How Stress and Strain Impact Shop Owners

A recent study highlighted by Forbes shows that two-thirds of employees in the country experience some form of job-related burnout. There are many contributing factors, but they all result in lower productivity and job happiness.  Heather Williams, co-owner of Xcel Service and Repair in Stonewood, West Virginia, says the automotive repair industry is no different when it comes to employees feeling burned out.

“It's more prevalent than anybody gives credit for. All of us go through it at some point in time,” Williams says. “It's just a matter of how extreme it is and if it's well-managed.”

Margaret Light, a Minnesota-based licensed therapist who specializes in serving clients from the automotive industry, says that burnout operates on a spectrum, and every single person falls on that spectrum somewhere.

“It's not necessarily a question of does someone have burnout or not? It's a question of what level of stress do they have and has it progressed into burnout?” Light says. “Everybody has baseline stress, and then as responsibility increases, stress increases.”

Burnout can have a major negative impact on your ability to perform your daily responsibilities. Identifying your level of burnout, understanding how it affects you, and learning methods to mitigate stress can greatly benefit your personal health and the health of your shop.

What Does Burnout Look Like?

Williams says most folks in the automotive industry take a tremendous amount of pride in their ability to multitask and operate under stressful situations. Though that may seem like a virtue, it can wear down your body, which can hurt you in the long run.

“Most people do have a lot of pride, and they won't even own the fact that they are overly stressed, which leads to burnout,” Williams says. “You're running yourself ragged doing three, four, five jobs, and that’s exhausting. Your body is physically breaking down.”

Burnout is a clinically recognized problem, and Light says three hallmarks are usually present in a person when they are burned out. Recognizing these in yourself or someone you work with can be a helpful first step in helping combat overworking yourself. The first is overwhelming exhaustion. People dealing with this may feel like even small tasks are overwhelming and impossible to complete, and it may seem like they are “giving up.”

The second is cynicism and detachment from work. This will come across as people seeming disinterested, withdrawn, or otherwise disillusioned with their job.

Last is a sense of reduced personal efficacy. This will show up as people thinking that their work doesn’t matter, which will result in them failing to meet even the bare minimum in their work.

Light says that, since burnout is a spectrum, people may only show one of those symptoms, or they may show all three, and they may show up in varying degrees of severity.

“There's going to be a combination of internal experience and then external behaviors,” Light says. “External behaviors could vary. It could be someone who's really irritable, it could look like no motivation, and lack of follow-through. And in some really severe cases, people just stop coming into work altogether.”

Williams says burnout can have symptoms very similar to depression, and people dealing with severe burnout may begin to lose sleep, become unmotivated, and be at higher risk of health problems.

“Sometimes you do need to have either a mental health professional or a doctor of some sort to evaluate you to make sure that the burnout isn't causing other problems,” she says.

How to Treat Burnout

Letting burnout go unchecked can be a major detriment not just to your personal health, but to the health of your shop. Light says that once burnout begins, it continues to build over time.

“It’s not something that will resolve on its own, and it doesn’t stay the same,” she says. “It gets worse.”

She also points to research that shows that people are more likely to become burned out themselves if they work with someone who is burned out. Because of that, it’s in your best interest and your shop’s best interest to help people dealing with burnout, whether that’s yourself or one of your employees. 

Williams says that the first step owners and managers need to take in dealing with their burnout is to learn to say no and delegate. Delegation isn’t a new concept, but building trust with your team and allowing them to take on more responsibility can help lighten your load.

“That’s something, especially as shop owners, we don’t like to ask for help,” she says. “But that is very, very important.”

She also recommends figuring out ways to make small adjustments in your schedule to allow for a little more personal time. It doesn’t have to be much—15 minutes added to your lunch or a half hour on Fridays when you’re able to leave a little earlier —but giving yourself a little space to breathe and unwind can go a long way.

Another crucial element is taking care of your physical health. Burnout expresses itself in physical symptoms, which means that your body will deteriorate from excessive stress. Getting enough sleep, eating right, and exercising enough are essential to helping your body recover.

Williams also says practicing self-care and doing things that are restorative for your mind and body is the best way to reverse burnout.

“That's going to be different for everybody, but maybe it’s going to the lake, reading a good book, going camping, hunting, fishing, whatever it is that you like to do,” Williams says. “You need to practice self-care and get in the habit of doing something you like to do that's not related to your job.”

Light agrees with the need to practice self-care, adding that spending time with friends and family, journaling, and finding hobbies outside of work can be a great benefit and can build a support network that helps maintain your mental health.

However, in more severe cases, self-help may not be enough to mitigate burnout. In those instances, Light strongly recommends seeing a mental health professional to help you deal with the symptoms.

Burnout is prevalent throughout the workforce and can be detrimental to a shop’s culture. Learning to identify it and properly deal with it is essential to running a smooth operation. Light says acknowledging that you may be burned out and asking for help if you need it is the best thing you can do for yourself and your business.

“You need to give yourself permission that it's okay to not have it all together once in a while,” Light says, “and we need to take burnout seriously early, because life doesn't get easier as it progresses.”