Combatting staff burnout in mental health: key managerial and leadership tasks that are fundamental to staff wellbeing and retention

Mental health services in Australia are struggling to recruit and retain adequately qualified and experienced staff. High turnover rates and understaffing is a significant problem faced by mental health services around the world and the most common reason for this is high levels of stress and staff burnout in this field. Mental health workers are at high risk of burnout, and this not only impacts negatively on the employee, but also on the quality of the service for clients and the functioning of organisations. While staff stress and burnout can be, at least in part, attributed to the emotional demands of mental health work, organisational management and leadership style plays a critical role in protecting staff against burnout and creating workplace environments that buffer against it. This paper outlines a range of key managerial and leadership tasks that are important to staff wellbeing and retention. A discussion of these tasks is the focus of this paper.