Cost-Effective Ways to Address Burnout

We often think of burnout as a series of binaries. We bend or break. We’re well or not well. Engaged or checked out.

But actually, burnout is forged in the greyness of in-betweens — where employees still show up and mostly deliver. They say, “I’m fine,” but it feels perfunctory, not sincere. And it’s these quiet, easy-to-miss moments that organizations should pay the most attention to.

“Preventing burnout is listening for the whispers rather than waiting for the shout,” said Lauren Young, psychotherapist and founder of The Burnout Therapist.

Tuning into the whispers hinges on understanding where your processes start to wear people down over time, and proposing structural changes that go beyond surface-level fixes.

What Burnout Is, and What It Actually Looks Like

Burnout is often conceptualized as a work-related contagion — as though it’s a condition that only exists from 9-5, and the cure is time off. 

But this narrow scope isn’t just preventing organizations from understanding what burnout looks like — it also keeps them from diagnosing and fixing its root causes. 

“What people think of as burnout is usually one facet of a larger constellation of issues at work,” said Tanya Tarr, behavioral scientist and president and founder of Cultivated Insights, a learning and development consultancy. 

“Burnout happens when you have chronic, unmitigated distress where people do not sense any level of autonomy or control, and they do not feel like their personal sacrifice is recognized. It’s the complete stripping out of motivation. It’s a wearing down where you feel like you have no ability to effect change.”

Burnout isn’t just about work-related stress — it can stem from caregiving, boredom, or mental exhaustion. And wherever it comes from, it’s characterized by a gradual, creeping feeling that disguises itself as a range of emotional and physical symptoms, including: 

• Exhaustion and persistent fatigue
• Difficulty sleeping
• Poor physical health
• Cynicism or pessimism
• Irritability or emotional volatility
• Withdrawal from hobbies or social interactions
• Anxiety and poor mental health

The negative effects of burnout run far beyond just the individual — they ripple outward into personal lives and the broader organization. Burnout strains relationships — both with loved ones and within teams. It disrupts sleep habits and depletes focus, leaving employees too drained to perform at their best. 

Long-term, this leads to higher absenteeism, reduced performance, and costly turnover. 

And because burnout rarely stays neatly contained, it doesn’t matter where it starts. If left unchecked, burnout and disengagement can cost organizations in the US between $4,000 and $21,000 per employee each year, according to a 2025 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. In an average company of 1,000 employees, that’s over $5 million.

What Causes Burnout

Job burnout rarely stems from just one thing. It’s an accumulation — honed slowly under the pressure of work demands, internal expectations, and how valued we feel at work. 

A 2016 paper on burnout by researchers Michael P. Leiter and Christina Maslach (who developed one of the first frameworks for understanding burnout) identified six key dimensions of workplace culture. The study examined the difference between individuals’ expectations and their experiences in these areas:

• Workload: When the demands of our work exceed our capacity — whether it’s hours, pace, unclear priorities, or just too much to juggle.
• Control: How much autonomy and flexibility we have over how we complete our work — from setting boundaries and priorities to how tasks get done.
• Reward: The extent to which we feel our efforts are matched by recognition and reward at work.
• Community: The strength of our relationships at work — and how supported, connected, and psychologically safe we feel.
• Fairness: Whether or not we feel fairly and equitably treated, across recognition, decision-making, workloads, and access to opportunity.
• Values: How well our own personal values align with those of our role and organization.

When any one of these drivers feels off, or employees feel that things are unbalanced, the risk of burnout increases. And then, as the scale finally tips and you start to see symptoms, you’re no longer preventing burnout; you’re managing its consequences.

Spotting Burnout Across Your Workforce: Warning Signs to Watch

The signs of burnout are often there before we notice them. 

“It can be a lack of interest in the things that usually motivate them, disengaging from group conversations, struggling to show up for others,” said Young. “Your coworker might drop the ball a few times. They might start emailing after hours — or not responding at all. It’s those shifts in behavior where you think, ‘That’s not like them.’”

These symptoms of burnout can be subtle. As Tarr notes, it might not be exactly in what people say, but what they’re not saying: “The moment they stop posting or sharing about their personal lives — their garden, running club, coaching Little League, that’s a red flag. You have to think about it diagnostically, not judgmentally.”

The Data Points That Reveal Burnout Patterns

In a workforce of thousands, spotting that someone has become withdrawn is no easy task.

This is why HR leaders and managers must pair what they’re seeing with signals in their employee lifecycle data:

• Engagement: Track employee Net Promoter Score, segmenting by team, to see overall sentiment trends. Then, use engagement drivers to identify possible root causes and process/system issues. Burnout can also show up in feedback fatigue — so if your survey responses plummet, it could be a red flag.
• Performance: Analyze performance review scores at a team level to spot any downward trends or sudden declines. Review targets and goals met — and how consistently these occur.‍
• Turnover: A rise in turnover — especially among mid-tenure employees or high-performers — can point to deeper issues that your workforce is at risk.‍
• Absenteeism: As burnout becomes more acute, team members may take more sick leave, whether for mental health, physical illness, or other reasons. Track overall increases in sick days, stress leave, and repeated short-term absences.‍
• Attendance trends: Burned-out employees may also feel reluctant to take time away from work, either because they fear falling behind or because they believe that it might be seen as a lack of commitment. Check on paid time off usage to see where teams and individuals aren’t taking breaks — and identify where teams are working long hours.

The above burnout metrics are all signals that something could be off. But when tracking your data, what matters most is spotting the outliers unique to your organization — the things that fall outside of your team’s normal rhythms.

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5 Ways to Address Burnout Without Breaking the Bank

Burnout prevention is always better than cure. Because the cure for burnout is less about a mindfulness day or some self-care — it’s thinking long-term about fixing the processes and systems that cause it in the first place.

This relies on great change management, strong leadership backing, and using systems thinking to pinpoint where processes and systems are breaking down.

1. Build transparent, two-way feedback loops to identify early burnout signals.

Strong feedback loops can be your best line of defense for catching burnout early.
Regular employee engagement surveys can highlight shifts in how people are experiencing work — such as declining work-life balance, changing workload, and unclear performance expectations. 

Meanwhile, pulse surveys give organizations in-the-moment feedback to identify specific stressors and burnout trends — particularly if they’re used after big projects or stressful periods, like a merger.

But no matter what you do, surveys must be paired with transparency and action if you want to prevent burnout long-term, Tarr says.

“You need to filter back to the people what you’re learning,” she said. “What were the results? How are we actually feeling? Now you have a collective barometer that everyone is looking at. That’s very transparent — and people feel a greater sense of connection to and trust in their leaders when they are transparent and act with integrity.”

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2. Recognize efforts early — and be specific.

Recognition is a powerful burnout circuit breaker. Organizations with strong cultures of appreciation are 87% less likely to see burnout show up, according to the 2025 Global Culture Report by the O.C. Tanner Institute, which surveyed over 38,000 workers.

A culture of recognition isn’t found in blanket surface-level praise or one-off declarations — it’s found in recognizing specific people, actions, and efforts as part of your regular way of operating.

“When people feel recognized, they feel a sense of belonging,” Tarr said. “Senior leaders must authentically recognize people and name them for their strengths.”

This recognition isn’t just about praising people for their hard work, says Young. It’s about saying, “I see you” — not just as a worker, but as a human.

“Recognition for your work is only one dimension companies can lean on,” she said. “There’s also the personal recognition — the type that acknowledges people are human. Like if your coworker is struggling because their child is home sick today, simply recognizing that fact — even if you can’t do anything about it — tells them you care.”

Organizations can boost recognition behaviors by:

• Creating spaces on Slack, Microsoft Teams, or tools like Lattice Praise, where employees can celebrate their peers in real time
• Modeling recognition right from the top in company-wide meetings and casual interactions, including peer feedback spaces
• Tracking the effectiveness of recognition and reward efforts, and adjusting in line with how employees prefer to be recognized

3. Create time for meaningful connections in the flow of work.

Great communication is a hallmark of healthy teams — it builds clarity, promotes belonging, and helps team members feel valued and supported.

One high-impact strategy Tarr has observed in high-stakes roles is in how teams debrief as part of stress management — and it’s just as applicable in office-based environments. 

“There was a study at a hospital here in Austin where after someone codes, the doctor will pull all the staff together for a five-minute conversation, where they ask, ‘How are you feeling right now?’” Tarr noted. “This alone reduced burnout for these workers, which translated into better patient outcomes.”

These moments don’t need to be long. But to interrupt a cycle of burnout effectively, they do need to be human.

“A five-minute conversation on the phone, Zoom, or in person will do so much more for your neurobiology to help you self-regulate,” Tarr said. “The really important thing is hearing another human voice — even a voice memo if that’s the only option available.”

To build in more space for these moments, organizations can:

• Implement brief, voice-based debriefs after stressful moments or at the end of projects, using calls, in-person meetings, and tooling like Loom or Slack huddles.
• Normalize conversations and check-ins outside of regular one-on-ones and meetings.
• Make time for unstructured connection — like volunteer activities — which, Tarr says, helps teams foster organic workplace friendships.

4. Give managers the support they need to protect their teams.

“Managers are your fire door against burnout — invest in them to be the best people managers they can be,” Tarr said. “They need to be present with their direct reports, and help them build up their internal sense of motivation and competency. The more they do that, the more the individual can feel a sense of control and autonomy.”

In practical terms, you can give your managers all the tools to notice burnout, but without strong people leadership skills, they’re heading into an inferno with a garden hose. 

A 2025 study on the impact of recognition, fairness, and leadership on employee outcomes found that transformational leaders — those who inspire, support, and motivate their teams — play a critical role in reducing burnout. 

Relationship-building, active listening, and empathy are core skills to lean on. But managers also need to create a space for employees to reflect on their wins.

“One of the most important things managers can do is ask the direct report, ‘Tell me something you did last week that you're really proud of,’” Tarr said. “This is a self-affirmation — it’s a reflection on something you did directly. It helps mobilize our sense of competency, making us much more objective, and much less emotionally reactive.”

Organizations can support managers by:

• Offering low-cost internal training and peer coaching groups to upskill managers in empathy, communication, and active listening
• Establishing structured performance management processes that help managers spot burnout early through effective one-on-ones and performance reviews
• Eliminating high-volume, repetitive tasks or unnecessary busywork — such as phrasing feedback and logging one-on-ones — so managers have more time to lead 
• Implementing reflective questionnaires into one-on-ones and weekly check-ins to guide self-affirmation, such as Patagonia’s 5-15 report, as suggested by Tarr

Equip managers with the right framework to lead empathetic, focused one-on-ones that catch early burnout with our free wellbeing one-on-one template.

5. Structure working patterns around flexibility and intentionality.

Few of us ever question the self-prescribed routines and rhythms of how we work — the 4:30 PM Friday meetings, or those scattered 30-minute segments that chip away at our deep focus time. 

But the constant gear-switching between tasks and calls can take its toll. 

“Many workplaces justify their routines by saying, ‘Oh, this is the way we’ve always done things,’” Young said. “But this creates a lot of inflexibility. Employees feel that their attention is constantly fragmented.”

A better approach, says Young, is to audit how work gets done — and create more space for focused, flexible routines. 

“As a company, you can create pockets of intentional work time that combine structure and flexibility,” she said. “You can set meeting days on Fridays, for example. But you also need to encourage the inner strength among your workforce so employees feel safe saying, ‘I need this, I’m entitled to it, and it makes me better at my job.’”

Organizations can support this by:

• Running a meeting audit to cut unnecessary calendar bloat and protect deep focus time
• Giving employees greater agency to push back on meetings that feel unstructured or unnecessary
• Encouraging managers to set team-level flexibility around working hours, individual time management needs, or location — especially following high-pressure moments
• Setting company-wide workflows that automatically nudge employees to take breaks

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