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Author: Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

  • Executive Burnout: The Hidden Risk Undermining Your Succession Plan

    Executive Burnout: The Hidden Risk Undermining Your Succession Plan

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Why Executive Burnout Is a Governance Risk You Can No Longer Ignore 

    For too long, burnout has been treated as a personal wellness issue. Aa sign that someone needs a long weekend, a vacation, or a meditation app. But from the C-suite vantage point, this is the wrong lens.

    Executive and managerial burnout is not a personal failure. It is a governance failure.

    It poses a direct, unmanaged threat to business continuity, leadership pipeline integrity, and organizational capacity.

    What I Saw in 20+ Years Leading Global Talent Processes

    Across my career at global organizations, I facilitated hundreds of Talent Review meetings. These are the rooms where senior leaders passionately debated performance, potential, and succession. Here’s what always struck me:

    Leaders loved Talent Review meetings… but consistently failed in the follow-through.

    • We dutifully assessed performance.
    • We analyzed potential.
    • We flagged flight risks.

    But then?

    Workloads took over. Development plans were untouched. Critical conversations didn’t happen. And flight risks… well, they flew.

    The pattern was painfully predictable:

    • A high-value leader resigns unexpectedly
    • The “ready-now” successor we thought we had wasn’t actually ready
    • We scramble to hire externally
    • Internal leaders lose morale because promotion paths feel blocked

    In every case, the root cause was the same: Weak follow-through. Not weak talent.

    And burnout was almost always in the background.

    The Cost of Executive Pipeline Fragility

    Make no mistake: executive burnout is a multi-million-dollar problem.

    • High-Value Loss: Burnout among executives and managers costs organizations over $20,000 per person annually in lost productivity and diminished performance.
    • Succession Shock: Replacing a critical leader costs 50% to 200% of salary and creates a destabilizing gap in your leadership pipeline.
    • Missed Opportunities: Your best leaders carry the most mission-critical work. When they leave, projects stall because no one else has the context or expertise.
    • Reputation Damage: When an executive leaves due to burnout, the story spreads, eroding employer brand trust faster than any Glassdoor review ever could.

    If you’re a senior leader focused on cost optimization and growth, this is not a people issue. This is a financial and operational liability.

    For further reading: Burnout Doesn’t Send You an Invoice but It’s Already Draining Your Bottom Line

    Conservative synthesis of leader and HiPo research suggests roughly 30–45% of critical successor/high-potential leaders are likely to show moderate-to-high burnout risk.

    Your Succession Plan Is Probably Blind to Burnout

    Traditional succession planning answers one question: Who could step into a bigger job?

    But it doesn’t answer the more urgent one:  Who is burning out in the job they have right now?

    This is the gap that creates unpredicted resignations and the expensive panic that follows.

    How I Bring Governance Discipline to Burnout Risk

    As an Executive Succession Risk Partner, my work is to bring a diagnostic, data-driven lens to what most companies treat as a “soft” issue.

    1. The Future Risk Audit

    Using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS), we assess your critical leadership cohorts. This is not an engagement survey. It is a structural risk audit.

    2. Pinpointing Systemic Failure

    AWS data reveals what’s actually eroding capacity:

    • Workload
    • Fairness
    • Reward
    • Control
    • Community
    • Values misalignment

    This tells us why your leaders are exhausted and which systems are failing them.

    3. The Structural Fix

    We stop blaming individuals and start repairing the organizational mechanics:

    • Workload friction
    • Recognition gaps
    • Decision-making autonomy
    • Value misalignment
    • Leadership capability issues

    These interventions rebuild capacity and strengthen succession integrity.

    The Outcome: Capacity Reclaimed. Succession Secured.

    Structural interventions create measurable gains:

    1. Succession Secured: You protect your most valuable leaders, ensuring pipeline integrity and business continuity.
    1. Capacity Reclaimed
      By removing friction, you recover lost hours, lost energy, and lost productivity — enabling your organization to finally “do more with less.”

    If you can’t afford to lose $20,000 of leadership capacity this year, or risk a sudden vacancy in a critical role, the time to audit your risk is now.

    Interested in assessing the risk inside your own organization?

    Let’s schedule a 15-minute conversation to evaluate the health of your leadership pipeline and the real-world cost of burnout in your succession plan.

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  • Bad Leadership Is One of the Biggest Drivers of Burnout

    Bad Leadership Is One of the Biggest Drivers of Burnout

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    We talk a lot about employee burnout – employee resilience, personal boundaries, and meditation apps. But what we don’t talk nearly enough about is the top driver of burnout inside organizations; i.e., leadership behavior and the psychological safety it creates (or destroys).

    The data is overwhelming:

    • 70% of team climate is influenced directly by the manager (organizational psychology research).
    • Teams with low psychological safety show significantly higher rates of stress, turnover, conflict, errors, and stalled innovation.
    • Leaders account for up to 40% of the variance in employee burnout (McKinsey).

    This isn’t about “bad apples.” It’s about leaders who were promoted without the training or support to create healthy, high-performance environments.

    And the cost is enormous.

    The Hidden Cost of Poor Leadership and Low Psychological Safety

    When psychological safety is low, employees operate under chronic threat response. And that creates a cascading set of losses:

    • Turnover: Employees leave managers, not companies.
    • Lost productivity: Chronic stress reduces cognitive capacity by up to 30%.
    • Higher healthcare premiums: Burnout costs between $4,000 and $21,000 per employee annually, depending on the level of the role.
    • Presenteeism: The “I’m here, but I’m barely functioning” cost.
    • Absenteeism: More sick days and stress-related health issues.
    • Lower innovation: People will not share new ideas if they fear being judged.
    • Slower decision-making: Teams stay quiet until asked, and escalate unnecessarily.
    • Employer brand erosion: Word spreads fast in talent markets.

    This is the Burnout Tax. A silent financial leak created by poor leadership practices.

    What Poor Leaders Consistently Miss: Psychological Safety Is the Engine of Performance

    Most leaders don’t intend to create burnout. But without training, they unintentionally:

    • react defensively
    • communicate inconsistently
    • set unclear expectations
    • reward urgency over quality
    • shut down dissent
    • ignore micro-signals of distress

    These behaviors create a low-safety environment where people simply cannot access their best thinking.

    Psychological safety is not “comfort.” It is the freedom to think, contribute, question, and take smart risks without fear. It’s the foundation of innovation, trust, and sustainable performance.

    How to Assess Psychological Safety (and Burnout Risk) in Your Organization

    Here are the tools that matter most. They are evidence-based, not trendy:

    1. Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)

    The gold standard for measuring burnout, used globally for decades. It assesses:

    • Emotional Exhaustion
    • Depersonalization
    • Diminished Personal Accomplishment

    2. Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS)

    The workplace assessment that reveals why burnout is happening:

    • Workload
    • Control
    • Reward
    • Community
    • Fairness
    • Values alignment

    Together, MBI + AWS provide the most complete view of burnout sources.

    3. Team Interviews or Focus Groups

    Direct, human insight. The nuance you can’t get from surveys alone.

    4. Workload + Decision-Making Analysis

    This exposes:

    • bottlenecks
    • inefficient approval flows
    • unclear ownership
    • decision fatigue
    • role overload

    5. Leadership 360s

    A reality check for leaders: “How you think you’re showing up” vs. “How your team experiences you.”

    The Metrics That Matter (Including Leading Indicators)

    Most organizations rely solely on lagging indicators; i.e., the signs of burnout that appear when it’s already too late:

    • Voluntary turnover
    • Absenteeism
    • Performance drops
    • Exit interviews
    • Formal complaints

    You need these, but they won’t help you intervene early.

    Leading indicators show burnout before it erupts:

    • Increases in workload without resource adjustment
    • Slow or hesitant decision-making
    • Drop in idea-sharing or collaboration
    • More escalations from frontline teams
    • Increased conflict or defensiveness in meetings
    • Reduced participation in optional initiatives

    These indicators tell you: “A burnout storm cloud is forming. Act now.”

    The Skills Leaders Must Learn to Reduce Burnout and Build Psychological Safety

    Psychological safety improves when leaders build specific, behavior-based skills:

    • Deep listening and non-defensive communication
    • Recognizing early burnout signals
    • Giving feedback without triggering threat response
    • Facilitating inclusive conversations
    • Clarity-setting and scope control
    • Managing workload and prioritization
    • Repair conversations after harm
    • Emotional regulation under pressure
    • Coaching skills (not just directing)

    These skills are not “soft.” These are performance skills that drive execution, innovation, and results.

    A Call to Action for Organizations

    If you’re serious about improving performance and retention, and strengthening leadership effectiveness, start with a Psychological Safety & Burnout Audit that includes:

    • MBI + AWS
    • Team Interviews and Focus Groups
    • Workload & Decision-Making Analysis
    • Leadership 360s

    This gives you clear data, clear language, and a clear roadmap for targeted improvement. No guesswork. No blaming individuals. Just evidence, insight, actionable steps and opportunity.

    If you are interested in learning more about a Psychological Safety & Burnout Inventory, contact us.

    Subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter for more.

  • Stop Burnout: Unlock Employee Innovation and Boost Productivity

    Stop Burnout: Unlock Employee Innovation and Boost Productivity

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Burnout isn’t about weak individuals. Burnout is a silent organizational crisis that is destroying your employees’ ability to think, innovate, and make smart decisions. For leaders demanding high performance, this is a huge financial leak.

    The system is broken, and the cost is measured in millions:

    1. Turnover Time Bomb: The moment your best people leave, you pay huge costs to replace and retrain them.
    2. Presenteeism Trap: Your people are at work, but the damage to their focus and decision-making means their output quality is low. This is worse than absenteeism because you’re paying for mediocre performance.

    Burnout is Everywhere: It’s Already in Your Company

    If you think this problem is unique to other industries, think again. Burnout is now a global epidemic that has been declared an “occupational phenomenon” by the WHO.

    • Prevalence is High: Studies consistently show that up to 70% of professionals report feeling burned out at least once in their career.
    • Managers are Hit Hardest: Middle managers, your critical layer for execution, are often the most exhausted, caught between unrealistic demands from the top and struggling teams below.
    • The Cost is Universal: Whether you’re in tech, finance, or retail, the root causes (unmanageable workload, lack of control, unfairness) exist in every organization.

    You are not immune. Your best people are likely struggling with this right now.

    The Burnout Brain Drain: Why Burnout Equals Bad Decisions

    Burnout isn’t just low energy; it’s a brain function failure that costs you millions in poor judgment:

    • Executive Functions Shut Down: The part of the brain responsible for planning, problem-solving, and good judgment struggles to work. Result: Your staff wastes time on low-priority tasks, makes costly errors, and can’t see the big picture.
    • The “Brain Fog” Trap: Focus and memory fade. If a critical email is missed, or a project detail is forgotten, it’s often the result of chronic cognitive exhaustion, not carelessness.
    • Innovation Blocked: Creativity and adaptability require a fully functioning mind. Burnout actively kills your ability to innovate and respond to market changes.

    For example, I know a CEO who has made Innovation a core company value. Yet, despite this focus, there is no measurement of employee burnout within the organization. This raises a critical question:

    How can true innovation be achieved if the company is experiencing brain drain due to unaddressed burnout?

    Without actively monitoring and addressing burnout, even the most innovative environments risk losing their best talent and stifling creativity.

    ACTION PLAN: 3 Ways Leaders Fix the Cognitive Crash

    Stop prioritizing wellness apps. Start fixing your organization’s design flaws.

    1. STOP Overload: Stop making people do two jobs. Cut non-essential work and enforce boundaries to give the brain time to recover.
    2. GIVE Control: Delegate authority and power, not just tasks. Giving employees control over how and when they work is the most powerful tool against burnout.
    3. MEASURE Risk, Not Just Engagement: Use validated burnout assessments to directly link your organizational culture issues to your turnover costs and error rates.

    Stop letting burnout drain your talent and your profits. It’s time to lead with systemic change.

    To learn more ways to fix burnout and its impact on innovation, creativity and thinking, contact us.

  • Stop Asking Burned Out Thoroughbred Leaders to Win the Race

    Stop Asking Burned Out Thoroughbred Leaders to Win the Race

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Last week, I was chatting with my neighbor, a former jockey who spent years racing some of the best horses in the country.

    He told me about a horse he once ran too hard. The animal had enormous heart and talent, and even when injured, it tried to push through. But one race changed everything. The horse finished (barely) and was never the same again.

    “Once a thoroughbred breaks,” he said quietly, “he won’t ever run the same again.”

    That line stayed with me. Because I see it play out in workplaces every day. We ask burned out leaders to do more and more.

    The Thoroughbred Leader

    High-performing employees, your thoroughbreds, are the ones who give extra, stay late, and care deeply. They don’t need constant motivation because excellence is already in their blood, in their DNA.

    But when they start to falter, showing signs of exhaustion, cynicism, or self-doubt, leaders often respond with: “We need to get engagement up.” They double down on focus groups, action planning, motivation, goal setting, or pep talks, asking these same employees to “dig deeper” or “recommit.”

    It’s the workplace equivalent of urging an injured racehorse to run faster.

    Burnout Is an Injury, not a Motivation Problem

    Gallup reports that nearly 30% of the workforce is burned out and burnout affects top performers more often.

    Some quick math: In a 500-person company, 15 thoroughbreds (your top talent), working at 75% capacity, costs the company over $560,000 per year.

    When someone is physically, mentally, or emotionally depleted, no amount of focus groups and action planning to improve engagement will restore their performance. Burnout erodes capacity from the inside out and, unless it’s addressed, those employees don’t just leave the company; they lose part of themselves in the process.

    Companies Are Not Thinking About the Cost of Burned Out Leaders

    Most organizations rely on engagement surveys to understand employee well-being. Engagement data tell you how committed people feel, not how depleted they are. Ironically, your team can be 100% committed yet burned out to their core.

    That’s why I use the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS) in my work. These tools reveal why people are struggling, pinpointing root causes like workload, control, recognition, fairness, values alignment, and community.

    When leaders have that data, they can finally fix what’s broken instead of pushing people harder.

    A Better Question: Are my Leaders Healthy Enough to Win the Race?

    Before asking for more engagement, productivity, or discretionary effort, pause and ask: “Are my top performers healthy enough to run?” Because if they’re burned out, they don’t need a pep talk, they need recovery and systemic changes in their work environment.

    Protect your thoroughbreds, and you protect your performance. Ignore their injuries, and you risk losing both.

    What do you think?

    Have you ever seen a “thoroughbred” employee pushed too hard? How did it impact them and the team?

    Interested in learning more about burnout assessment tools? Contact us.

    The Burnout Imperative is a weekly newsletter for CHROs and business leaders. Follow it here on LinkedIn.

    #BurnoutPrevention #EmployeeEngagement #LeadershipDevelopment #OrganizationalHealth #HRStrategy #CorporateCulture #instituteforburnoutrecovery

  • Burned out? What To Do If Your Company Doesn’t Help

    Burned out? What To Do If Your Company Doesn’t Help

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    You’ve hit that point where “just push through” isn’t working anymore. You’re exhausted, disengaged, maybe even resentful. But when you look around, no one at your company seems to notice.

    This is the situation one of my clients described this week.

    How about you? If you’ve tried raising the issue and been met with silence, surface-level wellness programs, or the classic “we’re all stressed” response… I see you. Burnout isn’t a lack of resilience. It’s a sign of chronic misalignment between you and the environment you’re working in.

    1. Understand What’s Really Happening

    When things feel off, it’s tempting to blame yourself. But burnout is rarely just about the individual. Dr. Christina Maslach’s research on the Six Areas of Worklife offers a map to understand where that misalignment lives:

    • Workload: You have too much to do and not enough recovery time.
    • Control: You lack autonomy over priorities or how work gets done.
    • Reward: Effort isn’t recognized or meaningfully rewarded.
    • Community: Relationships feel strained or disconnected.
    • Fairness: There’s inequity in how work, credit, or opportunity is distributed.
    • Values: What matters to you no longer aligns with what’s valued around you.

    Take a moment to reflect:

    Which two or three areas feel most out of sync right now?

    Naming it helps you see the problem as systemic, not personal failure.

    2. Rebuild From the Inside Out

    Even if your company isn’t addressing burnout, you can start rebuilding your foundation. Your body and brain are your most important assets. Remember, both need repair time.

    Start small and consistent:

    • Prioritize real rest and quality sleep. A consistent sleep schedule is a good starting point.
    • Reconnect with movement that restores energy, not drains it. A daily walk in nature is restorative on many levels.
    • Rebuild nutrition habits that stabilize mood and focus. Sugar hijacks thinking and behavior.

    These are not luxuries. They are preconditions for clarity, resilience, and good decision-making.

    3. Strengthen Your Emotional Intelligence

    When you’re operating in a high-stress or unsupportive environment, emotional intelligence becomes your most powerful ally.

    It begins with self-awareness – the ability to notice your own physical, emotional, and mental state before reacting. That’s often where burnout starts to reveal itself: irritability, brain fog, cynicism, or emotional detachment.

    In those moments, pause… Take one slow breath in and one slow breath out… Ask yourself… “What’s happening in me right now?”

    That short pause regulates your nervous system and creates just enough space to respond rather than react.

    From there, emotional intelligence expands into social awareness; that is, reading the cues of others and the energy in the room. You start to see dynamics more clearly: who’s escalating, who’s checked out, where your influence actually lies.

    And finally, it extends to self-management. This is choosing how to adjust your tone, pace, or words to meet the moment without losing yourself.

    This isn’t just emotional control. It’s leadership in action. Because when you can regulate your inner state, you regain access to calm, clarity, and choice – the very things burnout tries to take away.

    4. Decide: Heal Here or Move On

    Once you understand the misalignment, you face a choice: can you heal within this system, or choose to move on.

    If you stay, you may need to renegotiate workload, boundaries, or support. If you go, you’re not “giving up.” You’re choosing alignment over depletion.

    Either way, the goal is the same: reclaim your agency. Use the Six Areas of Worklife to assess future opportunities. You don’t want to fall into burnout again.

    5. You Don’t Have to Figure It Out Alone

    Burnout recovery is not just about bouncing back. It’s about building something stronger and more sustainable.

    If you’d like a framework to guide that process, contact me for a free copy of my eBook, Your Personal Guide to Burnout and Recovery. It walks you through the steps to rebuild your energy, clarity, and sense of purpose.

    Because when your company doesn’t address burnout, you still have a choice:

    • To protect your energy.
    • To rebuild your foundation of health and wellbeing
    • To lead yourself back to alignment with what matters most to you.

    Thinking about the Six Areas of Worklife, which one is most important for you to address right now?

    Follow me on LinkedIn.

    I wrote an article on Nine Ways to Recognize Burnout.

  • Before you Post That $100k Job, Think Again

    Before you Post That $100k Job, Think Again

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Why solving burnout by adding more people may cost more than fixing what’s broken.

    When teams feel stretched, hiring seems like the obvious answer. Add capacity. Lighten the load. Hit the goals.

    But what if the issue isn’t capacity? What if it’s culture?

    Before approving new headcount, leaders should pause and ask: Which of the six Areas of Worklife might be out of alignment?

    Because burnout rarely starts with individuals. It starts with systems.

    The Six Levers of Burnout

    Maslach and Leiter’s Areas of Worklife framework identifies six organizational factors that drive burnout risk:

    1. Workload – sustainable pace and realistic capacity
    2. Control – autonomy and influence over decisions
    3. Reward/Recognition – appreciation, fairness, acknowledgment
    4. Community – trust, support, and belonging
    5. Fairness – equity in workload, promotion, and decision-making
    6. Values – alignment between individual and organizational purpose

    When even one of these areas is consistently misaligned, adding more people rarely solves the problem. It just spreads the strain.

    Recognition: One of the Hidden Triggers of Burnout

    Recognition is often the quietest – but most costly – gap.

    When people feel unseen, their performance declines even if workload stays constant. Gallup’s 2024 data show employees who don’t feel recognized are 2.7x more likely to leave, and teams with low recognition experience 20% lower productivity.

    Many organizations misread this as a capacity problem and respond by hiring. But the real issue is motivational, not operational.

    Headcount Vs. Systemic Fix: A Cost Comparison

    For a mid-market company of 500 employees (average salary $100K):

    OptionCostOutcomeRisk
    Add 1 FTE$130K–$150K (salary, hiring, ramp-up)Temporary reliefRoot cause persists; burnout remains
    Address Recognition gap$40K–$60K (manager training, peer recognition tools, comms redesign)Engagement and retention gainsRequires leadership focus, not more headcount

    Even a modest recognition initiative that boosts engagement by 10% can recover $1M+ in productivity – a far higher return than hiring another employee.

    The CFO’s Math

    If just 10% of a 500-person workforce is underperforming due to burnout and low recognition:

    • That’s 50 people delivering at 80% capacity.
    • Annual productivity loss ≈ $1 million (50 × $100K × 20%).
    • Addressing recognition costs a fraction of that and pays back 10–12x ROI if engagement rebounds even halfway.

    And Recognition is only one of the six levers. Misalignment across multiple areas multiplies the financial impact.

    A Smarter Way Forward

    Before approving that next headcount request, ask: “Which area of work life might actually be out of alignment?

    Workload may be visible but Recognition, Fairness, or Control often drive the real energy drain.

    Systemic burnout requires systemic solutions. Adding people won’t heal a sub-optimal culture.

    The Leadership Imperative

    Recognition isn’t “soft.” It’s strategic.

    When leaders align all six Areas of Work Life, they don’t just prevent burnout, they protect performance, profit, and the people who make both possible.

    I help leaders quantify burnout costs before they become turnover costs. DM me if you’d like to see what that looks like in your 2025 plan.

    Sign up for my LinkedIn Newsletter.

    Learn more about the Cost of Burnout.

  • Preventing Burnout: A True Test of Your Leadership

    Preventing Burnout: A True Test of Your Leadership

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Why protecting your team’s energy is the highest form of leadership

    Your team looks fine at first glance.

    Deadlines are met – barely. Cameras are on in meetings. No one’s complaining.

    But lately, you’ve noticed something: The spark is gone.

    Fewer ideas. Shorter answers. The silence feels heavy somehow.

    You tell yourself, “They’re okay, they’re just busy.”

    But here’s the truth: burnout rarely announces itself.

    It hides behind silence.

    And as a leader, that silence is your early warning signal.

    The Leadership Blind Spot

    According to Gallup, 76% of employees experience burnout on the job at least sometimes, and 21% say they experience it very often or always. If you have a team of ten, that means’ that at least two people are very often or always burned out!

    The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon – not a personal weakness, but a work. It’s a created condition. That means burnout isn’t about personal resilience; it’s about how work is led, managed, and designed.

    And whether you lead a remote, hybrid, or onsite team, you are the front line of prevention.

    The Cost of Ignoring Burnout

    When burnout takes hold, it doesn’t just drain people. It drains performance.

    Engagement plummets. Turnover rises.

    Innovation stalls. And trust erodes in quiet, invisible ways.

    For leaders, it’s not just a business risk. It’s a risk to your own reputation as a leader. It affects your leadership brand and your ability to attract and retain talented people.

    Your ability to manage energy, not just results, is what defines you as a talent steward.

    Preventing burnout is one of the purest expressions of leadership because it’s not about what you achieve, but how your people thrive.

    The Six Alignment Levers

    Research from the Areas of Worklife Model shows that burnout takes root when there’s a mismatch between people and their work in six areas:

    1. Workload – Chronic overextension without recovery time.
      Early sign: Your best people say they’re fine but you notice more mistakes and missed deadlines.  
    2. Control – Lack of autonomy or clarity over priorities.
      Early sign: Teams stop making proactive decisions and start waiting for direction from you.
    3. Recognition – Effort goes unnoticed.
      Early sign: Good performers withdraw from “extra mile” activities like volunteering for new tasks or projects.
    4. Community – Isolation or eroded trust among colleagues.
      Early sign: Silence in meetings, less laughter, more private chats.
    5. Fairness – Uneven workloads or perceived favoritism.
      Early sign: Subtle cynicism or sarcasm, especially from your high performers.
    6. Values – A disconnect between what people care about and what they’re asked to do.
      Early sign: Passion turns into compliance.

    These six levers aren’t abstract. Managing the levers is your daily leadership responsibility.

    How you delegate. How you recognize effort. How you connect.

    Every small action or inaction moves your team toward alignment or away from it.

    Your Fiduciary and Ethical Duty

    As a leader, you are a steward of humans, not just outputs.

    Preventing burnout is both a fiduciary and moral responsibility to the company, and to the people who trust you with their time and energy.

    You don’t have to fix burnout overnight. But you do need to notice it, name it, and act on it before it costs your best people.

    So, this week, take five minutes and ask your team:

    “What’s fueling you and what’s draining you?”

    Then listen. Really listen.

    Then do something about it.

    Because the most powerful burnout prevention strategy isn’t employee self-care.

    It’s your leadership presence and actions.

    If you’re ready to understand where burnout risks live inside your organization, The Burnout Recovery System™ helps leaders measure, prevent, and resolve burnout before it costs their best people.

    Let’s connect to start the conversation. Learn more about The Institute for Burnout Recovery.

    To learn more about how middle manager are at risk, read Middle Managers: The Missing Link in Burnout Recovery or Nine Ways to Spot Early Burnout.

  • Burnout Is Not a Wellness Issue! It’s a Business Risk

    Burnout Is Not a Wellness Issue! It’s a Business Risk

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    When companies talk about solving the burnout problem (statistically, 30% of US team members are burned out), the conversation often drifts to wellness solutions: yoga classes, meditation apps, or resilience training.

    But let’s be clear: Burnout will not be solved by delegating the fix to team members. Placing the responsibility on the individual to resolve it is like asking a fish in a dirty aquarium to clean its tank.

    Burnout is a serious business risk problem. It requires leadership to assess and resolve systemic problems within the organization.

    The Blind Spot at the Top

    Senior leaders review engagement survey scores, may “steady results,” and conclude the workforce is doing fine. They don’t realize that engagement surveys fail to measure systemic issues causing increased turnover, absenteeism, presenteeism, and health care cost.

    If they do think about burnout, they dismiss it assuming it’s a personal weakness and a lack of resilience.

    Here’s the flaw: engagement and burnout are not opposites. A workforce can be highly engaged and simultaneously deeply burned out. In fact, high engagement can accelerate burnout if it’s not paired with sustainable systems.

    The Cost Leaders Don’t See

    Burnout doesn’t only show up in turnover (though that cost is steep enough). It shows up in:

    • Slower execution – deadlines slip, projects stall.
    • Lost innovation – people stop offering new ideas.
    • Eroded culture – trust fractures, collaboration wanes.
    • Weakened strategy – because you don’t execute with agility, your competitive edge weakens.

    And these costs do not appear as a neat line item in the P&L. They accumulate silently, invisibly.

     A Case in Point

    One company I worked with proudly invested in a robust wellness program: gym stipends, meditation rooms, a health app, nutrition classes and even massage.

    But turnover among high performers continued to climb. Innovation pipelines slowed. Team morale declined.

    Why? Because workloads were unsustainable, recognition was scarce, and decision-making bottlenecks kept people stuck. The wellness program was a bandage on a systemic wound.

    The Shift That Matters

    When leaders start treating burnout as a strategic risk, their questions change:

    • Where in our system are expectations misaligned with capacity?
    • Which leadership behaviors are draining, rather than fueling, performance?
    • How do we measure not just engagement, but sustainability of performance?

    This is how you prevent silent erosion. This is how you protect the strategy you’ve invested so much to build.

    Final Thought

    Burnout is not solved by the Benefits Department alone. It’s solved when leaders take it as seriously as any other strategic business risk.

    👉 In upcoming editions of The Burnout Imperative, I’ll share how to identify systemic risk factors, and how to act on them before they cost you your best people and your competitive edge.

    Subscribe to my LinkedIn Newsletter, The Burnout Imperative.

    Learn more about how Company Culture Contributes to Burnout

  • Why High Performers Burn Out First and Quit

    Why High Performers Burn Out First and Quit

    •

    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Your highest performers tell you they are leaving because they’ve been offered more money at another company. But it’s not always true.

    Some leave because they’re exhausted.

    And often, you won’t see it coming.

    In my HR career, I sat in countless Talent Review Meetings. Leaders spent enormous effort identifying high-potential talent – our “Hi-Pos.” We invested heavily in their development, planning for a future ROI.

    But what if they burn out before the return is realized?

    Take “Elena” (not her real name). She was brilliant, articulate, and already seen as a future VP. At the same time, she was a mom, caring for an ill parent, and married to a partner with an equally demanding career. From the outside, she had it all together.

    On the inside, she was running on fumes. Skipped meals. Sleepless nights. Guilt over missed school events. Guilt over leaving work at 5:00. Anxiety that she was “barely enough” at work and home.

    When she finally spoke to me, she was in tears. She was already deep into burnout and seriously considering quitting.

    Her story isn’t rare. It’s a pattern I see often: High-performing women, carrying heavy loads at work and at home, who silently burn out. Then, something breaks.

    Why High Performers Burn Out First

    • They say yes too often. Elena rarely turned down requests, even when she was stretched thin.
    • They self-silence. She didn’t want to appear weak, to others or in her own eyes, so she kept going.
    • They set very high standards. She expected excellence in every domain. No tolerance for “good enough.”
    • They become over-relied on. Her leadership team leaned heavily on her because she always showed up.

    These dynamics don’t just exhaust energy. They erode engagement, focus, and resilience.

    Recent Data on Burnout in High Performers: The Numbers Back It Up

    To show this isn’t just one person’s story, here are some recent findings:

    • A McKinsey/LeanIn survey of ~65,000 U.S. employees found 42% of women report feeling burned out, compared with 35% of men. Constant “always-on” expectations make a difference. (UNLEASH)
    • Deloitte research across 5,000 women in 10 countries showed 53% of women say their stress levels are higher than a year ago, and almost half feel burned out. (Deloitte)
    • According to McKinsey Health Institute, 37% of adult caregivers report high burnout symptoms (emotional, exhaustion, cognitive impairment), compared to lower rates for those caring for children. Caring for ill family members is a serious risk factor. (McKinsey & Company)
    • In a report about “high performers,” 53% of them said they are burnt out; higher than the rate among typical employees. (Modern Health)

    These stats show that burnout isn’t rare; it is widespread. And for high-potential talent, like Elena, the risks are compounded.

    The Leadership Blind Spot – Burnout in High Performers

    Many leaders assume that if someone is delivering, they’re okay. But that assumption is dangerous. High performers, especially those in caregiving roles or with heavy home responsibilities, often:

    • Mask their stress
    • Push through until they don’t have a choice
    • Avoid asking for help to protect their reputation

    This means that by the time the visible signals show up (e.g., a decline in quality, missed deadlines, withdrawal, lost enthusiasm) it’s already very serious.

    What Leaders Can Do About Burnout in High Performers

    Here are practical actions to prevent the burnout of your top people:

    • Redefine what success looks like. Celebrate sustainable performance, not just long hours.
    • Spot subtle signals. Fatigue, irritability, disengagement. If a previously reliable leader becomes quiet, don’t assume it’s just “busyness.”
    • Normalize asking for help. Create real space (not just a policy) for people to speak up when they’re overloaded.
    • Audit workload and responsibility. Distribute critical tasks more evenly; avoid defaulting always to your top people.
    • Support caregivers explicitly. Recognize that caregiving responsibilities (for children or adult parents) are major stressors. Flexibility and benefit plan design matter.

    The Bottom Line

    Elena’s story is painful, but we can learn from it. Burnout doesn’t just cause turnover. It dims innovation, erodes trust, damages reputation, and weakens organizational culture.

    If your high performers are burning out first, then the real risk is not only losing talent, but also momentum, credibility, and the strategy you’re trying to execute.

    I’ve worked with many leaders to identify burnout risk, redesign what’s broken, and protect their people (and culture) from burnout. If you want to be the leader who prevents that from happening, let’s connect.

    Sign-up for my weekly newsletter on LinkedIn.

    Learn more about ways to recognize burnout on your team: Your Team is Burned-Out! Nine Ways to Recognize It

  • Who’s Burning Out the Fastest? 10 Surprising Profiles at Risk

    Who’s Burning Out the Fastest? 10 Surprising Profiles at Risk

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Burnout hits some, more than others. Certain industries, roles, and even personality types are more in danger of experiencing it.

    Are you, or your employees, on this list?

    Knowing where burnout attacks is the first step you can take to stop losing talent, productivity, and trust.

    Here are the Top 10 Burnout Profiles Every Leader Should Be Watching

    1. Healthcare professionals: From nurses to physicians, the demand never stops, and the stakes are always high.

    2. Teachers and educators: Expectations keep climbing while resources shrink.

    3. Tech and IT professionals: Long hours, constant change, and being “always on” wear people down quickly.

    4. Middle managers: Responsible for delivering results and supporting teams, yet also reporting upward, is often the most difficult job in a company.

    5. Legal professionals: A culture of high stakes, high pressure, and little downtime make this one of the most burnout-prone professions.

    6. Women in leadership: Responsible for achieving results and carrying the weight of the majority of the invisible (home) labor, many feel exhausted and overwhelmed.

    7. Gen Z employees: Ambitious and eager to prove themselves, but often under-supported in how to sustain energy long term.

    8. Introverts in highly social roles: Sales, customer service, HR, and other outward-facing jobs can drain introverts’ energy quickly when recharging time is limited.

    9. High-performing perfectionists: Regardless of industry, those who push hardest for flawless results are at greater risk.

    10. Nonprofit and mission-driven staff: Passion fuels the work, but overextension is common.

    Bottom line? Even if you don’t see yourself or your employees here, burnout is still very likely in your workplace. Depending on the study, 30 to 75 percent of employees report burnout symptoms. That translates into lost productivity, higher turnover, more sick days, and rising healthcare costs.

    Burnout isn’t just personal. It’s systemic. And it’s expensive.

    Leaders, this is your call to stop and think. Some of your people are probably already running on fumes. Without understanding where burnout is happening, you risk underestimating the problem and overestimating the results your team will produce.

    To learn how to recognize burnout on your team, click here.

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