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  • 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.

  • The Power Gap: The Hidden Driver of Middle Manager Burnout

    The Power Gap: The Hidden Driver of Middle Manager Burnout

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    I’ve seen it and I’ve experienced it. There’s a quiet, exhausting truth in corporate life. It rarely makes it into senior leadership conversations. People are held accountable for results without having the authority to create them. It causes burnout.

    Middle managers live here:

    • Responsible for ambitious (impossible?) KPIs.
    • Expected to keep teams engaged and productive.
    • Caught between executive vision and frontline practicalities.

    Yet, their ability to make meaningful decisions is often stripped away.

    I call this the Power Gap.

    It’s not just frustrating; it’s one of the most corrosive, and ironically, most preventable, causes of burnout.

    I spent over two decades in multinational corporations leading global Talent Development functions, training countless middle managers. I saw their commitment… their care for their people… their willingness to go the extra mile.

    And I also saw the toll.

    We invested heavily in management training, but the burnout persisted. Why? Because you can’t train away a structural problem.

    The real causes were clear:

    • Workloads that exceeded human capacity.
    • Teams stretched so thin managers became doers instead of leaders.
    • KPIs set without resources to match.
    • Relentless waves of change with no time to recover.

    These are not gaps in skill. They are gaps in design.

    The solutions require courage at the top:
    • Clarify decision rights so managers know where their “yes” and “no” actually count.
    • Balance staffing and workload to match the expectations being set.
    • Protect focus by pacing change instead of piling it on.

    In my experience, many senior leaders will not implement these decisions. They often see the cost of balancing staffing and workload as a hard cost. They view burnout as a soft cost. But, the long-term impact of burnout has significant financial implications.

    • Burnout leads to higher turnover rates, increased absenteeism, and lower productivity. These are real and measurable costs.
    • Investing in balancing staffing and workload is an investment in the organization’s future. It leads to higher employee retention, reduced absenteeism, and improved performance. The ROI from a healthier, more engaged workforce can far outweigh the initial costs.
    • A culture of burnout erodes trust and morale. By addressing the Power Gap, we foster a positive work environment, attracting top talent and ensuring long-term sustainability. Balancing staffing and workload is essential for creating a resilient organization that can adapt to changes and challenges effectively.

    When middle managers have both accountability and authority, with the resources to back it up, they transform. They stop being bottlenecks. They become bridges, connecting strategy to reality, vision to execution, and people to purpose.

    If we want workplaces where people thrive, we have to close the Power Gap. Not by asking managers to “be more resilient,” but by redesigning the very role they’re asked to carry.

    For more information on burnout and its impact, contact me or follow me on LinkedIn.

  • Middle Managers: The Missing Link in Burnout Recovery

    Middle Managers: The Missing Link in Burnout Recovery

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Johnny C. Taylor, CEO of SHRM, recently offered practical advice for tackling burnout: spot the warning signs, encourage open dialogue, rebalance workloads, clarify expectations, and connect people with supportive resources like EAPs. These are important. But they’re not enough.

    There’s a blind spot in most corporate conversations around burnout and it carries real business consequences.

    We’re not talking nearly enough about middle managers.

    Middle managers are the connective tissue of every organization. They interpret strategy, drive performance, absorb change, and hold space for their teams, all while trying to meet expectations from above. They’re responsible for culture on the ground. And they’re exhausted.

    This layer of leadership is too often invisible in wellbeing strategies. We focus on frontline engagement or executive leadership development. But we forget the people holding both ends together. That’s a mistake.

    Middle managers are burning out – quietly, constantly, and in plain sight. Nearly half of U.S. middle managers now fear being laid off. Many are pushing themselves beyond what’s sustainable. They show up, stay late, skip recovery time, and carry the emotional weight of others because that’s what they think good leadership requires.

    The cost is staggering. A 2025 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine estimates burnout costs between $4,000 and $21,000 per employee, per year. For a company of 1,000 that’s a $5 million annual loss. And that doesn’t include the ripple effects: higher turnover, lower morale, slower innovation, and culture decay.

    If we’re serious about employee wellbeing, and profitability,  we need to get serious about supporting the people in the middle.

    Let’s stop asking managers to do more with less. Let’s stop normalizing heroic over-functioning. Let’s build something better – intentionally, and with heart.

    Here’s what that could look like:

    • Wellbeing as a KPI – Track manager wellbeing alongside business outcomes. Make it a metric that matters, not a poster on the wall.
    • Confidential Peer Circles- Create trusted spaces where managers can talk, exhale, and learn from each other without fear of judgment.
    • Genuine Recognition and Real Autonomy – Acknowledge not just results, but emotional labor. Give managers more say in how work gets done.
    • Training That Feels Human – Move beyond compliance. Offer workshops that equip managers with real skills: empathy, boundaries, psychological safety.
    • Reverse Mentoring – Invite two-way conversations between managers and executives. Give middle leaders a voice, and help the C-suite listen.
    • Workload Audits – Regularly review what’s on managers’ plates. Make space by removing the non-essential.
    • Protected Recovery Time – Normalize rest. Not as a perk, but as a performance strategy. Model this from the top.
    • Leadership with Heart – When senior leaders speak openly about their own challenges with burnout, they create permission for others to be honest too.

    Here’s the truth: middle managers are holding up the scaffolding of your culture. If they collapse, everything falls.

    So, here’s my invitation: What’s one bold move your organization can make today to support its “missing middle”?

    Because if we want resilient teams and thriving workplaces, we must start by caring for the people in the middle – thoughtfully, tangibly, and without delay.

  • Free eBook – You Can Recover from Burnout Too!

    Free eBook – You Can Recover from Burnout Too!

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    I thought burnout was for other people until…

    After nearly 15 years of climbing the corporate ladder, I landed what should have been a dream job – an exciting leadership role with a global manufacturing giant.

    It was fast paced. High stakes. International.

    • On paper? Impressive.
    • In reality? Relentless.

    I was a co-leader on a major technical rollout while helping launch a cost-saving regional operating model. That meant nonstop travel, often overseas for weeks at a time, and no margin for rest. I liked the work. I was good at it. But slowly, it began to cost me everything else.

    • Sleep? Fragmented.
    • Nutrition and exercise? Gone.
    • Happiness? Replaced by the gnawing pressure to keep up.

    My inner dialogue was punishing:

    “Your boss expects perfection. Don’t let anything drop.”

    And the better I performed, the higher the bar was raised. No finish line. Just more. More. More.

    And at home? I was trying to be superhuman there too – wife, mom, daughter to a mother battling Stage 3 cancer, neighbor, volunteer. I wasn’t just showing up – I was striving to excel. But under the surface, I was running on fumes.

    Until my body said: “Enough.”

    Almost overnight, I couldn’t bend my elbow. My feet swelled so badly I couldn’t wear shoes, much less walk.

    After months of testing, I was diagnosed with a “permanent” autoimmune disease. The treatment? Weekly injections – just to reduce the inflammation so I could function… and yes, keep working.

    That was my wake-up call. Burnout wasn’t just a buzzword – it had taken up residence in my body.

    And strangely, I’m now grateful for it. Because the pain forced me to face what I had been too proud (or too scared) to admit: I was breaking. And I had to change.

    That reckoning became the beginning of something better.

    This is the story behind my new eBook: Your Personal Guide to Burnout and Recovery.

    I wrote it for people like me – high-achievers who don’t know how to stop until they’re forced to.

    The guide walks you through what burnout really is and how to recover. It includes reflection activities and a template for your own recovery plan.

    If you would like your own copy, just fill out the Contact Us Form and we’ll send it right over.

  • Which Industries Are Burning Us Out the Fastest?

    Which Industries Are Burning Us Out the Fastest?

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    Christy Suerth, MS, SPHR, CPC, CHC

    Ever wonder if your industry is quietly burning people out?

    Burnout doesn’t always announce itself with a crash. Sometimes it’s a slow leak of motivation, energy, and purpose. Lately, I’ve been asking: Which industries are most at risk?

    The answer surprised me. And it might surprise you too, especially if you’re in a field where long hours or emotional labor are “just part of the job.”

    Industries Facing the Most Burnout

    Healthcare
    Nearly half of healthcare professionals report burnout, especially caregivers. Women in these roles experience even higher stress.

    Education & Social Services
    Teachers, counselors, and social workers often carry deep emotional burdens. Burnout rates hover in the mid-40% range.

    Project Management & Consulting
    One survey showed project managers facing some of the highest burnout rates – around 50%.

    Tech & IT
    Despite flexibility, burnout in tech is rising. Constant upskilling and blurred boundaries contribute to 47% reporting burnout.

    Retail, Hospitality & Manufacturing
    Burnout here is tied to physical exhaustion and emotional strain. Rates climb above 75% in some reports.

    Finance, Insurance & Telecom
    Surprisingly high burnout (up to 80%) in some surveys—driven by relentless expectations and limited recovery time.

    My sources include Deloitte, Quantum Workplace, AMA, and LinkedIn.

    Why It Hits Women Harder

    Women report burnout more often than men – up to 55%. Not because they’re less resilient, but because they carry more unseen labor: caregiving, emotional support, and the pressure to constantly prove themselves.

    What To Do with This Insight

    If your industry is listed (or even if it’s not) pause and check in.

    • Are weekends still restorative?
    • Are you getting things done, but quietly fading inside?

    Burnout isn’t personal failure. It’s often a signal that something systemic needs to change.

    ✨ Call to Action

    If this resonates:

    • Share it with a colleague.
    • Start a conversation about sustainable success.
    • Reflect on what boundaries or recovery might look like for you.
    • Contact me if you want to talk.

    You don’t have to live in burnout.

    Let’s create workplaces that support our energy, not just our output.

    Learn more about the role of middle managers and resolving burnout by reading Middle Managers: The Missing Link in Burnout Recovery