Employee Burnout: How to Spot, Support, and Prevent It

Employee burnout is one of those phrases that gets thrown around fairly carelessly. From employees who may just be having a bad week, to employers who don’t believe it’s “a thing,” it’s something we hear about often without stopping to think too deeply about the condition behind the words.

To be clear, employee burnout is real. It can have a devastating effect on the health and wellbeing of the sufferer, and from a business perspective, it can cost your company dearly. Think: lost productivity, negativity in the workplace, and poor employee retention.

Research by Gallup paints a stark picture:

• 76% of employees experience job burnout at least sometimes.
• Employees who frequently experience burnout are 63% more likely to take a sick day.
• 28% of employees say they are burned out “very often” or “always” at work.
• Employees who frequently experience burnout are 23% more likely to visit the hospital.

No one is immune — from your 20-year-old administrator to C-suite executives and everyone in between.

What exactly is employee burnout?

Burnout isn’t just about feeling a bit under the weather or being tired. It’s a serious condition more akin to physical and mental exhaustion.

The World Health Organization defines occupational burnout as:

1. Reduced professional efficacy
2. Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
3. Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job

This feeling of extreme tiredness doesn’t disappear at 5pm. Burnout infiltrates every aspect of the sufferer’s life — they simply won’t have the energy to live life outside of work to the fullest either.

What causes employee burnout?

Burnout isn’t usually triggered by a short busy spell — such as a few weeks while you’re hiring a replacement, or a seasonal rush. It’s caused by ongoing, constant stress that accumulates to push people to their absolute limits.

Common causes include:

• Not taking allocated annual leave
• Trying to fit an excessive amount of working hours into a week
• A stressful position with many responsibilities
• Taking work home during supposed leisure time

These can be worsened by monotonous work, lack of self-care, poor diet, lack of exercise, or a reliance on alcohol or other substances.

One of the big problems with burnout is that it can be insidious. When you’re in the middle of an intense period of work, adrenaline powers you through. Quick-fix solutions like takeout food and evening drinks become habitual. Once the intensity dies down and things return to normal, your adrenaline subsides — and burnout strikes.

How to spot burnout in your employees

Burnout can manifest differently in different people, but here are the key warning signs to watch for.

Mental and emotional signs

• Lack of focus: They’ve been given instructions but can’t execute tasks properly. Their mind wanders during meetings.
• Disengagement: Low energy, lack of attention and interest, emotional withdrawal from coworkers and work.
• Irritability: A previously pleasant employee has become snappy, grumpy, or easily offended — damaging workplace relationships and, if they’re customer-facing, your business.
• Higher than normal anxiety or depression
• Procrastination and emotional exhaustion

Physical signs

• Insomnia or trouble falling or staying asleep
• Intense fatigue and constant exhaustion
• Migraines or headaches
• Physical pain including back pain, strains, and sprains
• Respiratory or gastrointestinal issues

Productivity signs

• A nosedive in output and quality of work
• Increased errors and missed deadlines
• Inefficiency and inability to cope

Bear in mind that many of these signs are interconnected: an exhausted employee is going to be less productive and more irritable. An employee who can’t concentrate is going to be inefficient.

It’s also important to note that someone could have a headache without being burnt out, or be disengaged because they’re unhappy at your company or running a side hustle. Look for patterns rather than isolated incidents, and track absenteeism — if there’s a pattern of time off combined with constant exhaustion, it’s pointing to burnout.

Spotting burnout in remote employees

Not seeing your people in person makes identifying burnout harder. You need to actively and consistently measure the engagement of your remote workers.

Ask for feedback through surveys and make sure remote employees aren’t “out of sight, out of mind.” Check in with them regularly. Hold one-on-one and team meetings. Encourage them to connect with coworkers.

And keep an eye on productivity — if people aren’t online when they should be or the quality and quantity of work has dropped, they may be burnt out.

How to support employees experiencing burnout

If you’ve identified burnout in a team member, here’s how to help.

Trust and empower them

Get your people involved in team or departmental decision-making. It gives them a sense of control and says you trust them and value their opinions. This translates into employees feeling they can approach their manager freely with problems, helping to address burnout directly.

Recognize their work

Employee recognition doesn’t just boost retention rates and create a more positive company culture — it’s an effective tool against burnout.

When someone is struggling to cope or feeling inadequate, they want someone to notice and offer reassurance. Whether it’s a pat on the back from a coworker, a shout-out from a manager, or a thank-you gift card, these actions go a long way to helping someone feel appreciated and seen.

Listen actively

Be willing to listen to your people and let them know your door is always open. Employees who feel they can talk to a compassionate superior are less likely to become overwhelmed.

You can proactively listen too by encouraging feedback through company questionnaires, stay interviews, surveys, or anonymous suggestion boxes. Just make sure feedback and concerns are acted upon — otherwise it becomes an empty exercise.

Take health and wellbeing seriously

Healthy snack time and walking meetings are great, but proper access to mental health care, subsidized gym memberships, and company yoga or meditation classes will go much further in improving wellbeing.

Help them recover

For someone already experiencing burnout, they need to remove themselves from the source of stress for a significant amount of time. A day off or a weekend away won’t suffice. Whether it’s a proper vacation, a sabbatical, or even a job change, real recovery takes time.

In the meantime, encourage them to:

• Limit screen time, especially at home
• Take regular breaks during work — walk around the office or the block
• Spend downtime with family or friends
• Get out into nature
• Exercise — even when they don’t feel like it
• Meditate or simply do nothing

How to prevent burnout in your organization

Avoiding burnout is far better than dealing with it. As HR, you have a responsibility to make sure your company culture encourages work-life balance, not a culture of hustle.

Here’s how:

• Encourage full use of vacation allowance. Remind employees to spread it throughout the year rather than leaving it all until December.
• Create psychological safety. Ensure employees know they can speak up if they’re feeling overwhelmed without being penalized.
• Review your leave policies. Could they be better? Should you offer duvet days or a more generous vacation allowance?
• Protect downtime. Managers should not call or email employees in evenings, weekends, or during vacation.
• Staff adequately. If one person is doing the job of two or three, they’ll hit their limits quickly.
• Check in regularly with both remote and office-based employees. Make sure everyone is coping — especially those you can’t see.
• Assign sensible workloads that are as varied as possible.
• Build a culture of recognition and rewards — it’s easy to do and helps with satisfaction and retention.
• Support sabbaticals. If an employee is considering one, let them know you’d welcome their return.
• Remove the stigma around mental health by talking about it openly.
• Inject fun into the workday. Plan monthly team lunches or happy hour drinks. Make time for team building that doesn’t eat into people’s own time.

Why preventing burnout matters for your business

If your workplace embraces a round-the-clock hustle ethic, dismantling that won’t be easy or happen overnight. But if business leaders are resistant to change, make clear the impact of burnt-out employees:

• Decreased performance and productivity
• Higher error rates and lower quality output
• Plummeting morale
• Increased sickness and unauthorized absence
• Higher turnover as employees look elsewhere
• Decline in your employer brand and reputation

It only takes a few people burning out for the knock-on effect to be felt across the organization. Wouldn’t you rather be known as a great place to work than a glorified hamster wheel that works its employees to the point of collapse?

Conclusion

Employee burnout is real and it needs to be addressed. For anyone suffering from job burnout, they may very well need your help and some human empathy to overcome it and return to being the happy, productive, engaged employee they once were.

That’s great for them — and good news for your organization’s productivity, morale, and work-life balance.