Finding Your Way Through the Fire: How Burnout Affects Social Work Supervisors’ Role and Retention

In the dynamic landscape of social work, leaders play a pivotal role in ensuring positive outcomes for clients and practitioners. However, the increasing demands and responsibilities placed on social work leaders can lead to burnout, ultimately affecting their efficacy and retention. Despite its prevalence, supervisor burnout remains a largely overlooked issue in the field.

This presentation brings together the results of a systematic literature review that looked at how supervisor burnout affects role efficacy and retention. It showed that there is a big research gap because only three qualifying studies were found. The findings emphasize the critical necessity of addressing leaders’ well-being for organizational success, drawing from the innovative conceptualization developed from established theoretical perspectives to propose a strength-based, relational-cultural, with a trauma-informed lens.

This framework, which was the impetus for introducing a comprehensive toolkit, offers tailored strategies spanning individual and organizational levels to mitigate burnout among social work supervisors, aiming to enhance role efficacy and overall job satisfaction while empowering supervisors to prioritize their well-being and improve outcomes for supervisors and social workers alike.

This presentation underscores the importance of addressing supervisor burnout in social work. Through collaborative efforts and a commitment to supporting the supervisor’s well-being, we can create a more resilient and effective social work workforce.