Dismantling burnout: Insights from a public relations practitioner’s autoethnography

Dimensions of burnout framework

Burnout is an extended response to chronic workplace demands and stressors, recognised as an occupational syndrome characterised by a gradual shift from high motivation to emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and feelings of ineffectiveness (Maslach and Goldberg, 1998). Maslach and Leiter’s (2022) ‘Dimensions of Burnout’ framework identifies three core symptoms—emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and feelings of ineffectiveness—and builds upon earlier foundational work by Maslach and her colleagues (Maslach and Goldberg, 1998; Maslach and Jackson, 1981).

Although burnout manifests individually, Maslach and Leiter (2022) emphasise that it primarily arises from organisational and situational contexts, suggesting that individual burnout experiences cannot be fully understood independently of their work environments. Maslach and Goldberg (1998) highlight the critical importance of investigating how situational factors influence individual behaviour and perception, raising essential questions about workplace contexts:

An individual's experience of burnout can only be understood within the context of his or her work environment … How do situational factors shape or constrain individual behaviour? How does the person perceive the situation - its risks and benefits, or its prevailing social norms? (p. 69).

Despite the importance of these contextual questions, they have remained largely unanswered within the public relations academic literature, creating a significant gap in our understanding of burnout in this field.

Several studies have illustrated an unhealthy picture behind the scenes of public relations work. Waddington et al. (2025) found 53% of women cited burnout as their top career challenge, ahead of limited advancement opportunities and a high-pressure work environment. Muck Rack’s (2024b) study of more than 2000 United States-based public relations professionals found half of the respondents considered quitting their job in public relations that year due to exhaustion or burnout. About 44% of the study’s respondents said they had left a previous job for the same reason, citing heavy workloads, impending deadlines and being “always on” as the main contributors to stress. Considering such alarming figures outlined in these quantitative studies, there is more scope to explore how and why burnout happens in the public relations context.

The job demands and resources model (JD-R model)

Other recent studies on burnout have complemented Maslach’s conceptualisation of burnout as a response to excessive workplace stress by employing the Job Demands and Resources Model (JD-R model). Initially developed by Demerouti et al. (2001), the JD-R model is a theoretical framework that enriches our understanding of burnout by explaining how workplace conditions contribute to or buffer against burnout symptoms. Specifically, the JD-R model classifies workplace characteristics into two categories: job demands and job resources. Job demands are defined as physical, social, or organisational aspects of the job that require sustained physical or mental effort. In contrast, job resources refer to those physical, psychological, social, or organisational aspects of a role that can mitigate the negative impacts of job demands, facilitate achievement of work goals, reduce overall demands, or stimulate personal development.

According to the JD-R model, burnout primarily arises when job demands are high and job resources are inadequate, resulting in increased emotional exhaustion and cynicism (Bakker et al., 2023). While emotional exhaustion and cynicism are the two emphasised dimensions within the JD-R model, reduced personal accomplishment can also be acknowledged as the presence or absence of resources that contribute to this burnout symptom. A lack of resources such as poor autonomy and poor social support is connected to reduced personal accomplishment (Schaufeli et al., 1996), as are low job rewards (Bakker et al., 2023). Viewed through this lens, burnout is conceptualised as the negative pole on a continuum of employee wellbeing, with work engagement positioned at the opposite, positive end (Dall’Ora et al., 2020).

Recognising the complexity and variability of burnout experiences, scholars—including the JD-R model’s original theorists—have proposed various adaptations to better capture the nuances of workplace demands and resources. These adaptations include the “person × situation approach,” “multilevel JD-R theory,” “new proactive approaches,” and the “work–home resources model” (Bakker et al., 2023). Such developments integrate the JD-R model with other literatures, such as self-regulation, to explore new explanations and potential remedies for burnout. These remedies emphasise the strategic deployment of organisational resources, effective hiring and training practices, and fostering personal resources, including emotional intelligence and proactive personalities (Bakker and De Vries, 2021). Exploring these variations is particularly valuable to the public relations field, where burnout emerges from complex interactions of individual, organisational, and societal factors.

Building upon Maslach’s Dimensions of Burnout framework and the JD-R model, Chan et al. (2015) adapted the JD-R model to specifically consider the impact of information communication technology (ICT), reflecting its significance within the communications context including public relations. Their study found that managing client expectations and meeting deadlines, as well as striving for perfection, were among the primary job demands faced by communications practitioners. Conversely, job variety and social support from colleagues emerged as key job resources. ICT was perceived predominantly as a job resource rather than a demand; however, the continuous use of technology also contributed to blurring boundaries between work and non-work time. However, Chan et al. (2015) did not explicitly link these identified job demands and resources to emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and feelings of ineffectiveness, leaving the precise manifestation of burnout symptoms in response to these workplace factors unexplored.

Gendered dimensions of burnout

The experience of burnout within public relations is shaped by gendered organisational dynamics and broader societal expectations. Research focused on gender and women (Bilowol et al., 2024) revealed six critical workplace factors perceived as contributing to burnout in the Australian public relations context: unrelenting pressures; disregard of public relations counsel; disproportionate outcomes relative to effort; management, organisational, and client misunderstandings of the public relations role; lack of professional respect; and recognition that workplace stressors are experienced variably. Public relations shares many characteristics with other feminised professions, such as teaching and nursing, particularly regarding the emotional labour involved in continuously managing client and organisational relationships and expectations (Yeomans, 2019).

Although the JD-R model has been explicitly applied to study burnout within public relations (Chan et al., 2015), it features extensively in burnout studies focused on the teaching and nursing professions similarly characterised by feminised workforces and significant emotional demands. As such, valuable insights can be drawn from the burnout literature within teaching and nursing, professions similarly marked by gendered structures and emotional labour. Burnout research in these fields consistently supports the JD-R model, underscoring the significant role of job demands and resources in shaping experiences of burnout across its dimensions (Dall’Ora et al., 2020; Saloviita and Pakarinen, 2021).

Schools, like public relations environments, are complex workplaces characterised by significant demands, including workload pressure, role conflict, colleague conflicts, and student behavioural issues (Saloviita and Pakarinen, 2021). Skaalvik and Skaalvik’s (2020) longitudinal study of Norwegian high school teachers examined relationships between teachers’ perceptions of job demands and resources and burnout dimensions. Their findings indicated a lack of time to complete tasks was the strongest predictor of emotional exhaustion, while low student motivation and working in contexts with dissonant values were the primary predictors of cynicism. Conversely, autonomy was positively associated with increased perceptions of personal accomplishment, whereas low student motivation negatively impacted perceived accomplishment. A comprehensive study of 4,567 Finnish primary school teachers conducted by Saloviita and Pakarinen (2021) employed a similarly integrative JD-R approach, identifying individual teacher characteristics and environmental (student and organisational) factors contributing to burnout. Unexpectedly, they found burnout levels to be highest among subject teachers and lowest among special education teachers.

In nursing, similar patterns emerge. Burnout has been consistently associated with job demands including high workloads, emotional stressors, role conflict, and extended shifts. Dall’Ora et al. (2020), in their theoretical review of burnout research in nursing encompassing 91 studies, identified clear associations between job demands and burnout dimensions, with role conflict, limited autonomy, and lack of task variety being particularly influential factors. Broetje, Jenny and Bauer’s (2020) integrative review of 14 quantitative and qualitative nursing-focused JD-R model studies identified workload pressures, insufficient formal rewards, and interference between work and personal life as critical job demands. Conversely, supervisor support, fair and authentic management practices, transformational leadership styles, interpersonal relationships, autonomy, and availability of professional resources emerged as essential job resources.

Collectively, these insights from teaching and nursing literature provide valuable parallels to the public relations context, illuminating the importance of examining the nuanced interplay between gender, occupational demands, and resource allocation as they relate to burnout experiences. However, there remains a significant gap in our understanding of how these individual and organisational factors shape burnout within public relations. To address this gap, the present autoethnographic study seeks to explore the research question:

How do individual and organisational factors in the public relations sector contribute to burnout, and what role did these elements play in the first author’s personal experience as a professional in this field?

Through analysing and critically reflecting upon her lived experience, this inquiry aims to offer deeper insights into the complex dynamics underlying burnout in public relations.

Data collection

The first author’s experience with burnout occurred during her second year working as a senior media and issues advisor in government public relations when she was in her mid-to-late 20s. She later wrote a reflection of roughly 1550 words as part of her research exploring possible causes of burnout in the Australian public relations context to make sense of her own experience.

After the first author changed her doctoral studies from a thesis-based approach to a publication based one, in 2023 her supervisors suggested she write an autoethnography and use her reflection as its basis. Although at the time she wrote the reflection she had no intentions of using it for data for an autoethnography, it eventually became the foundation of this analytical autoethnography. According to Anderson (2006), analytic autoethnography is a study whereby the researcher is: (1) a full member in the research group or setting, (2) visible as such a member in published texts, and (3) committed to improving theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena (2006, p. 375). This autoethnography aims to apply five requirements Anderson insists are key to an analytical autoethnography: (1) complete member researcher (CMR) status, (2) analytic reflexivity, (3) narrative visibility of the researcher’s self, (4) dialogue with informants beyond the self, and (5) commitment to theoretical analysis (p. 378).

Data analysis

The first author’s reflective narrative served as a rich, contextually grounded data source, which was coded and analysed by the first researcher, before her findings and recommendations were collaboratively reflected upon by all three researchers to deepen insight and enhance the credibility and rigour of the findings and recommendations.

To analyse her reflection, the first author conducted a thematic textual analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2022). This author coded the autoethnography according to Maslach and Leiter’s (2022) three dimensions of burnout, highlighting where she determined there was evidence of emotional exhaustion, cynicism and a sense of ineffectiveness. She also coded data that did not appear to completely align with any of the dimensions but still felt relevant to the autoethnography’s research question. The first author further coded the autoethnography according to the JD-R model (Bakker et al., 2023), determining what were job demands and what were a lack of job resources. As the literature outlines that high job demands fuel emotional exhaustion and a lack of job resources prompts cynicism, she then compared the coding according to Maslach and Leiter’s framework to the coding in line with the JD-R model before writing up her initial findings and recommendations.

In response to common criticisms of autoethnography, the first author chose to involve two academics in the critical reflection of her organisational autoethnography situated in a “previous/other life organisation” (Sambrook and Herrmann, 2018: p. 224). This collaborative approach felt ‘safer’, and was inspired by Sambrook and Herrmann’s (2018) following questions:

What experiments have been conducted with alternative autoethnographic ways of doing research to attempt to protect researchers and the researched, and what has been learned through the process? (p. 226).

In keeping with this reflexive and protective stance, the first author invited her co-authors to engage collaboratively in critically reflecting upon her narrative, findings, and recommendations emerging from her account of burnout.

Building on this protective and reflexive approach, the study does not constitute a collaborative or co-produced autoethnography in the more conventional sense of joint fieldwork (Johnson and Eaves, 2013; Lee and Gregory, 2008), nor shared processes of coding for data analysis (Bieler et al., 2021). Nonetheless, it embraces what L’Etang et al. (2012, p. 520) describe as “the breadth of opportunity open to ethnographers working in the field of PR”. Specifically, we adopt a collaborative approach to the analysis and sense-making of the first author’s experience of burnout in public relations, thereby enhancing the study’s legitimacy and trustworthiness. The three authors worked collaboratively to critically reflect on the narrative, findings, and emerging recommendations, identifying points of resonance and dissonance in the author’s account, and engaging in collective dialogue to surface shared meanings and contestations. This process involved regular video conference discussions and the use of shared online documents to iteratively develop and enrich the analysis.

Drawing on Anderson’s (2006) call for analytic reflexivity and dialogic engagement, our approach involved a multi-staged process where each collaborator brought distinct disciplinary lenses and personal experiences to bear on the narrative. By working collaboratively our aim was to create a layered interpretive framework that aligns with Herrmann, Barnhill, and Poole’s (2013) concept of a co-authored organisational autoethnography. This dialogic process enabled the first author to move beyond a solitary, introspective narrative to one that is socially situated and critically interrogated. As De Andrade (2014) suggests, such an approach enriches the methodological rigour of autoethnography by ensuring the ‘vital data’ of personal experience is situated within broader cultural and ethical contexts. Our collaborative analysis thus mirrors the process described by Herrmann et al. (2013), where co-authors navigate their own assumptions and positionalities to produce a more nuanced and polyvocal account. In this way, the methodology acknowledges meaning making is not only personal but also relational, shaped through ongoing negotiation between selves and others.

Findings applying the dimensions of burnout framework

Findings applying the JD-R model

Applying the JD-R model (Bakker et al., 2023) to the first author’s vignette, it is apparent a combination of high job demands and insufficient job resources contributed to her emotional exhaustion, cynicism and feelings of ineffectiveness. The following snippet illustrates interplay between stressful job demands such as a high workload and limited resourcing such as a lack of managerial support:

…he delegated everything to me, even the writing of his emails sometimes, but then would proceed to micromanage, resulting in tasks taking so much more time than I felt they should have.

Job demands are defined as the physical, psychological, social or organisational aspects of the job that require sustained physical, cognitive and/or emotional effort (and are therefore linked with physiological and/or psychological costs) (Bakker et al., 2023). Job demands including a huge workload and long hours resulting from servicing the 24-h news cycle, performing tasks outside of her role, and being micromanaged contributed to her emotional exhaustion.

Job resources, meanwhile, are defined as the physical, psychological, social, or organisational aspects of the job that have motivating potential, are functional in achieving work goals, that regulate the impact of job demands, and that stimulate learning and personal growth (Bakker et al., 2023). The job demands in her role were compounded by a lack of job resources including a lack of managerial support, limited staff resources, and a lack of autonomy and control due to counsel being ignored that contributed to her experiencing all three dimensions of burnout.

There are similarities between the job demands and lack of job resources that contributed to the first author’s burnout experience and those found to contribute to burnout, according to the JD-R model, in the public relations, teaching and nursing literature such as deadlines, time pressure, role conflict and limited autonomy. Meeting deadlines was a primary job demand linked to burnout for Hong Kong’s communication industry (Chan et al., 2015), with time pressure found to be the biggest contributor to emotional exhaustion in teaching (Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2020). Similar to the blurring of the first author’s work and non-work time because of being on-call 24-7, Chan et al.'s (2015) study also found continuous use of technology contributed to a lack of boundaries between work and non-work time among Hong Kong communicators. Broetje et al. (2020) argued interference between work and personal life was a critical job demand fuelling burnout in nursing. Like the role conflict the first author experienced due to being delegated tasks outside of her role, and the lack of autonomy that resulted from her counsel being ignored, Dall’Ora et al. (2020) found role conflict and limited autonomy to be influential factors in burnout in nursing.

Confusion and frustration

During and after the first author’s burnout experience, it became evident her symptoms extended beyond exhaustion, cynicism, and feelings of ineffectiveness. She also experienced significant confusion, which was intertwined with feelings of frustration, because she could not clearly identify or articulate what she was going through, as encapsulated in the following snippets:

Throughout my career I had always felt bullet-proof, and had thrived on deadlines and, in public relations, tackling issues and crises. I felt like I did not know exactly what was happening to me; I couldn’t pinpoint it. But I knew that the more I did, the more work was heaped upon me and that the cracks were emerging.

Confusion is defined as the affective experience arising when individuals encounter conflicting information between their existing knowledge and new experiences, resulting in difficulty comprehending or adapting to these discrepancies (Baker et al., 2025). Frustration occurs when an individual is prevented from reaching a specific goal (Baker et al., 2025). Baker et al. (2025) reconceptualise these intertwined experiences as “confrustion,” noting confusion and frustration share similar causes and effects on learning and achievement. Confusion is characterised by uncertainty about its causes, while frustration involves the inability to overcome obstacles or achieve intended goals.