As the BlackBerry has become an extension of many people’s appendages (in October 2007, Research In Motion reported 10.5 million BlackBerry users worldwide at the end of the second quarter), it seems some employees just can’t turn off work! “For many people, work and life hasn’t really been balanced for a long time,” says Catherine Middleton, Canada Research Chair at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto, who is currently researching BlackBerry use. But, she says, those who use this device at home or in social situations actually believe they’re achieving balance. “They’re saying to those around them, ‘Look, I’m here. I’m with you.’ Yet the people around them see that as soon as that device comes out, the person is mentally disappearing.”And what could be a mental disappearing act one day could escalate into a full-blown mental breakdown the next. Bill Blades, a workplace consultant in Cheyenne, Wyo., works largely with medium-size companies (about 100 to 1,000 employees) to help employers and employees manage potential burnout issues. Through a sabbatical of a few weeks or months and one-on-one coaching, Blades and the employee work together on a number of skills or habits that the employee needs to improve, such as organization or learning to prioritize.Of course, there are less expensive ways to help employees facing burnout, such as group seminars. But Blades is wary of these more impersonal approaches. “Millions of people go to seminars every year,” he says. “They get back to the office and drop their notes on the corner of the desk. A couple of days later [the notes] go to the desk drawer, then that drawer is cleaned out at Christmas.” With a sabbatical, “the person is held accountable for what we agreed he or she would get better at,” he says.An employee should take responsibility for his or her behaviour, but sometimes the manager has to take responsibility, too—to model healthy behaviour. “You have managers who have never had the right coaching to be good leaders,” says Blades. “They’re treating those people as things. They think it’s wonderful when they see those people burning [the candle] at both ends.”Keeping those employees from burning out and burning up is important, especially if an employer wants to keep them. “The brain has to have some downtime,” says Blades. “The individual has to have enough time to get some walking in, some non-business reading time in [and] some time to notice non-business things in the world.”

To comment on this story email brooke.smith@rci.rogers.com.