Stress and Employee Burnout at a European Telecommunications Company

At his home in a smart neighbourhood on the outskirts of a large European city, Peter liked
to proudly display his scores of trophies from marathons from New York to Paris. “You need
a certain spirit and mental focus for long distance running” said his sister Carly. Peter, 51,
was a perfectionist with a healthy lifestyle. He had two passions in life: sport and his senior
job with a European Telecommunications Company. But at his desk, Peter was living a
private hell that made a mockery of the ‘happy face’ he brought to work each day.
On a bank holiday, he was once found wandering along a main road, dazed and unsure of
where he was. In his personal diaries he had previously written entries describing that he felt
he could not take any more. He denounced an alleged company culture of management by
terror and constant stress. “I have become a wreck”, he wrote. Other comments he made
about his job was how he brought his vast workload home and his disturbed sleep. In this
company there seemed to have been pressure from the top to slim down operations by
destabilising workers: people were undermined to the point that they got ill. Employees
accepted far too heavy workloads out of fear of losing senior jobs. Peter had no other
problems, no money worries, no family concerns

However, amid restructuring, Peter was not the only one to suffer. Scores of other
employees underwent stress, which led to burnout in most of the severe cases. Under
government pressure the European Telecommunications company launched negotiations
with the unions over the issues of employee stress. The company introduced helplines with
counsellors and medical experts available, and temporarily suspended staff relocations. But
staff began to break the silence to the media on their working conditions.

Workers on call-centre floors said they had to ask permission to go to the toilet or file a
written explanation of the going one-minute over a lunch break. Senior staff alleged being
bullied and being repeatedly forced to move job. Many turned to antidepressants and some
had to take extended sick leave.

Staff were trying to come to terms with even more of their colleagues going off sick with
burnout. “I’m scared to speak out”, one worker in her 40s said. Sally, 32, who dealt with
business customers over unpaid bills emailed her father from her open plan office. She
wrote of her fear of changing boss – the latest in a long line of changes to her work. “I’m
more than lost”, she typed. She had struggled with depression before but was living with
what her father called ‘hell’ at work. Some days she could not get up or if she did was in
tears.

“A wave has started, now no one knows how to stop it”, A spokesperson from the union said.
“Unfortunately, there will be a repeat of staff becoming sick and we are seeing a snowball
effect. The directors have to completely change their management style and put back some
humanity into the company. Every case is complex, but it’s clear that recently work is what
has been pushing people over the edge”.

Another union representative, said, “it’s not change, it’s the way it’s being handled”.
Alan was another one of the workers who suffered from depression and burnout: he was a
skilled technician at one of the research and development centres. On speaking out he said,
“the malaise is everywhere, from client liaison staff who are not allowed enough rigidly
scheduled minutes to talk properly to customers, to technicians who are not allowed the time
to do thorough repairs. Only money and marketing counts, not the quality of our work. I’ve
been moved three times. You could get a call on Friday at 11 am saying you had to find
somewhere else to go in the company by Monday morning. I was lucky, I clung to interesting
jobs. Other highly skilled technicians ended up in call centres, chasing unpaid bills. Even so,
I’ve been on antidepressants, my marriage broke up and I can’t sleep at night unless I take
pills”.

A psychologist commenting on the organisation remarked “management by stress” was part
of a new trend across Europe. After interviewing a cross-section of staff, she identified
feelings of being undervalued and of low self-esteem running from directory enquiries, callcentre staff and sales assistants in mobile phone shops, right up to senior managers. Teams
were deliberately broken up to leave workers in isolation and feeling like failures in a
performance driven system. “I found normal people whose psyches had been weakened by
work”. she said.

One senior worker in her 50s who was demoted to work in a call-centre said that she felt that
she had stepped back in time to an era where mainly young women staff were terrorised and
controlled, made to make several sales an hour from dictated scrips. “There was a lot of
illness and a lot of depression, I had to leave”, she said.
Another worker said, “It’s shocking that a respected colleague (Peter) who was so good at
his job was the first one who cracked”, he said, “if these tragedies are to stop, things have to
change at the top”.

A spokesman for the European Telecommunications Company said of the allegations by
staff about poor work conditions “these are complex subjects. I could very quickly find you
testimony by people for whom everything is going well in their jobs. But we are facing a
sequence of very dramatic events that means people expressing themselves perhaps more
freely than before. Many other workers don’t recognise these complaints, as they have had a
very good experience of the company changes over recent years. We do not deny that there
have been difficulties or problems in certain places but what is certain is that these
complaints do not reflect a complete picture of the company. We have taken on board the
staff concerns and launched a series of measures to deal with them”. He said Peter had
been promoted and seen his salary rise as part of technological changes and his colleagues
had not realised how difficult he had found this change.

Ultimately the European Telecommunications Company, in late 2019, was found
guilty of causing employee depression and employee burnout. They were ordered to
pay a large sum of money in fines and damages to affected families, employees and
other stakeholders.

Case Study Questions
Acting as an expert Occupational/Business Psychologist carrying out consultancy
work, you have been appointed to write a 2,500-word report with a focus on how to
resolve the issues outlined in the case study. This report needs to firstly scrutinise
the key issues/problems in the case study and secondly to then make
recommendations to resolve them. You should therefore include:
 Introduction to your report
 Demonstration of consultancy skills by referring to the consultancy cycle
 Consideration of what poor management practices are highlighted in the case
study that might give rise to the feelings of stress experienced by some of the
staff. Relate these key issues to relevant psychological literature.
 Make feasible recommendations (according to the literature) on how you
would approach change in the organisation in this case study in order to help
protect employees and to repair the harmful work practices.
 Incorporate a change model
 You must refer to the psychological literature throughout.