Is Your Cup Empty? Using the ProQOL Survey to Measure Burnout and Compassion in Your Organization

We’ve all heard the saying: “You can’t pour from an empty cup.” Yet, in helping professions, it’s often easy to keep giving until there’s nothing left. I experienced this personally. After ten years as a classroom teacher, I left due to burnout. 

The warning signs appeared gradually: a 120-mile round-trip commute daily, a never-ending backlog of grading and assessments, and redesigning the curriculum to be more interactive, which I deeply believed in but cost me valuable hours. 

By Friday evening, I was completely drained and spent most Saturdays on the couch. A never-ending to-do list overshadowed weekends with my husband. Sunday nights brought dread instead of rest, and I even wished I were sick to justify staying home. (In teaching, being sick doesn’t even guarantee a real break; you still have to prepare lessons for the substitute, often while feeling terrible.) 

After a decade, I decided to leave. Fortunately, I was able to move into a part-time position at the same school, which offered the flexibility I needed. However, I wish I had better tools earlier to recognize the signs and address the issue before reaching the breaking point.

The Professional Quality of Life Survey (ProQOL) is one such tool.

What the ProQOL Measures

The ProQOL is a practical, research-backed instrument that helps individuals and organizations take an honest look at professional well-being across three dimensions: burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion satisfaction.

Burnout reflects the slow erosion of motivation, energy, and meaning that builds over time. It’s not a single bad week; it’s what happens when demands consistently outpace recovery.

Secondary traumatic stress (sometimes called compassion fatigue) captures the emotional toll of repeated exposure to others’ pain. Helpers in social services, healthcare, and similar fields are especially vulnerable, often absorbing the weight of their clients’ experiences without realizing it.

Compassion satisfaction, on the other hand, is the positive counterweight to the sense of purpose and fulfillment that comes from meaningful work done well. This is what keeps people in the field. It’s worth protecting.

Understanding where you and your team fall on each of these scales is the first step toward making meaningful change.

Why Leaders Need to Take This Seriously

As a leader or supervisor, it can be tempting to focus exclusively on team performance and outcomes. But if your people are running on empty, those outcomes will suffer, and eventually, so will your retention.

Disengagement and over-involvement are two sides of the same coin. Some employees check out emotionally to protect themselves. Others become so enmeshed in their clients’ well-being that they lose their own footing. Both patterns signal that something in the environment isn’t supporting professional sustainability. The ProQOL gives you a starting point for that conversation with your team, and with yourself.

What You Can Do as a Leader

Review your policies and expectations. Are your practices actually giving people room to recover from emotional labor? Do staff have genuine opportunities to decompress and leave work at work? If the honest answer is no, that’s worth addressing not as a luxury, but as a retention strategy.

Model recovery yourself. Leaders set the tone. If you are visibly overworked and skipping breaks, your team will follow suit or burn out trying to keep up. Demonstrating healthy limits isn’t weakness; it’s leadership.

Shift from “what can I do” to “what can we do.” Burnout is often treated as an individual problem. But the most durable solutions are organizational, looking at workload distribution, supervision structures, and systemic support, and asking what needs to change at the environment level, not just the personal one.

What You Can Do as an Employee

If your own ProQOL results are raising flags, take them seriously. A high burnout score isn’t a character flaw; it’s data. Identify what’s within your control, be honest about what you need, and don’t hesitate to advocate for change. Individual resilience matters, but it has limits.

A Tool Worth Using

The ProQOL is free, easy to administer, and creates a common language for conversations that are often hard to start. Burnout accumulates quietly. Compassion fatigue looks like indifference in people who once cared deeply. Taking the time to measure where you are isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s the first step toward doing something about it.

Let’s Work Together

If you lead or work within an organization that serves children and families, this work matters, and so does the well-being of the people doing it. I offer workshops designed to help staff show up as their best selves so they can better serve the clients who need them most.

If you’re interested in exploring what a partnership could look like for your organization, I’d love to connect. Reach out to Kathy@wildewoodlearing.com and let’s start the conversation.

The ProQOL survey is publicly available at proqol.org.

Disclaimer: This article was produced with help from AI tools and checked by a human editor (me!). The ideas, personal stories, and opinions shared are solely those of the author.

Boundaries: The Key to Sustainable Connection in the Workplace

There once was a leader who cared very deeply for her staff. Let’s call her Kay. Now, Kay was a competent leader with many years of experience under her belt. She went out of her way to go above and beyond for her staff and the families and children they served. You could see in the way she checked in with her staff, stepped in when things got tough, and stayed late to ensure everything was covered. Kay wanted her staff to feel supported and connected. 

Most days, Kay would arrive early to work and be the first one through the office door. She would pause whatever she was doing to listen to a staff member’s concerns and stay up late following up on emails and work-related tasks. 

When a staff member felt overwhelmed, Kay stepped in and took something off their plate. When there was tension in the office, Kay worked to smooth it out. Kay had a very long “to-do” list that never stopped, and she truly maintained an open-door policy. 

She wanted to create a positive connection with her staff, but over time, something began to shift.

Kay felt exhausted most of the time and slept very little. She felt responsible for everyone — staff, clients, families, her own family — and the responsibilities didn’t seem to end.

The more Kay gave, the more people expected her to pick up the pieces. 

She loves to get outdoors and walk, but seems to have little time for it. When she does have time away from work, she spends it with her family, which leaves very little or no time for herself. 

Kay didn’t set clear boundaries, and if she continues on this path, she will burn out.

Does Kay sound familiar?  

In some respects, I was a “Kay”. I struggled to set my boundaries, and it wasn’t a skill that came naturally to me; it was one I had to practice. 

“Kay” is someone I often see helping organizations. Leaders who care deeply about their teams and the people they serve, and who, often without realizing it, take on more in the name of caring. But here is the truth:

Leaders don’t create a healthy workplace culture by doing everything. 

They create it by modeling what is sustainable.

When leaders practice setting clear, kind, and consistent boundaries, they build trust and safety, helping staff feel secure and supported.

A Trauma-Informed Lens: Boundaries Create Safety

One of the key pillars of my framework is safety. Safety is essential for creating a healthy workplace.

When boundaries are clear:

People know what to expect.

Stress levels are lower.

Trust increases due to consistency.

These are trauma-informed principles that help staff feel safer at work. They also apply to staff working with families and children.

Leaders who fail to model boundaries often unintentionally foster cultures where overgiving becomes the norm. Staff may start to think that being “helpful” means saying yes to everything, even if it harms their own well-being.

What do healthy boundaries look and sound like?

Healthy boundaries involve being clear about what we can and cannot handle while maintaining a relationship. For example, if Kay needed to set a boundary with a staff member who kept coming into her office to ask questions, she might say: “I want to support you, and I can talk for 5 minutes. I am not able to take this on today. Would you be willing to talk to me about the situation tomorrow morning?” This response is clear and kind, and Kay may need to repeat it to the staff member more than once. 

Keeping the Boundary

Setting a boundary is just the first step. Keeping it is where the real work happens. 

People often unintentionally test your boundaries. When this happens, you might fall back into old habits by giving in, over-explaining, or saying yes when you really want to say no. Sometimes you’re unaware of your boundaries until they are crossed. If a situation makes you feel uncomfortable, guilty, frustrated, or resentful, then a boundary might have been crossed. 

Instead of defaulting to your old behaviors, I suggest a simple RESET.

Regulate your nervous system by practicing the pause.

Empathize with the person by acknowledging their feelings

State your boundary clearly and kindly to them

Enforce the boundary by keeping it short, 1-2 sentences, restating it if needed

Take care of yourself; you are not responsible for the other person’s reaction

Consistency, not perfection, is what builds trust. 

Leaders Create the Culture

In my view, leaders are you! It doesn’t matter if you are an administrator, director, classroom teacher, social worker, home daycare provider, or anyone else who serves families and children. Your relationship with boundaries sets the tone for the staff, families, or children you interact with daily. 

When a leader takes on too much responsibility, responds at all hours, or avoids setting limits, it sends a message of “This is what’s expected here.” However, when a leader clearly states their limits, asks for help, or reinforces a boundary with care, it fosters a culture where people can engage without burning out. It’s a small change that can make a big difference. 

Ready to Practice?

If you’re looking for simple, practical language you can use right away, download my Trauma-Informed Boundary Scripts Handout to support conversations with colleagues and clients.