JULY/AUGUST 2019 businesstraveller.com50
‘Friends and family
think you are so
lucky to travel to all
of these places. They
don’t understand
what it entails’ISTOCK/ANTIMARTINAthey’re constantly on duty, answering
emails at all times of the day, with
their phones always on,” Holman
says. “I used to have a team in Asia as
well as America and Europe, so I was
getting messages all times of the day in
different regions. There never seemed
to be a defined nine-to-five existence.”
In the Kingston study, 73 per cent said
they worked longer hours while away.
Despite this, many travellers say they
are still treated as if they have been on
holiday by colleagues. As one frequent
f lyer puts it: “When returning home
from long trips involving multiple time
zones, it used to take me two days to
recover. That was in my 30s and 40s.
Now I’m in my 50s, it can take me up
to four days to get back to a normal
routine. Friends, family and some
colleagues think that you are ‘so lucky’
to travel to all of these places. They do
not understand what it entails.”LIFESTYLE FACTORS
According to the Kingston University
research, 76 per cent say they are
less likely to have a balanced diet or
exercise when travelling for business,
and 73 per cent experience reduced
quality sleep. At the same time,
46 per cent say they are more likely to
consume alcohol while travelling for
work, and 35 per cent are more likely
to visit bars and nightclubs.
“Conferences and events are
notoriously good at providing a world
where access to free drinks and late
nights is the norm,” says Holman.
“And not every hotel has g ym or
leisure facilities or healthy menu
and snack choices, or is in a suitable
location for outdoor exercise.”
Lewis says: “Increased workload
and external demands, plus decreased
resilience triggered by lifestyle factors
equals emotional exhaustion, one of the
three component factors in burnout.”
Signs of emotional exhaustion vary
from person to person, but commonsymptoms include sleep disruption,
tiredness, lack of motivation,
irritability, absent-mindedness, anger,
feeling drained, a sense of dread, and
a sense that something will go wrong.
“The key is any behaviour that is out
of character. We need to treat it as a
wake-up call,” Lewis says.
The standard advice for preventing
travel burnout is to upgrade your seat
and hotel rooms and allow time in
your work schedule to decompress
from trips. But not everyone has those
options. As Holman says: “When
you know your work is piling up,
time away from the office after a trip
is likely to add to your stress. And
the trend for ‘bleisure’, encouraging
business travellers to tag a weekend
on to trips to enjoy some relaxation
or sightseeing, doesn’t work for those
with families back home.”
Treating burnout is complex, says
Jayne Morris, an executive coach
and author of Burnout to Brilliance:
Strategies for Sustainable Success
(Changemakers Books). “Typically,
you reach the point where jumping
ship seems to be the only option. But
this is not always a viable solution. Fora start, it’s hard to be your best in a job
interview when you are in this state.
And there is also the danger of ‘out
of the frying pan into the fire’, which
happened to me ten years ago.”
Morris left a high-profile but
exhausting marketing job at the
BBC in search of a career with more
meaning but ended up burning
out. “I knew I needed a change but
approached it with my usual ‘push
myself as hard as I can’ approach, and
signed up for a fast-track teaching
programme. Within a few months I
was teaching teenagers in an under-
resourced inner-city school, where I
had very little departmental support.”
The tipping point came when
Morris went to bed with f lu and
didn’t get up for six months. “I was
diagnosed with post-viral fatigue
syndrome and labyrinthitis [an inner
ear infection], but in retrospect I can
see it was burnout.”
As Morris found, recovery from
burnout can take several months
and requires a change in mindset. “I
realised I couldn’t sustain a way of
working that never allowed me to
recover from stress or exhaustion.