Demystifying burnout: The who, what, and why of work burnout symptoms

A common burnout story

James sat in his car in the parking lot staring at the sign he'd seen most days for the last 25 years. He dreaded the thought of going into the building. He was tired and already felt angry anticipating the questions customers and peers would ask him that day. He rubbed his aching head, sighed, and opened the door to start his shift.

What James was feeling illustrates the symptoms of burnout. Burnout is a psychological syndrome in response to continued stress on the job. It consists of three components: high exhaustion, high cynicism (defined as a distant attitude toward the job), and low efficacy (either realized by people around them or an internal declining sense of professional capability).

Who is burning out?

While James' story may feel familiar, this is just a small example with infinite variations. So many people in the North American workforce are experiencing burnout, but who exactly are they?

According to our de-identified data¹ from over 1.2M employees based in North America, just over one in five are experiencing burnout. It's worth noting that this number has risen sharply since its five-year-low of 8% in the first quarter of 2021, suggesting that the rise of flexible working arrangements during the height of the pandemic and the return to office (RTO) mandates that followed might be informing this trend. Perhaps surprisingly, hourly employees and salaried employees are experiencing burnout at roughly the same frequency (21.7%), reminding us that burnout can be found everywhere and in all types of workers.

Moreover, a similar trend is observed across genders. Both men and women are experiencing burnout at growing levels, with women reporting slightly higher rates of burnout than men. This suggests that the pressures contributing to burnout - such as managing work-life balance, adapting to hybrid work environments, and dealing with RTO mandates - affect men and women alike, though women seem to be more impacted by these stressors.

When we looked at specific industries, our data showed some interesting differences. For example, the financial services sector saw a significant decrease in burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping all the way from 41.5% in 2019 to roughly 10% in 2021. But over the past three years, that number has steadily risen back to 26.8%, putting it at the highest burnout rate among the industries studied. The most conspicuous change impacting this industry during that period is the growing number of RTO mandates, although other factors could be causing this rise in burnout as well.

A similar upward trend has impacted the other studied industries since 2021. Here's a quick look at how other sectors have fared between 2021 and 2024:

• Services - up from 8.8% to 25.2%
• Public sector - up from 14% to 23.6%
• Retail - up from 13.5% to 23.5%
• Healthcare - up from 12.1% to 20.3%
• Manufacturing - up from 12.3% to 18.9%

How to address work burnout symptoms

As a leader, what can you do to address work burnout symptoms? The ideal situation is to act before workers experience full-fledged burnout.

But sometimes, you might not notice the burnout signs before it's too late.

The best thing a leader can do is talk to their burned-out employees to understand what the cause of the burnout is. Take stock of their knowledge, skills, and experiences to see if they can be moved to a new role or leader. Being as proactive as possible once you see burnout symptoms is the best thing you can do.

While some employees are already burned out, you can go back to basics to keep others from burning out, too. Here are six ideas for avoiding future employee burnout.

1. Revisit compensation and benefits packages

Make sure compensation and benefits are competitive. This helps your people feel valued. If employees are worried about how they are going to make ends meet while working for you, that constant stress is going to breed resentment and cynicism.

2. Revise roles and build boundaries

Make sure employees have a defined job description that they can reference, with clear roles and responsibilities. This helps the employee set boundaries to help prevent exhaustion. Knowing what they're responsible for and what they can de-prioritize or delegate elsewhere gives employees the power to say "no" - something that's especially hard to do in a busy, over-burdened work environment.

3. Create opportunities for time off

Monitor employees' schedules for those who have not taken time off or are being asked to work longer, such as shifts over more than five consecutive days or consistently scheduled weekends. This helps identify those who are at an increased risk of experiencing exhaustion. In some cases, the workload in an employee's area is so overloaded that people cannot take time off. To offset burnout risk, consider hiring additional employees if the budget allows.

4. Recognize, celebrate, repeat

Promote a culture of recognition, including recognizing leaders. Often, as people move up the ladder, they stop being recognized. Make sure you understand the how, when, and frequency of people's recognition preferences. Think about your Senior Vice President who received praise frequently as they climbed the ladder, and then it stopped when they hit that SVP level. This can result in your leaders doubting themselves and feeling unappreciated. Whether it's an individual contributor, middle manager, or C-suite executive, recognize their accomplishments.

5. Personalize engagement activities

Not all recognition is created equal. When creating engagement activities, make sure they're personal to the specific employee. If you recognize your employee in a way that isn't meaningful to them, it can be disengaging. An example of this would be rewarding a very introverted employee with a trip where they're surrounded by co-workers all day, every day of the trip. They are likely to leave that trip feeling more drained, like it was work instead of a reward. Understanding how each employee experiences recognition can reduce unintentional burnout.

6. Rewrite goals over time

Having realistic, attainable goals that are updated throughout the year helps the employee and leader set boundaries and deprioritize low-priority work. Rewriting goals over time also helps managers understand employee workload, giving them the opportunity to assess and restructure unreasonable workloads.

Burnout is not inevitable, and it's up to leadership to mitigate burnout risk. Look for ways to actively work against this preventable problem to keep it from overrunning your organization.

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[1] Methodology: At Dayforce, we're assessing anonymized data from clients that have opted into a program where we can use their data for research purposes. This data has been further segmented using the NAICS code to group clients into industries to look at industry-specific trends. The data used in this article represents over 1.24M employees across seven industries (financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, public sector, retail, and services) from 2019 to 2024.

This blog was updated on 10 October 2024. It was originally published on 16 August 2022.

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