Staff cuts, heavier workloads, ageing, and the trend towards atypical employment contracts have proved to be a major challenge to employees' ability to adjust, which often places a considerable strain on both individual employees' and the entire workplace's ability to cope with changes. Work pressure and exhaustion have become topical problems. The ways to prevent exhaustion at work range in dimension and level from social policy down to individual psychology. Work-related stress refers to a situation where the demands of the job exceed the employees' own resources. Prolonged stress may develop into exhaustion, where the workload has long since increased beyond one's resources.
Exhaustion is a gradual process.
Advanced exhaustion of this type is often called burn-out. Research on exhaustion at work has largely concentrated on nursing and teaching professions, but the problems that trigger exhaustion can appear in any sector. In the information technology sector, for instance, exhaustion is induced by cognitive overload and problems associated with handling information which has to be updated constantly. There is a wide range of reasons which can make a person susceptible to fatigue and exhaustion at work or induce or aggravate it. People who are the most likely to suffer from exhaustion are usually diligent, conscientious and strongly committed to their work.