Good morning!
It looked last year as if the workplace burnout crisis was coming to a head, thanks to ongoing struggles over return-to-office mandates, increased pressure on workers over productivity, and a burgeoning loneliness epidemic. But 2024 will probably only be worse, as continued failure to adequately address workers’ mental health may finally prompt employees to look for jobs elsewhere.
Around 85% of business leaders surveyed by freelancing platform Fiverr in late November said they are aware of employees at their organization experiencing burnout. Of bosses who say they’re aware of worker burnout, 85% said they thought mental health strains on workers had impacted their ability as managers to retain talent.
Around 54% of polled workers said they’d experienced burnout or mental health challenges in the past year, and finance and IT saw the highest rates of burnout, at 58% and 55% respectively. Intense workloads, toxic company culture, and pressure from managers were cited as the top drivers of burnout by workers. And it seems that bosses have good reason to be worried—of employees who report struggling with burnout or adequate work-life balance, 65% said they will consider leaving their employer if their conditions don’t improve.
“At the culmination of a challenging year, many workers are reassessing their relationship with work. Pressures to return to the office, a 9-5 schedule, stress from management, and a lack of free time have all contributed to an epidemic of burnout among U.S. workers,” Gali Arnon, chief business officer at Fiverr, wrote in a press release.
Focusing on offering quality mental health benefits, and educating workers about them, is one way to go about addressing burnout within an organization. Around 47% of workers said improving mental health and well-being was a priority for their careers in 2024, but 40% of employees surveyed also said their company doesn’t offer benefits around mental health, or that they weren’t aware of such benefits.
Workers say that four-day, 40-hour weeks, mental health days, and limiting after-hours workloads would have the most positive impacts on their well-being, according to a survey from Gallup and Bentley University published in November.
“The U.S. is in the midst of a wellbeing crisis,” Tara Nicola, a senior consultant at Gallup, wrote in November. “These trends have many employers considering new approaches to addressing wellbeing.”
CHRO Daily is off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday and will be back in your inbox on Tuesday, Jan. 16.
Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion
