel are occurring beyond our control.

Despite the size of your agency and whether you serve in a paid or volunteer capacity, the fire service is collectively facing issues involving recruitment and retention. My particular interest in the subject has become identifying the influence and role leaders have in creating a workplace climate and culture that maximizes employee satisfaction and performance. How organizations explore and choose to introduce change and the frequency with which they do it have a pronounced effect on their employees’ motivation, mood, emotions, stress, and mental and physical health.

Paying attention to morale offers organizations the proverbial 30,000-foot view of whether employees enjoy coming to work. While low morale is a symptom of a poor work environment (also called climate), it is only one aspect that reflects the quality of how employees are experiencing their work. An additional measure whose factors are often present in employees’ stories and conversations but not directly measured by departments is employee burnout. Burnout occurs when an individual experiences excessive and chronic workplace stress, characterized by having one or more of the following characteristics:^3,8

• feelings of energy depletion or emotional exhaustion;
• increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and
• reduced feelings of personal accomplishment or effectiveness at work.

Side effects of burnout include loss of employee productivity, commitment, and engagement to the organization, with increases in turnover and absenteeism.⁸ Research shows that as many as 8 out of 10 employees report experiencing burnout some of the time⁵, and 28% report feeling burned out at work “very often” or “always^.”6 In addition, burned-out employees are 63% more likely to take a sick day, are 2.5 times more likely to look for another job, and have decreased confidence in their performance (self-efficacy).⁶

In any organization, the efforts of just a few highly engaged and competent people can have profound effects on the organization’s overall performance. These A-players act as the organization’s engine, driving both how and if the mission is accomplished, but they are not immune from experiencing burnout (see sidebar B). When polled, more than 40% of top performers are more likely to burn out than lower performers.⁹ You read that right–the folks in your organization who contribute the most are also the ones who end up not wanting to come to work and feeling the least fulfilled or motivated when they do. Burnout can halt employee development and stifle career growth. Research shows that when people experience burnout, they are less likely to seek growth opportunities and challenges. They are half as likely to want to discuss their career goals with their bosses and become more resistant when offered coaching or asked to buy into change.^3,6

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Model the Actions Required to Achieve the Organization’s Purpose

Employees thrive when they understand what’s expected of them, have the resources to accomplish their work, and work with leaders who support and collaborate with them.⁵ To this point, research shows that employees who feel that their leaders are genuinely available and willing to listen to their work-related problems and concerns are 62% less likely to experience burnout.⁶

An additional consideration to help prevent burnout is holding leaders accountable when they only provide lip service to their employees, promising action without the follow-through. One of the primary ways to reduce the incidence of employee burnout is to help employees see how their efforts influence the bigger picture. While that may sound obvious since we are in the job of saving lives, the question it begs is, does anything I do as an individual affect how things turn out for the team or organization?  

The importance of having a sense of purpose in one’s work cannot be overstated. Employee motivation often drops when an employee is given a transfer or even promotion to a position where the work does not generate a sense of purpose. Employees consider their connection to an organization’s purpose twice as important as how well they are compensated or whether there is the availability of career advancement.⁴ For employees to feel and stay motivated in their work, they must trust that the organization can provide the resources they need (or perceive to need) to do what is expected of them. In most instances, this is material, such as apparatus, uniforms, equipment, etc. But the same expectation is also true of the many interpersonal needs employees have of their leadership–including fostering positive employee experiences, addressing stressors at work, setting clear expectations, communicating effectively, removing barriers, and ensuring that employees feel supported.⁶

The fire service has a significant and noble purpose in the community. But it can only achieve the tremendous potential of its mission if its members are willing to put themselves and their needs second to those of the citizens. Teams pay attention to the actions of their leaders, especially when leaders ask for others to contribute and sacrifice but are unwilling to put in the effort themselves. When such hypocritical leaders lack the courage and ability to walk their talk, it undermines everyone else’s hard work. These leaders act as obstacles instead of catalysts for our organizations, and their existence contradicts the servant values that are the bedrock of the fire service.

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The Leader’s Role in Reducing Employee Burnout

The fire service cannot tolerate leaders who abdicate their responsibility to engage and support their people. Many root causes for employee burnout are within a leader’s grasp to help prevent and resolve. In 2020, Gallup published research highlighting several causes and cures for employee burnout, including the following:⁶

Unfair treatment at work: This occurs when employees experience or witness bias, sexism, racism, or favoritism; it can also occur when they experience direct or witness mistreatment by a co-worker. 

Unmanageable workload: It turns out that a workload that provides a sense of purpose for the employee or support and interaction with the leader is more effective in reducing the incidence of burnout than reducing the number of hours worked or even the workload itself. 

Lack of role clarity: This occurs when managers fail to set clear expectations and employees are left to figure out for themselves what work should or shouldn’t be done. It can also occur if managers fail to provide information that helps employees better align their performance to support larger goals, facilitate team collaboration, and understand the strategy behind the organization’s priorities.

Lack of communication and support from their manager: Employees benefit enormously from leadership that values proactively sharing information, encouraging them to ask questions, and soliciting their opinions.⁶ Managers who neglect their essential role as communicators can inadvertently silo their teams from the rest of the organization, leaving employees feeling uninformed and unvalued or working toward objectives that are no longer a priority or even relevant for the organization.

Unreasonable time pressure: This occurs when leaders ask employees to continue to operate in roles that are not within their strengths and passions, which may lead to spending more time at work. When employees feel they lack flexibility and control over how their work gets done, this threatens their sense of autonomy.⁶ Tenured members also expect more input into their work and the organization’s decision-making process.

Burnout Is a Sign That the Culture Is Becoming Unhealthy

An organization’s culture will either consume or support its strategy. An organization’s culture is much more than the mission, vision, or value statements often framed and hung in our firehouses. Organizational culture “is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which governs how people behave…and contributes to the unique social and psychological environment of the organization.”¹⁰ Organizational culture helps determine how people experience their work, notably setting and reinforcing the social norms that employees participate in.

As an example of culture’s influence, consider the varying attitudes of teams found in our firehouses. First, picture the station or assignment in your agency where the members are known for training, showing up to work early and prepared, and hungry to run calls. They are also probably your go-to when it comes to getting things done well on the fireground. Anyone who dares to show up at this assignment and fails to conform to their expectations, standards, and traditions can expect an intense outpouring of objections and social pressure until their behavior is corrected or they pull their parachute and leave.

Next, picture the station or assignment that acts as their counterparts–places where sick leave use is predictably always high, especially on prescheduled training days. In this assignment, leaders turn a blind eye to members barely arriving to work on time, there is no rush to put their gear on the rigs, and every moment is an opportunity to complain about anything the organization or citizens ask them to do throughout the day. This group is also not shy in saying that they’d be just fine if they never had to run another structure fire again. The striking contrast between the work ethics of these two groups is reflective of their respective subcultures. Even though the organization’s mission and values are the same for both, one group dramatically outperforms the other.

Leaders should be aware that culture is highly sensitive to new things, especially if it is perceived to threaten traditions, resulting in peoples’ efforts to attack and undermine the change. But culture can also support change when planned, communicated, implemented, and adjusted correctly. Consider that since its inception, the fire service has initiated, absorbed, and thrived with a tremendous amount of change. Your agency likely no longer has horse-drawn pumpers and wagons, but it does have cutting-edge SCBA and thermal imaging equipment. In addition, personal protective gear leverages improvements in technology to help you get to the seat of the fire faster and survive thermal threats longer than the gear your predecessors wore.

But just because leaders feel they can help introduce and sell a change doesn’t mean they should. Change done poorly can act as dynamite to employee morale and create a work environment conducive to fostering employee burnout. Change often confuses and threatens the role of clarity and the experience that people gain over time in their job and alters or eliminates previously relied on communication and support pathways for employees. Change can also cause employees to feel that their sense of autonomy is in jeopardy, inadvertently diminishing people’s value in their work.

Putting It All Together

Each of us has a varying tolerance level for adjustments to our environments at home or work. While many of us like to imagine ourselves as flexible and open to change, our capacity for it varies greatly day by day and even hour to hour, as we can easily be overwhelmed by events in our personal and professional lives. For example, an employee going through a divorce or whose child has become gravely ill is predictably lacking full capacity to adapt to changes at work. The inverse is true at home as well, where performance issues at work can distract an employee from attending to the most precious priority at home-the family.

Avoid inadvertently creating an environment conducive to employee burnout and morale issues by initiating too much change without considering how your organization’s culture will seek to either undermine or support the change. Make sure to listen to your workforce and monitor for early signs of morale dips and employee burnout. Provide ample opportunities for A-players to weigh in on change, own the process, and act as ambassadors for your vision. Seek to understand what your proposed plan for change is really asking of people and, from their feedback, determine if they have the ability in their current work environment to accomplish it.

Leaders have a decisive role in determining how people feel about coming to work, and we should never marginalize or blame employees when they are struggling to engage in their work. Likewise, leaders play a vital role in whether employees experience negative or positive emotions while at work. Positive emotions result in employees developing a solid sense of self-efficacy–a person’s belief that they have the opportunity, capability, and resources to do their job. Many organizations list empathy as a core value, but it’s meaningless if we only support our people when they don’t inconvenience what we want to accomplish as leaders.

Perhaps the impact of change is best understood by picturing a snow globe. When you purchase a snow globe, you connect to what is at its center, perhaps a photo of your family or a memento of a fun family vacation. Now picture your organization’s mission and your role and purpose toward it at the center of this globe. Change acts in the same manner as shaking the globe does—it temporarily disturbs what people can see of the landscape and thus of their purpose and mission at the center. When the snow finally settles, the landscape is forever different but, ideally, the core of the snow globe remains the same.

When leaders attempt to introduce too much change, it shakes the globe too much, essentially producing a blizzard that obscures what matters most to the employees in the organization. If not left to settle, even the most loyal and tenured people in your organization will begin to experience a crisis of purpose—the doubt that they will ever clearly see the big picture at the center of the globe again. It matters how employees feel about their work and workplace. Ensure that your culture has the capacity for change before you ask it of your members, and avoid introducing a crisis of purpose within your organization.

Bio

Benjamin Martin provides leadership training workshops and keynotes internationally and throughout the United States. He blends over 18 years of public safety experience with his ongoing Ph.D. study of human behavior. He is the founder of EmbraceTheResistance.com, featuring leadership training for existing and aspiring leaders. He is an EdD candidate in leadership, learning, and organizational psychology. He is a captain with a large metro fire department in Virginia.

Endnotes:

1. Bonnici, R. (2018). Why I encourage my best employees to consider outside job offers. Harvard Business Review.
2. Moss, J. (2019). Burn-out is about your workplace, not your people. Harvard Business Review
3. World Health Organization (2019). Burn-out an”occupational phenomenon”: International classification of diseases
4. Blount, S, & Leinwand, P. (2019). Why are we here? Harvard Business Review.
5. Wigert, B. (2021). How to eliminate Burn-out and retain top talent. Gallup
6. Gallup’s perspective on employee burnout: Causes and Cures (2020)
7. Gallup. Designing the employee experience to improve workplace culture and drive performance. Obtained January 2nd, 2022 from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/323573/employee-experience-and-workplace-culture.aspx
8. Tafvelin, S., Nielsen, K., von Thiele Schwarz, U., & Stenling, A. (2019). Leading well is a matter of resources: Leader vigor and peer support augment the relationship between transformational leadership and burnout. Work & Stress, 33(2), 156–172. https://doi-org.aspenuniversity.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/02678373.2018.1513961
9. Murphy, M. (2018). Three reasons why high performers are often miserable. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2018/07/01/3-reasons-why-high-performers-are-often-miserable/?sh=516c9cfa45fc
10. Rick, T. (2015). What is organizational culture? https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/culture/organizational-culture/