Commitment | Are you being 'breadcrumbed' at work?

New terminology entering the public lexicon can be extremely beneficial for HR; in the early 1970s American Psychologist Herbert Freudenberger, unable to properly reference the consequences of severe stress and high-pressure causing illness in the workplace, coined the term ‘burnout’.

His contribution to workplace wellbeing in the following decades is immeasurable as workers were for the first time able to concisely identify their condition accurately without resorting to complicated descriptions. In fact, so accurate was Freudenberger’s identification of the issue that earlier this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) officially certified burnout as a medical condition.

As wellbeing and work-life balance become more and more significant in the conversations that workers have with HR, other such terms have been coined; last week HR Grapevine reported on a word that Metro created to describe those employees who continue to take on work even if their plate is already full.

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Burnout | Do you suffer from workplace 'offerism'?

The term, ‘offerism’ was almost immediately adopted by workers on Twitter – with Life Coach Tracey Livingston telling Metro that, “offerism likely stems from beliefs and feelings of ‘not being good enough’ or perfectionism or the need to overdeliver in order to be liked or validated.”