
Your best employee just handed in their resignation. They seemed fine last week—maybe a bit quieter than usual, but fine. Now they're leaving, and you're wondering: What did I miss?
Probably burnout. And you probably missed the signs weeks or months ago.
The World Health Organization officially recognized burnout as an occupational phenomenon in 2019, defining it as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that hasn't been successfully managed. It's characterized by three dimensions: energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from work with feelings of negativism or cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy.
Burnout doesn't happen overnight. It builds gradually, with warning signs that managers can learn to recognize—if they know what to look for. The problem is that by the time burnout is obvious, significant damage has already been done: to the employee's health, to their work, and often to the entire team.
This guide will help you spot burnout early, understand its root causes, and take action before it's too late.
Burnout has reached epidemic levels. Recent surveys suggest that 52% of workers report feeling burned out, up significantly from pre-pandemic levels. Among managers, the numbers are even higher.
Beyond the human cost, burnout is a business problem:
Turnover: Burned-out employees are 2.6 times more likely to actively seek a new job. Replacing a knowledge worker costs 50-200% of their annual salary.
Productivity: Exhausted employees produce less, make more mistakes, and require more supervision. They're physically present but mentally checked out.
Contagion: Burnout spreads. One burned-out team member affects everyone around them through negativity, dropped balls, and increased workload on others.
Healthcare costs: Burnout contributes to depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, and other health problems. This shows up in healthcare spending and absenteeism.
Innovation: Burned-out employees don't innovate. They're in survival mode, focused on getting through the day rather than improving things.
Several factors have intensified burnout in recent years:
Blurred boundaries: Remote and hybrid work eliminated the commute that once separated work and home. For many, the workday never really ends.
Always-on culture: Slack, email, and mobile devices make employees perpetually reachable. The expectation of constant availability has become normalized.
Uncertainty: Economic volatility, layoffs, and organizational changes create chronic stress. People work harder to prove their value, accelerating burnout.
Understaffing: When organizations run lean, the remaining employees absorb the work of departed colleagues. "Doing more with less" often means doing too much.
Manager burnout: Managers themselves are burning out at record rates. Burned-out managers can't effectively support their teams, creating a cascading effect.
Burnout rarely announces itself. By the time someone says "I'm burned out," they've been struggling for months. Learning to spot early signs gives you the opportunity to intervene before it's too late.
This is often the first objective indicator—and the most frequently missed because it's gradual.
What to watch for:
Why it matters: High performers don't suddenly become mediocre. When you see sustained performance decline in someone who was previously excellent, something is wrong. The instinct is often to address the performance issue directly, but that misses the root cause.
What you might hear:
The subtle version: Sometimes the decline isn't in output but in engagement. They're still completing tasks but no longer offering ideas, pushing back on problems, or going above and beyond. They're meeting the minimum, not leading.
Burned-out employees often retreat from workplace interactions and culture.
What to watch for:
Why it matters: Withdrawal is a protective mechanism. Burned-out employees don't have the energy for engagement, so they conserve by pulling back. They're not being antisocial—they're exhausted.
What you might hear:
The remote work challenge: In remote environments, withdrawal is harder to spot. Someone can be checked out while still appearing on Slack with a green dot. Pay attention to communication patterns, not just presence.
A shift from constructive criticism to pervasive negativity is a classic burnout signal.
What to watch for:
Why it matters: Cynicism is one of the WHO's three defining characteristics of burnout. When someone who was once optimistic and solution-oriented becomes persistently negative, their relationship with work has fundamentally changed.
What you might hear:
Distinguish from valid concerns: Not all negativity is burnout. Sometimes critical feedback is warranted. The difference is whether the person offers constructive alternatives and seems invested in improvement, or has given up entirely.
Burnout manifests physically and emotionally, often in visible ways.
What to watch for:
Why it matters: Burnout isn't just psychological—it has physical effects. Chronic stress impairs sleep, weakens immune function, and affects cognitive capacity. These aren't personal problems separate from work; work is causing them.
What you might hear:
What you might observe: Cameras off when they used to be on. More frequent "sorry, I lost track of time" moments. Appearing distracted or foggy. Quick frustration with minor setbacks.
When employees feel their situation can't improve, they've often reached an advanced burnout stage.
What to watch for:
Why it matters: Burnout creates a sense of powerlessness. People feel they can't change their circumstances, can't leave, and can't sustain the status quo. This is dangerous territory—both for work performance and for mental health.
What you might hear:
Take seriously: These expressions should prompt immediate supportive conversation. They may indicate severe burnout, depression, or consideration of resignation.
Identifying signs is only half the battle. To address burnout effectively, you need to understand its causes—which often differ from what managers assume.
The most obvious cause is simply too much work:
But here's the insight many managers miss: workload is relative to capacity. The same workload that one person handles easily may overwhelm another, depending on their skills, circumstances, and other demands. Context matters.
Feeling powerless is exhausting. Burnout increases when employees:
Research consistently identifies lack of control as a top driver of burnout—sometimes exceeding workload in importance.
A 2023 study found that "ineffective processes and systems" was the number one driver of burnout—ahead of workload. Employees burn out when they:
This is particularly frustrating because it's fixable. People can tolerate working hard on meaningful things; working hard on pointless things is demoralizing.
Not knowing what success looks like creates constant low-grade stress:
Employees can't succeed if they don't know what success means.
Feeling that effort goes unnoticed is deeply demoralizing:
Recognition isn't just nice—it's essential fuel. Without it, motivation depletes.
People burn out when their values conflict with their work:
This kind of burnout is particularly corrosive because it attacks meaning and identity, not just energy.
Difficult relationships are exhausting:
We're social beings. When work relationships are negative, work becomes draining regardless of the tasks themselves.
When you spot burnout signs, the next step is talking about it. This conversation requires skill.
Your goal is to understand, not to fix (yet) or to evaluate.
Do say:
Don't say:
Start from a place of care, not accountability. The accountability conversation, if needed, comes later.
Your role in the initial conversation is to understand, which means listening:
Many burned-out employees have never had anyone ask how they're doing and actually wait for the answer.
Once you understand that someone is struggling, explore why:
Don't assume you know the cause. What you think is driving burnout might not be what the employee experiences as the main problem.
Don't dismiss or minimize:
Don't make promises you can't keep:
Don't add to the burden:
One conversation isn't enough. Schedule follow-ups to:
Burnout recovery takes time. Consistent support matters more than one dramatic intervention.
Individual conversations are necessary but insufficient. Addressing burnout requires structural changes.
Audit and adjust workloads:
Build in slack:
Triage and prioritize:
Let people control how they work:
Reduce micromanagement:
Identify friction points:
Eliminate busywork:
Improve handoffs and communication:
Establish norms around after-hours work:
Protect focus time:
Enforce PTO:
Make recognition a habit:
Connect work to impact:
Beyond addressing active burnout, how do you create conditions where burnout is less likely to occur?
Teams where people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and admit mistakes are more resilient:
When people can raise issues early, problems get solved before they cause burnout.
Build teams for marathon performance, not sprint collapse:
Isolation accelerates burnout. Foster connection:
People who see a future are more engaged and resilient:
Stagnation breeds burnout; growth prevents it.
You can't prevent team burnout if you're burned out yourself:
Your wellbeing enables your team's wellbeing.
Sometimes you don't catch burnout early. When someone is already severely burned out, different strategies apply.
Severe burnout requires significant intervention:
Half-measures don't work. Burned-out people can't "push through" to recovery.
Recovery requires time away from work:
Short breaks usually aren't sufficient for severe burnout. Longer recovery time may be necessary.
Sometimes the role itself is the problem:
The answer might be internal movement, role restructuring, or (in some cases) recognizing that the organization can't provide what this person needs.
Severe burnout may require professional help:
Recovery from severe burnout takes months, not weeks. Set realistic expectations:
Preventing and addressing burnout is a core management responsibility—not an HR function or an individual employee problem.
When burnout is driven by factors outside your direct control, your role is to advocate:
Sometimes the most important thing you can do is tell your boss the truth about what's happening.
You can't pour from an empty cup:
Manager burnout creates team burnout. Taking care of yourself is taking care of your team.
Burnout isn't inevitable. It's not a character flaw in weak employees. It's a predictable consequence of mismanaged work environments—and it's largely preventable.
The signs are there if you know how to look:
Catching these signs early gives you the opportunity to intervene before burnout damages employees, teams, and the organization.
But spotting burnout isn't enough. You need to:
This is real management work. Not process administration, not task assignment—actual leadership that creates conditions where people can thrive.
The cost of getting this wrong is enormous: turnover, lost productivity, damaged culture, and human suffering. The benefit of getting it right is equally significant: engaged employees who do their best work, healthy teams that support each other, and sustainable performance over the long term.
Your people are watching to see whether you notice, whether you care, and whether you act.
What are you going to do?
Burnout often hides until it's too late. Intelogos helps managers spot the early warning signs—like workload changes and engagement patterns—so you can support your team before burnout takes hold. See how Intelogos supports team wellbeing.