Preventing Burnout in Clinical Operations

As we’ve outlined before, Clinical Operations is a hefty job.

With so many deadlines, details and stakeholders to manage, it’s challenging as-is.  Add to that unexpected fires and lack of process, and you have a recipe for Clin Ops burnout.

What is burnout?  Mayo Clinic defines it as  a special type of work-related stress — a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity.

Companies without systems to support the well-being of their employees have:

• • higher turnover
  • lower productivity
  • higher healthcare costs

Employees that are burned out are 2.6 times as likely to be actively seeking a different job.  And in areas with plenty of biotech and pharma opportunities, they have their pick of the litter.

Too much work, too little time

A Gallup poll of 7,500 full-time employees found that the top 5 reasons for burnout are:

1. Unfair treatment at work
2. Unmanageable workload
3. Lack of role clarity
4. Lack of support from their manager
5. Unreasonable time pressure

Meaningless work

• Autonomy:  the ability to have significant control over one’s work.
• Mastery:  the ability to see improvement and progression in one’s craft.
• Belonging or relatedness:  a feeling of connection and community.

We’ve all experienced the satisfaction of working hard without burning out.  When the excitement, ownership, and challenge of the project or job drives us, we’re less likely to focus on “external motivators” such as promotions, and paychecks (to an extent).  Many take pay cuts to work at exciting start-ups for just that reason.

The overall mission of Clinical Operations is commendable. However, it’s a diverse job, facets of which are enjoyed by different people:

• If you’re a people person, you’ll enjoy facilitating meetings and building relationships.
• If you like data, you can dive into queries and trends.
• Strategic thinkers can create a new recruitment strategy.

However, the job is almost always riddled with administrative work.  The larger and more complex the trial, the greater the burden.  And jobs with a large proportion of busy work rarely feel meaningful or enjoyable.

Joyless work (absence of flow)

Not only do employees want to find meaning in their work, but they actually want to enjoy the act of working.  One way to do is to to find flow.  Flow is a mental state in which the person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.  In essence, it’s characterized by the complete absorption in what one does and a feeling of timelessness and serenity.

Not only that, but in a 10-year study conducted by McKinsey, top executives reported being five times more productive in flow.  We could argue this applies to front-line employees too.

There are conditions that help people be in flow:

• Knowing what to do (clear goals)
• Knowing how to do it (instructions)
• Knowing how well you’re doing it (feedback)
• A good match between challenge and skills.  Too much challenge leads to anxiety and too little, to boredom.
• Freedom from distractions

Clinical Operations employees are also particularly susceptible to distractions:

• The many deadlines, details, and stakeholders mentioned at the top of this article requires that employees switch from task to task and system to system.
• And of course, there is the high volume of emails, chats, and meetings waiting to be addressed!  Contrast that to a stats programmer who spends an entire day coding (in flow) and attends 2 meetings a week, on average.

And again, as stated above, employees are saddled with busy work, which doesn’t challenge skilled people.

Preventing Burnout in Clinical Operations

Thus far, we’ve described factors leading to burnout, such as lack of:

• Meaningful work
• Challenging (not busy) work
• Reasonable volume and timelines
• Clarity around work expectations
• Fair treatment and support from management, positive colleagues
• Non-distracting work environment

We’ve all experienced lacking some of these.  However, sometimes one aspect of our work life is so good that it compensates for other areas.  For example, excellent colleagues can sometimes make up for a lack of challenging work.
But why can’t employees have it all? Especially now that we know what they want?

Implementing this collection of solutions ensures Clin Ops burnout prevention is baked into your culture:

• Management training:  Create training for new Clin Ops managers (via consultants or in-house) and hold them accountable for supporting, training, and challenging their employees with 360 performance reviews.
• Responsibilities Matrix:  Require each Clin Ops study team to track all (high-level) tasks found within a study with primary and back-up assignees.  Discuss and update the list each time a new team member joins or a task is added.
• Onboarding/Training: Each time a new team member joins, or an existing team member is assigned a new task, arrange training with the related subject matter expert.  SOPs are good, but nothing beats in-person training and support.
• Central Timeline and Metrics:  Save timelines and high-level metrics to a central location and share the link with everyone in your team.
  • Discuss feasibility of timelines biweekly with people actually doing the work, and readjust or support them with more resources.
  • Overly aggressive timelines cause people to ignore them, and so cease being motivating or meaningful.
• Work From Home:  If your IT infrastructure allows, let people work from home a few days/week.  This flexibility gives people much needed breathing room.  Further, it’s the wave of the future and attractive to candidates, so why not implement this now?
• Solutions/Processes:  Implement  solutions that help reduce busy work for a manageable workload and timelines.  Employees can reclaim this time to do more of meaningful work that puts them in flow. At Seascape Clinical, our mission is just that – to help teams reclaim time.   To learn more, visit us at www.seascapeclinical.com

Sources

• https://hbr.org/2019/12/burnout-is-about-your-workplace-not-your-people
• https://hbr.org/2014/05/create-a-work-environment-that-fosters-flow
• https://getpocket.com/explore/item/burnout-runs-deeper-than-too-much-work?utm_source=pocket-newtab
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)