According to the OpinionWay barometer, the psychological distress of employees seems to have improved since they were able to return to their workplaces. But the number of burnouts, on the other hand, continues to increase: 25% more, since May, and 2.5 million employees who are currently affected.
franceinfo: Claude Halmos these figures are impressive, how to explain them?
Claude Halmos: They are certainly linked on the one hand to the extreme psychological violence inflicted on all French people by the pandemic; on the other hand, to the psychological difficulties, which are very important, which teleworking can cause. To which is added the fact that these two dangers having been very largely underestimated, one did not help people to protect themselves from them.
We went, overnight, with the Covid, from a world capable of dealing with disease, to one where we were powerless, and with no other recourse than to lock ourselves in our homes. It was very disturbing for everyone. Especially since we had to endure, in addition to the violence of the confinement, a permanent presence of death. In the form of fear, for ourselves, or our loved ones, but also endless announcements of the death toll. As in a war …
Were you talking about the difficulties of teleworking?
At the work level, many people have lived in addition, the fear of another death: that of their company, or their job. Those who have not lost it have experienced teleworking which can be very destabilizing. Our life is, like our identity, made up of two parts: one professional, the other private, and our balance requires that they be clearly identified. Working in a place different from our home helps us do this. Especially since we benefit from social interactions, from the eyes of colleagues, which gives meaning to the work, from a possible progression.
In teleworking, even in good conditions, we are deprived of it. Many people have therefore cracked, to the point of no longer being able to work. Hence the diagnosis of burnout. Diagnosis always a little hazy because, even though the problem is triggered by work, it often resonates with personal wounds, very deep, and very buried.
What can help an employee with burnout?
It is important first of all that he becomes aware of the weight of what he has undergone, so that he does not imagine that he has cracked because of particular psychological weaknesses. What would be devaluing for him, and moreover, false. However, the strongest spine cannot support everything; neither is the psyche. Then the therapies are very useful, provided that they take into account the weight of the realities undergone.
But the support of the collective is also essential. A national ceremony to pay tribute to the deaths of covid is to be organized soon. It would also be important that, in companies, we organize time for discussion to talk, together, about what we have experienced. It would be a real work of prevention.