Listen to Episode 10 - Running on Empty: Burnout, Who’s Most at Risk, and How to Prevent It
Picture the type of employee in your workplace who's most likely to burn out. I'll give you a few seconds.
What type of employee did you picture?
If it was someone who seems to be struggling, disengaged, or who's just not that invested in their job, I'll challenge you on that vision because research on employee burnout says the opposite.
Burnout doesn't usually hit the weakest performers first. It hits the strongest ones.
The ones who are seemingly the most talented, most engaged, and most invested. These are the people that are often closest to the edge, but you usually can't tell that they're at the edge until it's too late.
In today’s post I’ll talk about why that happens, what you can do to help prevent it (both for yourself and for your team), how burnout has changed since the pandemic, whether remote work helps the burnout issue, and why women consistently report higher rates of burnout than men do. If this sounds like you (or someone you know) keep reading…This information will help you.
What is burnout?
According to the World Health Organization, burnout has 3 components:
feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
increased mental distance from your job or growing cynicism about it, and
a reduced sense of effectiveness or accomplishment.
So, burnout isn't just being tired, or frustrated, or having a bad day/week at work. It has to meet a specific set of criteria: exhaustion, being checked out, and feeling like nothing you do matters anymore. You can be tired, you can be frustrated, you can be straight up over it, but that doesn't mean you meet the criteria for experiencing burnout. One thing to remember is that burnout is not a medical diagnosis. It's an occupational phenomenon, which means that it's very specifically tied to your occupation.
Now, that doesn't mean that you have to technically “be employed” to experience burnout. If your occupation is stay-at-home mom, you can still experience burnout. So, let's be clear on that too. It's not something that only someone “officially employed” can experience. It's whatever you do, whatever your occupation is - whether you're paid for it or not. So now that I cleared that up, let me get really into all this burnout jazz.
Researchers from Yale, the University of Leipzig, and the WHU Otto Bisheim Institute School of Management surveyed over 1,000 U.S. workers and identified something they called the “Engaged/Exhausted Profile.” The people who fall into that profile are employees who are both highly engaged and highly burned out at the same time. So, Engaged/Exhausted. That group made up nearly 19% of the entire study, and here's the thing that should really worry the managers out there: The Engaged/Exhausted Profile group reported the highest levels of intention to leave their organization. Even higher levels than employees who were just flat-out disengaged. Being invested in your work does not protect you from burnout, and in a lot of cases, it's the very act of being invested that's the mechanism driving the burnout.
A more recent study published this year (2026) backs up this initial study in an even more unsettling way. Research out of Bentley University's Center for Health and Business found that burnout in high performers often doesn't look like reduced effort at all. These employees keep generating product, keep responding quickly, keep showing initiative, and keep current on their assignments. Where high performers are most affected by burnout are in the less visible areas like strategic judgment, long-range thinking, and their ability to focus.
The Bentley University study researchers called this the “erosion of innovation capacity.” What that means in plain terms is that burnout in your highest performers doesn't always show up as someone falling apart. It shows up as someone who's still delivering, but they're running on fumes while they're doing it, which is more challenging to notice, which then leads into exactly why it so often goes unnoticed for so long.
But why does this happen to the most talented or most engaged people, specifically? A few patterns show up in the research about this.
First, high performers tend to be responsible for the most difficult and highest stakes work.
Second, they're less likely to ask for support because asking for help can feel like admitting weakness to them.
Third, they tend to set brutally high personal standards for themselves that don't leave very much room for an off-day or a mistake.
They're not weak. What they are is more likely to carry a heavier burden, without drawing attention to it, for a longer period of time, without the visible warning signs of burnout that people are trained to look for.
If you suspect that this might be your current situation, what can you do?
I want to give you real strategies, not the typical “take a vacation” kind of thing, so please take what I say to heart because I do want this to help.
The strongest evidence on how to help yourself when it comes to burnout comes from research on what's called “psychological detachment,” meaning your ability to genuinely mentally disconnect from work during your off hours.
A major review of psychological detachment research, led by organizational psychologist Sabine Sonentag, found that a lack of psychological detachment consistently predicts higher exhaustion and lower well-being over time. So, the less likely you are to separate your mind from work, the more likely you are to burn out.
Reduced ability to detach from work has been shown to predict rising burnout symptoms in studies that track people over weeks and months. So, to put it bluntly, if your brain never leaves work, even though your body has, you're on the express train to Burnoutville.
Great, so how does one mentally detach?
First, you have to build yourself an off-switch.
That might look like having a hard stop to log off for the night, like at 7:00, you're done. That's it.
Or maybe you have a specific activity that you do at the end of the day that signals work is over for your brain.
Or maybe you simply don’t have your work email accessible on your phone after a certain hour. Just because someone could reach you at 10 p.m. doesn't mean that you should be reachable at 10 p.m.
The goal of an off-switch isn't to build your willpower against work. The goal of the off-switch is to remove the ability to unintentionally slip back into work mode.
If you make the conscious decision to keep working, that's on you. But you shouldn't.
You should do what you can to prevent yourself from being on the couch watching TV at night and then just mindlessly checking your work email.
Second, protect actual recovery time, not just time off.
There's a difference between a day off where you're still mentally processing work problems in the background all day, and a day where your mind actually disengages from work. The mental disengagement is what will restore you.
In order to do this, you have to start to set boundaries for yourself.
Leave your work phone at home when you take a day off.
Keep your mind occupied on non-work-related things on your days off.
Don't take the day off and sit on your couch ruminating over what's going to happen at work tomorrow.
None of that is restorative, and in fact, I'd suggest that it actually does more harm than good.
Third, notice when your standards are the problem, not the work.
If you're a high performer (and if you listening to my podcast or read my blog posts, you probably are), some of your exhaustion may be coming from the self-imposed pressure that you naturally place upon yourself. High performers tend to hold themselves to standards that no one else holds them to. I'm not here to victim shame anyone over this. I have done this to myself so many times over the course of my 46-years on this earth, but listen, sometimes we do do this to ourselves. If this is where you are right now, I understand. I've been there. But you need to take a long look in the mirror and decide if this is how you want to continue to treat yourself. The answer should be no. Don't make things worse for yourself. You need to be your biggest cheerleader, not your own worst enemy.
Work on being comfortable with good enough.
Stop requiring perfection and give yourself some grace.
Fourth, ask for support before you're in crisis, not after.
This is really hard for high performers because asking for help can feel like it contradicts your whole identity. High performers often pride themselves on doing more, doing it themselves, and doing it perfectly.
Asking for help is not weakness. It shows that you're self-aware enough to know that you can't continue to operate in the same manner without slipping. Because you ask for help so infrequently, people will take you seriously when you do ask, and they'll likely be very happy to help you.
How can managers and leaders help reduce burnout?
Burnout often isn't something an individual can fully fix on their own. It's often woven into how a team or a company operates. According to Gallup's most recent global research, managers account for roughly 70% of the variance in their team's engagement levels. So, managers aren't a minor factor in burnout. They are almost 3/4 of the story there.
So, managers and leaders, pay attention: Here's where you can come in, and here's what you can do to actually help instead of hinder the situation.
These recommendations I'm about to give are for teams already struggling with burnout and for teams trying to prevent it in the first place. There's actually a lot of overlap in both the preventative and reactive recovery methods for burnout, so feel free to use these suggestions regardless of which side of burnout your team is on.
First, take a look at, and evaluate, the demands being placed on your team against the resources your team has at their disposal.
Burnout research refers to this as a “demands/resource balance.” Workload, time pressure, and emotional labor are on the demand side, and support, autonomy, and recognition are on the resource side. When demands chronically outweigh the resources, burnout will follow.
So, as a manager, you're one of the people who actually has influence over both sides of that equation, not just the demand side. Take steps to ensure that the resources side of the equation (support, autonomy, recognition) aren't in low supply. Your team needs those to keep going, and it's part of your job to make sure that they have them.
Second, recognize effort, not just an outcome, and be specific in the recognition.
As I mentioned in episode 5 about giving feedback, vague praise doesn't really have much of an impact. Naming exactly what someone did well, and how or why it mattered, does help. So instead of a generic “hey, keep it up,” try saying, “hey, great visuals in your presentation yesterday.”
In addition to specificity, acknowledge when someone put in a lot of work or made a valiant effort, even if the end result didn't quite reach the ultimate goal. People need to know that their work is appreciated and noted. You can't place all value on the result, or people will begin to believe that efforts hold no value unless they result in perfection.
Third, watch your high performers more closely, not less.
It's natural to assume that your most capable people need the least amount of oversight, but given everything I've covered here, you need to stay on the lookout for signs of trouble. Check in on your best people as deliberately and consciously as you would check in on anyone else who's visibly struggling.
I'm not talking about micromanaging them. I'm talking about taking a genuine interest in their well-being. You know the saying,
“it's always ‘what are you doing’, never ‘how are you doing?’” Well, start asking, “how are you doing?”
Fourth, if someone on your team is already burned out, don't just tell them to rest.
Telling someone to rest when they have a ton of work on their plate and they can't afford (at least work-wise) to rest really doesn't help them at all. What you, as their manager, need to do here is actually redistribute some of their workload, temporarily reduce the scope of their responsibilities, whatever, and then follow up with them on whether that change has helped them. It's very common for a reduced workload to creep back to its old size within a few weeks if no one's really monitoring and ensuring that the change is sticking, so follow up is necessary.
If someone is burned out and you tell them to rest, then do something to help them rest. Don't just leave it on them to figure out how to rest when they're already overloaded. You're just adding to the problem here, not helping it. So help them.
Fifth, model the behavior you want to see.
If you send emails at 11 p.m., your team will feel pressure to respond at 11 p.m., regardless of what you say your actual expectations are. If you want to send emails at 11 p.m. because that's what works for you, fine, do it. But do your team a favor and schedule them so that they don't hit their inboxes until the morning. Also, if you are sending emails at 11 p.m., I really hope you're doing it because that is what works for you, and not because you, yourself, have failed to enact an off an off-switch. You need to have boundaries too, so pay attention to what you're doing, when you're doing it, and why.
Next, let's talk about burnout levels.
Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 report found that global employee engagement dropped to just 20%, and that the percentage of employees reporting significant daily stress still remains above pre-pandemic levels. 2026 is actually the first time that Gallup has recorded two consecutive years of declining engagement. It is wild to think that 80% of employees globally are feeling disengaged from their work. What is happening out there?! Why don't organizations care about this more?! This is absolutely devastating and horrifying information. Only 20% of the workforce globally feels engaged.
Jointly, McKinsey and LeanIn's Women in the Workplace study, which I've mentioned in previous episodes, gives us a pretty clear before/after look, specifically on burnout as it relates to the pandemic. In 2020, 32% of women and 28% of men reported frequent burnout. By 2025, those rates climbed sharply, and among senior level women, 60% now reported frequent overall burnout, and 50% of senior level men reported it.
And 40% of employees overall, not just senior employees, 40% overall.
So, multiple independent sources confirm the same fact: Burnout skyrocketed during the pandemic, and it still hasn't come back down. It's going up. It's getting worse.
Does remote work help with burnout?
A lot of people who are experiencing difficult times at work think that working from home would help their symptoms, but data is actually mixed on that, and even though I am a huge supporter of working from home and remote work in general, I still need to be honest about what data shows. Skewing something to reflect my own viewpoint would be dishonest, unethical, and a disservice to everyone listening. So, here we go.
The American Psychological Association's Work in America survey has consistently found that hybrid and remote workers report more satisfaction with how, when, and where they work. Hybrid and remote workers reported better perceived management support, and in earlier survey years, they reported less workplace verbal abuse when compared to fully in-person workers. Those survey results certainly paint remote and hybrid work in a pretty favorable light.
However, Eagle Hill Consulting's 2025 workforce survey found that fully remote employees reported burnout at higher rates than hybrid or in-office employees.
Those two studies aren't necessarily a 1:1 comparison because one studied burnout levels while the other studied workplace satisfaction, and those are not the same thing.
So, which is it? Is remote work good or bad for people who are likely to burn out?
Here's what I think the most useful finding is, and it's from the American Psychological Association: The strongest predictor of well-being wasn't actually remote vs hybrid vs in-person at all. The strongest predictor of well-being was whether someone was working in their preferred work arrangement.
People in their preferred setup reported significantly better levels of mental health and job satisfaction, regardless of which setup that was. In other words, remote work isn't inherently protective against burnout, but it isn't inherently a burnout risk either. It's all dependent upon how an individual best works. Forcing a work arrangement on someone that doesn't fit how they best perform their work seems to be the bigger problem than the specific arrangement itself.
Finally, how burnout affects women…
Lastly, today I'm going to get into how burnout affects women more than it affects men.
The McKinsey/Lean In research shows that in 2020, the gender gap in burnout rates was already present. 32% of women reported burnout versus 28% of men. A 4 point difference.
By 2025, the burnout among senior level women had climbed to 60%, and burnout among senior level men had climbed to 50%. So, while there was a huge increase in burnout rates across the board, the gap also widened from a 4-point difference to a full 10 points.
Why is this happening?
There are a few threads that connect here to cause this, and some of it I've covered in previous episodes/posts.
One cause is that women disproportionately carry what researchers often call “the third shift,” meaning the workday itself, plus the invisible labor of managing a household and/or caregiving responsibilities on top of that, which leaves a much smaller margin for recovery, even after the workday officially ends.
We also talked back in episode six about research on non-promotable tasks, the invisible, uncredited work that women get asked to take on and volunteer for more often than men. That kind of work adds time and cognitive load without adding recognition, which is pretty close to a perfect recipe for burnout, exhaustion, and a shrinking sense that your effort is being seen or valued.
None of this means that women are less resilient or less capable of managing stress. It means that women are, on average, carrying a heavier and less visible total load than men, and burnout is what tends to show up when that keeps happening over a long enough period of time.
Ultimately, here's what I want you to take from all this.
If you're a high performer, burnout isn't a sign that you're not cut out for the pressure that comes with your role. It's often a sign that you've been taking on way more than anyone around you realized, including maybe even you.
Build in detachment time.
Be mindful of your self-imposed standards.
Ask for support earlier than you think you may need to.
If you manage people, watch your best people a little more closely because they're the ones least likely to show you they're struggling before they reach the point of no return.
I hope you found this content useful. I'm Lauren. This is Glass Ceiling Smashed. Go grab your hammer and let's break something together.
You can find the sources used to write this episode/article in the show notes for this episode linked at the beginning of this post.
