By Stephen Haynes, Director of Wellbeing, British Safety Council 

What is burnout and how well do we understand it in our organisation?

We’re talking a lot more today than ever about burnout – but it’s far from a new concept. Professor Herbert Freudenberger in 1974 played an important role in shaping the research on burnout - and our understanding has grown over recent decades – but it was far from a new concept even in the ‘70s – researchers have even found similarities between burnout syndrome and characters from famous literature.

Just how well do we understand the drivers, the prevalence and implications of burnout in our workplace? If we don’t have a good grasp of this – how effective can we actually be in addressing stress and burnout in our organisations?

Burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic unresolved or ineffective management of stress in the workplace and was officially classified as an 'occupational phenomenon' (in other words, an “untoward or unusual event worthy of note and investigation”) rather than a medical condition, by the World Health Organisation.

There are types burnout and there are stages of burnout. The two main types are overload and underload/ under-challenged burnout. Overload is when we work harder and harder striving for success, but at the risk of our health and personal life; under-challenged burnout is where we may feel underappreciated, maybe bored – perhaps our job doesn’t provide learning or growth opportunities, or we feel under-challenged – we may distance ourself, become cynical and even avoid responsibilities. We also have neglect burnout where we feel helpless – if things aren’t going right, we may feel we’re incompetent (can be linked with imposter syndrome where we doubt our abilities) and then we have Habitual burnout – The most serious phase – chronic physical and mental fatigue, crossing over into depression. It’s vital for people to seek help at any stage, but imperative at this stage.

Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace study revealed that a quarter of leaders around the world often or always feel burned out, and around 40% of those with people management responsibilities experience stress daily. Last year’s global study by McKinsey exploring the health of the workforce across 30 countries and over 30,000 workers looked at multiple domains of health – including burnout symptoms – across 5 key dimensions (exhaustion, mental distancing, impaired cognition, emotional impairment and symptoms). The findings were worrying, with around 1 in 5 of the global workforce reporting symptoms of burnout, and in the UK nearly half of the workforce self-report report symptoms associated with exhaustion. 1 in 5 reported symptoms categorised as mental distancing (aversion or reluctance to work – not laziness) and nearly a third indicating attention and concentration deficits, memory problems and reduced performance. Add this to global workforce engagement data – such as Gallup’s most recent data, which shows only 20% of the global workforce are engaged; 60% are disengaged – and 20% are just plain unhappy.

Burnout vs. employee engagement

But where does burnout meet employee engagement? Identifying burnout isn’t always easy, for numerous reasons – and it’s not limited to high pressure roles – it can affect anyone because the underlying drivers are common factors in today’s working environment. These include high work demands; a perceived lack of job control or community; a perceived lack of fairness or organisational justice; a mismatch between reward and recognition; or a mismatch between individual and corporate values.

We don’t always show or recognise the signs of burnout – humans can be adept at masking the signs – particularly if we don’t feel psychologically safe enough in our working environments to reach out. Pluralistic ignorance happens when we feel something is wrong and we’re not on top of our game, but instead of talking with someone about it, we carry on as normal. Because everyone else is doing the same thing, we can perceive others are OK and that the problem is us – but behind those masks, others may be in similar boats.

We do know that burnout leads to chronic fatigue, irritability, insomnia and reduced motivation. Physically, it can manifest through headaches and muscle tension, high blood pressure, and a loss of appetite. In the workplace, burnout makes itself known through reduced innovation and productivity, absenteeism, presenteeism, and reduced quality of work

It represents a significant cost to UK business, both in financial and, more importantly, human terms – but talking in terms of financial impact means little compared with understanding how stress and burnout actually impacts your own organisation’s people, performance and bottom line. No matter which studies you look at, the evidence for addressing stress and in turn burnout – and improving wellbeing – is a no brainer. Ultimately, higher wellbeing and engagement drives down turnover, absence and safety incidents – whilst turning up customer loyalty, sales, innovation, production, and profitability. 

Understand our people ‘enablers’ and ‘inhibitors’

Ultimately, what we’re talking about is optimising our people experience in the workplace. There is very limited scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of tertiary interventions – such as helplines and health apps – in addressing stress and burnout, largely because we’re rarely comparing homogeneous approaches to workplace wellbeing. However, it is the primary factors, driven from the top down, that make life at a company amazing or awful. Does the design of my job, the way my work is organised, the quality and safety of my working environment, the culture, the working relationships etc. enable or inhibit my work experience? 

Fundamentally, we need to understand our people’s ‘enablers’ and our people’s ‘inhibitors’ so we can create informed, relevant and impactful approaches. Know what data and information to look at – and look at it holistically – and know what to do with it.

For example, are your people managers creating stress or do they help your people thrive in their work? Do they simply manage – or do they lead, inspire and coach? Are you ‘managing’ or ‘mitigating’ stress? How well do you understand your exposures to work stress? How well do you understand the relationship between work-stress and your employee engagement? How well are your managers equipped to identify and address signs of stress in their teams? Do your teams have sufficient control over their roles? What meaning do your employees find in their work? 

Only by having an informed picture of your enablers and inhibitors, can you embed relevant and effective interventions. Otherwise, are you just hoping that your approach is going to work? In our work, we’ve encountered hundreds of different approaches in organisations in addressing worker wellbeing – both informed and creative, to the typically less effective ‘off-shelf’ approaches. Beating burnout fundamentally requires senior leaders and decision-makers to understand the prevalence and drivers of stress in their organisation.  

Employees who find meaning in their work – who connect with the mission, vision and values of the organisation, and who are empowered – are more creative and more likely to feel they can raise new ideas or objections and, ultimately, more likely to feel in better health, and at lower risk of work-related stress and burnout.

Beating burnout requires commitment, clarity and communication from business leaders and decision-makers. It means putting worker wellbeing front and centre, investing in wellbeing as a people strategy - not a series of interventions - and it begins with leadership role modelling best practice to adopt a better working culture, ultimately ending with a thriving workforce, a happier workplace and improved performance.

Want to learn more? Check our out most recent webinar on the topic, or reach out to one of our brilliant minds in our wellbeing team Being Well Together l British Safety Council British Safety Council India