Making Sense of the Employee Burnout Epidemic

Have you found yourself rage applying after months of quiet quitting and acting your wage? Has the stress of the polycrisis led you to go goblin mode?

In recent years we’ve resurrected long-forgotten terms and invented new ones to describe the fatigue, apathy, and rage enveloping society. What seemed like a byproduct of the pandemic has revealed itself to be something more complex and persistent. There are clues to what is causing this burnout epidemic, scattered throughout our work, home lives and wider culture.

Post-pandemic life is harder. Companies’ embrace of frictionless customer service is leading to sharp increases in consumer complaints. Lingering supply chain issues make essential products like baby formula and Adderall hard to find. Staffing shortages reduce access to crucial services. It takes on average 26 days for a new patient to get a doctor’s appointment, 8% longer than before the pandemic.¹ Three-quarters of working parents have trouble accessing adequate childcare.² Nearly all of the country’s public transit agencies are understaffed, with 84% saying it’s affecting service levels.³ Airlines are slashing flights, including cuts of up to 10% in New York City this summer due to a shortage of air traffic controllers.⁴

Screen time is taxing our brains. The average American spends 7 hours a day—about 40% of their waking hours—staring at screens. Nearly half of teens say they’re online constantly, up from 24% a few years ago. Research indicates excessive screen time changes our brain chemistry in unhealthy ways. Videoconferencing forces our brains to work harder, resulting in fatigue that leads to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and stress.⁷ Constantly checking social media has shown to make teens hypersensitive to feedback from peers.⁸

Digital work can be soul-shriveling. Three-quarters of jobs now involve interfacing with digital systems that induce more rage and boredom than satisfaction. A study published last year found workers at three Fortune 500 companies were toggling between various apps and websites 1,200 times a day.⁹ In health care, electronic record systems have increased burnout among doctors by turning them into unhappy data-entry clerks.¹⁰

Why It Matters

Burnout is not a new problem. But recent changes to how we live and work make us more susceptible to it. Understanding and addressing its root causes is important because:

Customer service is under scrutiny. Our tolerance for even minor inconveniences has diminished. Record numbers of customers are yelling at businesses, with nearly half of Americans witnessing such outbursts over the past year.¹¹ This makes customer-facing jobs more challenging and may complicate efforts to use technologies like generative AI to automate more tasks.

Employers need solutions. Corporate wellness spending is forecast to double to $22 billion by 2027.¹² More companies are creating C-suite level positions to oversee efforts to reduce burnout.¹³ As employers look for better solutions, companies may need to evolve product offerings faster than anticipated to meet demand and fend off competitors. Companies need holistic solutions that address employees’ physical, mental, and financial well-being..

Getting digitization right. Last year large companies deployed more than 200 applications, up from 77 in 2015. Employees are now juggling so many apps we need two screens, with furniture maker MillerKnoll reporting increased requests for two-monitor workstations.¹⁴ More digitization isn’t always better. As we look to further digitize our operations, we’ll need to ensure we’re designing humane digital experiences. That means thinking beyond automation to how technology can empower associates to exercise their skills in meaningful ways.

Signals to Watch

Ditching smartphones. More people of all ages are buying dumb flip phones to escape their notifications and live more in the moment.¹⁵ Such behavior is likely to become more common as people seek ways to counteract expectations they must always be connected.

Better assessment tools. Companies need ways beyond surveys to measure burnout. One startup, Ambr, aims to automate the process by collecting and analyzing anonymized data from corporate communication tools. Another tool, the Mental Health at Work Index, scores companies’ mental health programs and recommends where they can be improved.

Addressing app overload. Rapid digitization has left workers drowning in software they don’t need or know how to use. One report found workers’ inability to effectively use all this tech resulted in companies losing on average 76 employees over the past year.¹⁶ Look for more companies to follow the lead of cloud software firm Freshworks, which cut its apps from 800 to 200 by targeting duplicative and unused software.¹⁷