Despite a thriving corporate wellness industry, overwork and burnout are still rife in the US and across the world.
Sometimes, even a wellness-oriented infrastructure that sees organizations offering multiple flexible working options, recharge days, counselling and strong employee assistance programs may not be enough. Worryingly, over 60% of Americans left PTO on the table in 2024, despite a clear correlation between lack of vacation and decreased productivity/burnout.
This needs to change. While HR and L&D teams can’t physically stop employees from overworking, there are ways to do more to help shift the workplace culture towards better personal ownership of wellness.
Employees could take more accountability for their own health. They often don’t, due to stigma, lack of awareness, fear of confidentiality breaches or the perception that using resources signals weakness.
But burnout prevention is a two-way street. So how can we reframe wellness as a shared responsibility between employer and employee and help people to help themselves?
One key thing we can do is help employees have better conversations, in which they communicate their capacity more honestly, set boundaries more confidently and feel able to challenge negative workload situations.
As managers, we could ask colleagues more often about their energy levels, and what changes they might suggest to increase their energy or at least stop draining it. We could do more to help workers identify tasks that align with their natural preferences versus those that require significant ‘energy stretching’ (a major driver of burnout).
We can’t ignore this problem. Two-thirds of American employees reported experiencing job burnout in 2025. According to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, burnout is costing US employers between $4,000 and $21,000 per employee annually in lost productivity, turnover, and absenteeism.
A 1,000-person company in the U.S. can lose an estimated $5m annually. Stress-related health issues are driving up insurance premiums and legal costs.
Research from Moodle showed that:
Unsurprisingly, compulsory return-to-office requirements and the impact (or perceived threat) of AI-related functional changes are sending these stress levels even higher.
Improve manager training and burnout awareness
Untrained managers can damage organizational culture, productivity, staff wellbeing…
Even aside from understanding burnout issues, many managers receive no formal training. Gartner research reveals that 85% of managers have none– they are accidental managers.
Yet it pays to equip managers to spot the signs of severe stress and burnout and respond compassionately. And to help them become comfortable managing change initiatives and the human ‘fallout’ they can cause. And that means gaining a deeper understanding of the individuals in their team.
Equipping managers and leaders with Insights Discovery training, for example, helps them adapt to different management styles, making it easier to spot early warning signs of stress. It also helps managers and employees have more productive conversations.
The workplace is changing so fast that for many managers, the team they carefully built to fit their business needs a year ago may soon need to display a different set of skills.
The impact of increased AI adoption on not just recruitment, HR or technical processes, but on entire business operations and ways of working, means that once smooth team dynamics can hit several blocks and challenges. Navigating healthy conversations around this is an essential interpersonal skill.
Normalize therapy
The availability and benefits of counselling is something we could all talk more openly about. Often, exhausted employees recognize that therapy may help their wellbeing, but don’t engage because of cost or other barriers.
Create wellness-focused norms
Burnout often happens because employees think they aren't allowed to switch off. Unchecked digital communication is a leading driver of modern burnout. HR can support personal boundaries and introduce more transparent norms, like the right to disconnect outside core hours or ensuring that leaders visibly take lunch breaks and share when they’re offline.
Shift to outcome-based performance
When people are judged on hours logged, they stay online to look busy (presenteeism). Many organizations are shifting to a more practical focus on results, where performance is assessed on agreed outcomes and not on time spent.
But as well as these essential steps, we can help employees and managers have better conversations. We can ask overworked colleagues questions like: “How would I know you were starting to feel overwhelmed?”
It helps the employee to take ownership of their stress signals and share them. An empathetic manager might also ask: “Which of your natural strengths are you over-using?”
Burnout often happens when a positive trait (like a desire to work towards shared goals or create harmony on the team) is pushed too far. This question helps the employee see that their ‘good’ habits might actually be the source of their exhaustion.
But by far the most powerful thing we can do is to help employees communicate their needs better and take more ownership of their stress levels and health challenges.
When people become more self-aware and build emotional literacy and confidence, they may be more able to have conversations that don’t focus entirely on emotions.
In a structured Insights Discovery self-awareness program, for example, the language of four different color energies to describe personality type and preferred communication and work styles replaces the language of emotions. It helps things feel less personal and more solvable and helps people articulate their needs and speak without fear of judgment.
The various programs for individuals, teams and leaders offer tailored support to different personality preferences. In cases where severe stress and potential burnout are affecting someone’s ability to function well at work, the programs can help with:
Recognizing stress triggers: Different personality types (Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow, Earth Green, Cool Blue) have different stressors. Fiery Red may burn out from losing control (or trying to retain it at all costs), while Earth Green may struggle prohibitively with conflict.
Dialing up different types of energy: The individual Insights profiles can be used to help employees understand when they are overusing a particular energy (e.g. becoming too intense or too withdrawn) and to intentionally ‘dial up’ a different color energy to manage stress.
Tailoring the work environment: Managers can help to create an environment that respects an individual’s preferences. For instance, allowing time for quiet, analytical work (Cool Blue) or enabling social, collaborative interaction (Sunshine Yellow).
Strengthening team connections: Employers can foster social wellness by providing virtual or in-person ‘non-work’ spaces where employees can connect and reduce the potential for isolation-induced burnout.
Overall, a better understanding of different communication and work styles within a team reduces the emotional exhaustion associated with workplace conflict. Knowing (even sharing) people’s color energies proactively before team meetings, for example, helps to set behavioral expectations.
Organizations can take many positive steps to reduce burnout by implementing systemic changes and managerial habits that address the root causes of chronic stress.
But essentially, better wellness at work starts with better, healthier, non-judgmental conversations. And that means helping people become more self-aware so they can manage their reactions more easily and with more confidence and less anxiety.
Insights Discovery is an L&D training system that creates high-performing teams by enhancing awareness and workplace relationships. Using a memorable four-color model to illustrate different behavioral styles, it creates a common language that connects colleagues across geographical and cultural boundaries, fostering collaboration, driving productivity and transforming workplaces.