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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
Around the Table
A round-up of the most important HR headlines.
- Starbucks is getting sued by a consumer advocacy group for its claims about ethically sourced coffee and tea. The lawsuit alleges that the chain buys from producers guilty of human rights and labor abuses. Starbucks said it plans to “aggressively defend” itself against the claims. —Washington Post
- Lyft is being sued by a woman who says she was sexually assaulted by a driver contracting for the company. Lyft says the incident did not happen during a Lyft ride, but at a later encounter between the woman and the driver. —CBS
- Companies in the U.K. are experiencing their highest CFO turnover rate in a decade, and the U.S. is also experiencing high churn. —Financial Times
Watercooler
Everything you need to know from Fortune.
Overworked. A former recruiting chief for Goldman Sachs is suing the bank for $1.3 million, saying he worked so hard that he developed serious mental health problems and heart ailments. —Katharine Gemmell, Bloomberg
Notable retirement. College football coaching legend Nick Saban is retiring. Don’t miss the highlights from a Fortune profile of the coach back in 2012, in which he discusses his highly-organized coaching process which parallels how CEOs operate. —Fortune Editors, Brian O’Keefe
Leaked. The company that owns WebMD and Fodor’s reportedly accidentally shared an internal video intended for employees only, in which the CEO champions working in person and scolds people clinging to WFH. “We aren’t asking or negotiating at this point,” he says. —Jane Thier
Avalanche of layoffs. We’re not even halfway through January and the tech sector has already had several layoffs. Amazon and Google are cutting hundreds of jobs, and Unity Software Inc. is eliminating around 1,800 roles. —Brody Ford, Bloomberg
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