Glossary

Burnout — a syndrome with three components arising from chronic workplace stress: exhaustion, cynicism or detachment, and reduced sense of efficacy. Classified as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical diagnosis. Not a synonym for tiredness.

Demand-control — the finding that high job demands are far more harmful when combined with low control over the work. Control is the modifier, which makes it the cheapest available intervention.

Detachment — psychological disengagement from work during non-work time. The mechanism by which rest produces recovery. Someone who checks messages on holiday has not detached, whatever their location.

Efficacy — the sense that one's effort makes a difference. Its reduction is the third burnout component and the one most often overlooked, because it does not look like distress.

Job crafting — small negotiated adjustments to task mix, method or relationships within an existing role. One of the few individual-level interventions with a reasonable evidence base, because it changes the work rather than the person's tolerance of it.

Leading indicator — a measure that moves before outcomes do: hours worked, leave taken, vacancy duration, meeting load. As opposed to lagging indicators such as turnover and absence, which confirm rather than steer.

Presenteeism — being present at work while functioning at reduced capacity, typically through illness or exhaustion. Frequently costs more than absence and is measured almost nowhere.

Proximity bias — the tendency for physically present employees to receive more attention, opportunity and advancement. Measurable, and it determines whether flexible arrangements carry a career cost.

Psychological safety — a team-level belief that interpersonal risks are acceptable: admitting mistakes, disagreeing, asking for help. Not the absence of pressure and not general pleasantness.

Psychosocial risk — workplace hazards arising from how work is designed and managed rather than from physical conditions. Within the scope of workplace health duties in a growing number of jurisdictions.

Role ambiguity — not knowing what one is responsible for. Distinct from role conflict.

Role conflict — being subject to incompatible expectations, so that success is impossible by definition. The more damaging of the two, and the less often addressed.

Six areas — workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values. The framework used throughout these notes to locate a mismatch between the job and the person.

Terms avoided here

"Resilience" is used to mean both a personal trait and an organisational property, and the ambiguity usually shifts responsibility onto individuals. These notes name the specific condition instead.

"Wellness" describes lifestyle programmes; these notes are about working conditions, which is a different subject with a different evidence base.

"Engagement" measures something related and not identical, and its composite scores conceal exactly the variation worth having.

"Self-care" is reasonable advice to an individual and unreasonable as an employer's response to conditions the employer designed.

"Support" frequently means provision offered instead of change. These notes say what is being offered and what is being changed, separately.

On the evidence base

A brief note on how confident to be about anything in this field.

The six-area framework and the demand-control relationship are long-standing and well supported.

The relative weakness of individual interventions compared with organisational ones is consistent across reviews, though effect sizes vary.

Specific intervention studies are frequently small, in one sector, and hard to generalise.

Measurement instruments vary, so figures from different studies are often not comparable.

Much of the practical detail here comes from practice rather than trials, because randomised studies of organisational change are rare for obvious reasons.

Treat the frameworks as well founded and the specific tactics as reasonable defaults to be tested in your own setting — which is what the measurement notes are for.

How to read these notes

A short orientation for anyone arriving at the collection rather than at one page.

Start with the foundations if the subject is new, particularly the six areas, which the rest refers back to.

Start with measurement if you have a programme that is not working.

Start with the manager section if you are one, since most of what is within your gift is there.

Start with work design if you already know where the pressure is.

The reference section states the boundaries — what an employer cannot fix, and where obligation rather than benefit applies.

None of it is clinical or legal advice, and the notes say so where it matters.