Burnout is an operations issue

Burnout has quietly become the norm in today’s workplace, rising at alarming levels. Yet most organizations still assume burnout as an individual issue that could be solved with resilience workshops, wellness apps, or additional resources such as PTO/vacation time. In my experience as an HR leader and culture change strategist in workplace mental health, adding additional resources can be part of the broader strategy to support employee burnout; however, they do not proactively prevent it from happening in the first place.

The truth is that burnout is an operations workflow flaw, not an individual issue. Collectively, we should look to fix the bottlenecks where burnout actually thrives: challenging stakeholders with unreasonable expectations, addressing toxic leadership behaviors, and evaluating inefficient workflows, such as creating a false sense of urgency.

Rather than reviewing their operational design, many organizations expect additional investment, like wellness apps or resilience workshops, to serve as a magic cure for all workplace stressors, shifting the burden of addressing workplace stressors entirely onto employees. This “carewashing” approach not only oversimplifies complex workplace issues but also risks absolving leadership from its responsibility to address the root causes of things like employee burnout.

If organizations double down on solely resources, they will face unfortunate costs with psychological safety, inefficient cycles of operations, and undermining employee long-term performance.

Additionally, misunderstanding the root cause of burnout does not hold leaders accountable for creating an impactful solution. For example, in recent years, mental health and wellness apps have surged in popularity as organizations aim to prioritize employee well-being, including burnout. However, a wellness app solely does not resolve overloaded roles or competing priorities; research affirmed by a study published by Oxford University found the effectiveness of well-being programs is low. 

At a previous organization, leadership doubled down on a wellness app, hoping it would solve employee burnout. Rather than focusing on structural advancements such as hiring more capacity or building sustainable relationships with external stakeholders, this approach shifted responsibility onto employees themselves. As a result, the wellness app saw low engagement.

Employees who consistently experience chronic burnout without systemic support are prone to be less engaged or leave entirely. I have witnessed many employees at various levels be frustrated with wellness perks, rather than address the work systems that are depleting them in the first place. Deloitte’s Well-Being at Work survey reinforces this reality with 80% of employees saying work itself is the primary obstacle to improving their well-being, with heavy workloads, stressful jobs, and long hours being at the top of the list.

From personal experience of burning out three times in my career, I can attest to the fact that burnout starts with small accumulations of stressors, such as workload. However, the good news is that HR leaders and people managers can identify, correct, and prevent employee burnout by applying a robust framework that evaluates operational drivers. 

Leaders must first change the behaviors they reward, then surface the real capacity constraints, and finally redesign workflows so reasonable work doesn’t become unreasonable in practice.

Change Leadership Behaviors 

Even when capacity is managed well, burnout can occur in environments where leadership behaviors create fear, urgency, or inconsistency. Many leaders still behave and create conditions where employees don’t feel they can make mistakes, voice concerns, or expect managers to include them in decision-making.

Across my work with global firms, I have witnessed firsthand how this can impact employees when their ideas are dismissed or their concerns minimized. Leaders must recognize that their role naturally creates a power dynamic, and while they say a healthy culture is important, they must act the part. For example, if you are amplifying an employee working at all hours, allowing others to accept every client demand, or creating a model where the employees feel compelled to say “yes” to everything, you are not fostering an inclusive environment for others to raise their hand for support. In fact, you are telling your employees that this is the golden rule for everyone to follow.

A first step in shifting this dynamic is being intentional about one-on-ones with team members. Too often, one-on-ones focus solely on tasks rather than checking in on the person, their capacity, and their career growth—assuming one-on-ones even happen at all. When leaders skip these conversations, they lose visibility into early signs of burnout.

Modeling healthy boundaries is another critical role model exercise. Limiting communication outside of normal working hours or blocking personal appointments on your calendar, so your team feels permission to do the same, reinforces a more sustainable balance. 

Finally, leaders must evaluate how effectively their messages are communicated internally. Many organizations experience a disconnect between leadership perception and employee reality. While executives may speak openly about healthy work-life integration, those messages often fail to cascade if direct reports are not reinforcing them. Establishing a consistent cadence of communication and ensuring leaders visibly practice the behaviors they promote is essential to changing the narrative.

Capacity Audit

Once there is an environment of trust, you can start evaluating the workload itself.

A capacity audit forces leaders to confront the actual bandwidth required to do a specific project, which includes meetings, cross-collaboration with other teams, project analysis, and any other related items to the task. A simple yet impactful practice is to assign a low/medium/high rubric to every project or task, with these definitions in mind:

• Low: a few hours a week
• Medium: a steady weekly commitment
• High: a significant portion of someone’s time, impacting other priorities

After this is mapped across the entire team, leaders should be able to see certain patterns, especially if the trend is “high”. While not all projects can be deprioritized or add more people to the team immediately, a solution does need to be put in place. As an interim solution, deadlines can be extended or team members from other departments can allocate a portion of their time until a permanent solution is agreed upon by all team members. 

This audit can also surface common operational issues such as scope creep or unrealistic client expectations. While clients may push for more deliverables, it is an organization’s duty of care to manage those expectations. Simply put, clients can’t have it all, and boundaries must be set.

One effective way to do this is by establishing a client social contract at the start of an engagement. A social contract defines mutual expectations, including clear communication channels and hours, agreed-upon scope and deliverables (with no scope expansion without revisiting fees or timelines), respect for personal time, and confidentiality. When done well, this creates a more professional, respectful, and sustainable working relationship for both parties.

Workflow Design

Even when expectations are clear and capacity is well-governed, burnout can still flourish when workflows are outdated, handoffs are unclear, processes are duplicative, or tools make simple tasks unnecessarily complex. In one previous client engagement, this became evident between the sales, project management, and technology teams.

Sales repeatedly overpromised deliverables to new clients to drive revenue, without checking team capacity or infrastructure readiness. While revenue generation is critical, inefficient governance and gaps in cross-functional communication created friction that quickly turned into burnout. Instead of teams aligning early on what was realistically possible, I spent unnecessary time moving between groups, forcing timelines, and responding to urgency that didn’t need to exist.

To address this, I introduced a governance checkpoint. After an initial client conversation, Sales entered key details into a Jira ticket as a potential sale, which was flagged for review against the infrastructure roadmap and current project load. If work was urgent or high priority, I partnered with IT to assess feasibility and impact, allowing timelines, scope, or cost to be adjusted before any commitments were made.

The caveat here is that it takes a few iterations to create operational efficiency that yields meaningful results. Each organization and team will be different, and evaluating those specific bottlenecks using the capacity audit from earlier can reduce employee burnout. By using an agile methodology, you’ll get clearer signals on what’s working, faster course correction when it’s not, and a system that evolves before people disengage or leave altogether.

Burnout continues to be one of the leading issues facing our workforce today. The solution isn’t always the easiest, yet it is possible with the right amount of strategy and empathy.

source https://www.fastcompany.com/91462106/burnout-is-an-operations-issue-workplace-burnout