Can You Fix Employee Burnout?

By Sarah Lynch, Staff reporter @sarahdlynch

Burnout is a bad word in corporate culture. But the question of how to combat it in the workplace is more complicated.

Burnt out employees are becoming more common. A recent report from Glassdoor showed that in July, employee reviews mentioning burnout reached the highest point since 2016, when the company first started tracking this data. Since February 2020, mentions of burnout spiked 44 percent.

Why? The report points to a series of tumultuous changes in the labor market, from the Great Resignation and historically high quit rates to "layoffs and sluggish hiring in 2023 and 2024," which Glassdoor lead economist Daniel Zhao told Inc. made it hard for employees to "catch their breath."

And without that breathing room, team members -- and their work -- could start to suffer. Amy Young, a professor of business communications at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, says signs of employee burnout could include "not showing up to work in a way that they once did, being late on getting assignments in, just low energy."

But a few late assignments are far from the worst possible ramifications of burnout. Employees might quit without notice. Arguments might escalate between team members. And in "extreme, terrible cases," an employee might kill themselves, says Melissa Doman, an organizational psychologist, former therapist, and author of the 2021 book Yes, You Can Talk About Mental Health at Work: Here's Why (and How to Do It Really Well).

So, what can leaders do? Here's what experts say, and what strategies companies have taken to prevent burnout at their organizations.

Understand what burnout is -- and what it isn't

First, it's important to unravel some common misconceptions about burnout. "People think of it more as an individual problem -- a sort of a disease, a mental health issue," says Christina Maslach, a professor emerita of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

But that's not the case, she says, instead pointing to the World Health Organization's definition of burnout: "a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed."

There are a few notable parts of this definition, Maslach says. First, the chronic nature of burnout, which can make it more difficult to overcome since it isn't an "acute" issue. But on the brighter side, the phrase "not been successfully managed" indicates that there is a way to better manage these stressors, she adds.

To do so, however, leaders need to stop thinking about burnout as an individual problem, Young says, and take a broader look at the workplace. "Offering counseling -- well, that's great to have someone to talk to, to relieve a little bit of the pressure," Young says, but the impacts will be limited until you've "changed the way the work is designed."

And even so, burnout isn't a problem that can necessarily be solved once and for all, Doman says: "The best use of time is to prevent it and/or manage it and shorten its duration if it occurs."

Better manage workloads and workflows

Indeed, there are ways that companies can mitigate, remove, or help team members cope with those chronic stressors, Maslach says -- though she adds there likely won't be a one-size-fits-all approach for different teams and roles.

In her book The Burnout Challenge: Managing People's Relationships With Their Jobs, Maslach and her co-author identified six factors that contribute to burnout: workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values. The one that people might think of first, though, is workload, Maslach says. In fact, in Inc.'s recent LinkedIn poll of more than 2,700 respondents, more than a third agreed that easing workloads would be an effective way for leaders to alleviate burnout.

"The mismatch is usually something like, 'I have high demands, high expectations, and really low resources. I don't have enough time. There's not enough people. We don't have the necessary tools or equipment,' " Maslach says.

When Bryan Scanlon, 54, started Look Left Marketing, a San Francisco-based public relations and content marketing agency, in 2017, he foresaw overstretched client loads being a problem for the team.

That's why he made the conscious effort to give his employees -- of whom there are now 12 -- a client load 20 percent lower than the standard. While some employees will come to Look Left Marketing having previously worked with eight to 10 clients at a time, he says, at Look Left it's typically three to five.

This is crucial, Scanlon believes, for providing team members with the "breathing room" to do their jobs, respond when things change unexpectedly, and recharge. It works well, he believes, pointing to the company's retention (in a "bad year" voluntary churn is 10 percent, Scanlon says) and revenue, which grew to more than $3 million in the last year.

But it's not just how much work employees have -- how that work is done can also factor into burnout. In working with teams and leaders, Young finds that "if you have a really inefficient workflow, or if there are unnecessary tasks that an employee is doing, they can feel really discouraged."

Leaders can play a key role here, Young adds, by "communicating clear expectations -- what's needed in the job or what's most important, so that the employee's work is more efficient."

Stay on top of emerging issues

Preventing burnout won't be a one-time intervention at a company, experts say. Rather, it should be a "continuous improvement loop," in Maslach's words. "It's asking the question not once, but on a regular basis -- like a checkup. 'So, how are things going around here? How could we make it a little better?' "

The approach should be collaborative, Maslach adds, including feedback from team members.

Kungfu.AI, an Austin-based, AI-focused management consulting and engineering firm founded in 2017, has a forum for this feedback: the Horizon Group, a rotating group of about six team members from their 40-person team tasked with "looking out at the horizon, or ways to improve the business," says CEO and co-founder Stephen Straus.

In 2022, the Horizon Group identified an issue. Due to the breakneck pace of AI, team members were spending weekends and evenings keeping up with AI developments and research -- and risking burning out. Just a few months later, the group's solution was implemented: Fridays became "Lab Days" dedicated to learning about AI, listening to guest speakers, experimenting with new models, and more -- not client work.

This was no small investment, Straus realized -- it's 20 percent of their workweek, and a critical change for a company built on offering professional services. But it's helped them stay on the "cutting edge," Straus says, as well as alleviate burnout. Meanwhile, the company's revenue has grown an average of 30 percent year-over-year in the last few years, he says.

Indeed, preventing burnout requires a "village effort," Doman says, involving far more than the company leader -- though she adds that leaders can yield significant influence. For instance, she says, leaders can encourage "consistent team conversations" about burnout, adjust processes so not every issue is treated like an emergency, and understand the work on team members' plates.

It comes down to having a "consistently clear" message, Doman adds, "of what is the goal we're all trying to achieve and what we're trying to prevent."

Editor's note: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has published guidance on the "Role of Employers in Preventing Suicide" and other resources here.

Photo Credit: Getty Images.