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ON THE MOVE DEWBERRY PROMOTES KIRT LADWA AND DAVID REVETTE IN NEW JERSEY Dewberry , a privately held professional services firm, has announced the promotion of nearly 50 professionals nationwide, including two in its New Jersey, offices. Kirt Ladwa, PE, has been promoted to associate in the Mount Laurel office, and David Revette, PE, has been promoted to associate in the Parsippany office. Kirt Ladwa is a project manager and has nearly 20 years of experience. He has spent his entire career with Dewberry in the
transportation department, where he oversees highway-related projects, as well as personnel management. He earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Widener University. Ladwa is a professional engineer in New Jersey, and is a member of the American Society of Highway Engineers. David Revette is a project manager and has nearly 10 years of experience. He is a lead for the firm’s electric vehicle infrastructure practice, involving design, planning, development, and engineering services. Revette earned his
bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Clarkson University and is a professional engineer in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Dewberry is a leading, market-facing firm with a proven history of providing professional services to a wide variety of public- and private-sector clients. Established in 1956, Dewberry is headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, with more than 50 locations and more than 2,000 professionals nationwide.
MERCEDEZ THOMPSON, from page 3
night, just like you would a work meeting ❚ ❚ Get outside – start by taking a 30-minute walk after work every day ❚ ❚ Set goals unrelated to work and prioritize them – perhaps you want to lose 15 pounds, try a new recipe weekly, or read 20 books this year ❚ ❚ Be transparent about your workload This final strategy is critical to your well-being because it hints at a larger problem. We cannot solve organizational issues with a bit of self-care. A meditation app and a nutritious meal can only go so far. We must communicate a reasonable workload with our managers and stop wearing our burnout as a badge of honor. Furthermore, firms must adapt at an organizational level to beat burnout and protect their most valuable asset: people. The responsibility for burnout does not rest on an individual’s shoulders alone. Early in the pandemic, firms failed to adjust workloads. In many, demands increased. As hiring halted, responsibilities expanded and hours climbed. Parents grappled with working from home while caring for children. Employees without children were pressured to stay later, do more. Zoom meetings multiplied. Emails arrived at all hours of the night. And employees, terrified of losing their job in a recession, went into overdrive. Firms had their own fires to fight. Uncertainty was at an all-time high and profit goals were suddenly unfeasible. Yet, the firm that ignores the realities of burnout will pay for it in low productivity, sinking culture, and turnover. The real leaders of today are those engaging in burnout prevention strategies that alleviate overburdened employees, reduce the number of meetings, encourage paid time off, promote flexible hours, and provide training for empathetic management. Burnout isn’t something that appeared with COVID-19, but it is amplified by it. The only sustainable solution is one shared by employee and firm with honesty and awareness. MERCEDEZ THOMPSON finds and shares a firm’s unique stories to connect with clients and build business. She is a proposal manager at Michael Baker International, where she leads capture planning and proposal development for company strategic opportunities. Before entering the AEC industry, Mercedez taught writing at the University of Nevada and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. She earned her master’s degree in English from Indiana University and her bachelor’s degree in literature from Ohio State University. You can find her on LinkedIn or her blog at simplywritingblog.com.
LET’S TALK BURNOUT. Burnout is workplace stress that stems from exhaustion and makes it difficult to function and perform. It manifests in cynicism, lack of satisfaction, irritability, decreased motivation, difficulty concentrating, and even in health conditions such as insomnia and depression. The AEC industry is prone to burnout because of constant demands to perform well, unrelenting deadlines, and unmanageable workloads. Simply put, there is always more work to do, more work to win, and high competition for every job. Burnout was exacerbated by COVID-19 because the lines between work and home blurred as we faced unprecedented insecurities. The Catch-22 of burnout is that overworking eventually makes you less productive, less creative, and detached. It can result in isolation, procrastination, withdrawal, and illness. Perhaps bigger than burnout itself is our willingness to wear it as a badge of honor. This is the behavior I recognized in my seemingly innocent perusal of timecards. We are enamored by the “grind,” by how much we get done, how long we work, how little we sleep or relax. We are all in a constant competition to work harder than the next person. Moreover, we actually measure our value this way – taking a misplaced pride in our fatigue and fearing nothing more than being perceived as unmotivated. This isn’t surprising. The stereotype that millennials are particularly unambitious has propelled a reverence of overwork in our young workforce. Combine that trend with an always-on digital world and a global pandemic that transforms kitchen tables into pseudo-offices, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. SO, WHAT CAN WE DO? Setting healthy boundaries begins at the level of the individual. If you are feeling the effects of burnout, and some estimates hold that more than 80 percent of us are, you need to act fast. ❚ ❚ Establish non-working hours and stick to them ❚ ❚ Separate your home office from the rest of your home, if possible ❚ ❚ Shut down your computer rather than allowing that lingering blue light to entice you after hours ❚ ❚ Remove your work email from your personal mobile device ❚ ❚ Schedule after-work activities, like at-home yoga or movie
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THE ZWEIG LETTER APRIL 26, 2021, ISSUE 1389
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