What drives Auditor burnout?

Bright Yue Hong, an assistant professor ​in the School of Accountancy and MIS, clarifies five misconceptions about burnout and identifies a new cause of burnout: "a misfit." This refers to the gap between what employees need and what employers provide. Hong and her coauthors find that this gap drives rapid burnout in early career auditors at large firms, in addition to well-known drivers such as workload. Their findings may be of use to those in other high-pressure professions. 

 

In this Q&A, Hong discusses her research, which was recently featured in the California Management Review Insights​. 

 

You and your colleagues found early career auditors frequently experience burnout, even just two years into their careers. What are the primary drivers of such rapid burnout for young professionals? 

Workload, deadline pressure, hierarchical teams and staffing shortages are among the important environmental drivers of burnout. Young professionals take on the majority of fieldwork because audit teams are hierarchical. Workloads are high, typically 60 or more hours per week during busy season to meet deadlines, and auditors can have multiple busy seasons in a year. Staffing shortages exacerbate all the job demands: teams are doing more with fewer people. 

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