Burnout Is Not a Badge of Honour - The Cost to Organisations Is Real

This newsletter is inspired by Empower World's Coaching and Leadership Podcast conversation with Nicola Spencer-Perera, Executive Coach & Founder, Reset Wellness: Episode 261 - 'Burnout Is Not a Badge of Honour - The Cost to Organisations Is Real.'

Being busy has become something some people wear with pride. Or perhaps we recognise it as a default response - the automatic answer to "how are you?" that arrives before the question has even fully registered. Or we notice it as a pattern because it is said so often and automatically, that we wonder - does the person even hear themselves saying it anymore? And if they do - do they know how to stop?

"How are you?" "Busy - really busy." It can sometimes be perceived as a measure of our worth. A signal we are needed, contributing, indispensable. And somewhere along the way, the exhaustion that comes with it stopped being a warning sign and started being a credential or perhaps an everyday normal.

The numbers that should stop every leader in their tracks

The data tells a very different story. Deloitte's 2024 research estimated that poor employee mental health costs UK employers approximately £51 billion annually. Presenteeism - being physically present at work but not performing at your best - accounts for around $24 billion in lost revenue globally. And 12 billion working days are lost every year to poor mental health, anxiety and depression.

These are not soft statistics about feelings. They are hard numbers about the bottom line impact on business. And yet - most organisations respond to this crisis with a yoga class on Tuesday nights, a bowl of fruit in the kitchen and perhaps an annual team-building day.

As Nicola Spencer-Perera - a coach, burnout specialist and founder of Reset Wellness - says: "It's not free fruit and yoga."

As Nicola suggests: plasters over wounds do not address the underlying condition. When your manager is emailing you at midnight and setting unrealistic deadlines, no amount of breathwork in the break room will make you feel psychologically safe enough to say - I am not okay.

Why wellbeing initiatives fail

The most common reason wellbeing programmes do not work is not the programme. It is the culture the programme is trying to exist within.

When leaders are visibly dysregulated - when they are demanding, unavailable, or modelling the very behaviours that create burnout - no initiative deployed below them will reach far enough. The energy of a team flows from the top. When a leader is running on empty, so is everyone beneath them.

Nicola describes working within a high-pressure global events team where the atmosphere was so relentless that a colleague's first words of welcome were: "Get ready to get scurvy - you won't see much daylight." She explains the team delivered, the event was a success from the outside, but people cried, went off sick, and she herself was unwell for two weeks after it ended.

Two years later, with leadership support and a genuine wellbeing strategy in place, the same event was delivered by the same type of team - but this time, nobody ended up in the medical centre. Nobody lost weeks to recovery. The event was still a success. The difference was that this time, the people delivering it were looked after by providing the opportunity for everyone to have a voice for their concerns in a safe place.

Nicola instigated the following initiatives to support the team:

• Leadership buy-in first. Working directly with the event director and with full support of the leadership became the foundation everything else rested on.
• A weekly drop-in session. A confidential space where anyone could come and talk. Themes covered daily routines and self-care practices. 
• An away day for leaders. Bring together the whole leadership team and specialists to connect and create awareness about both burnout and self-care. 
• Workload monitoring with permission to escalate. This created a safety net that did not exist before.
• Content sharing. Resources including books, podcasts and wellbeing to support the team. 

Same outcome. Entirely different human cost.

What actually works

Genuine organisational wellbeing is not a programme. It is a culture - and culture is shaped by what leaders do, not what organisations say.

It begins with listening. Not the performative "how are you - good, great, right, onto the agenda" listening. But the kind of listening that coaches are trained to do - that notices what is underneath the answer, that creates enough safety for someone to say "actually, I am struggling."

It continues with role modelling. When a leader leaves at a reasonable time, they give their team permission to do the same. When a leader shares their own vulnerability - their tired days, their stretched boundaries, their imperfect mornings - they make it possible for others to be human too. 

As Nicola observes, one of the most powerful things a leader can do is simply role model leaving the office at a good time. It costs nothing to be a role model and it changes everything.

And it deepens into strategy. A wellbeing audit. An anonymous pulse check to understand where the organisation actually is - not where leadership hopes it is. A long-term plan, led by HR and owned by leadership, that addresses the systemic causes of stress rather than papering over the symptoms.

The micro-practices matter too - and they are simpler than most people expect. Two minutes of breathing before a meeting. A genuine check-in at the start of a conversation. Space between meetings rather than an unbroken sequence of back-to-back demands. These small things, practiced consistently and modelled from the top, begin to shift the rhythm of how a team operates.

The signs you should not ignore

If you lead people, the signals are often visible before the crisis arrives. Disengagement in meetings. Eyes that do not connect. Productivity that quietly dips. Absenteeism that creeps up. Errors that were not there before. The team member who used to contribute freely and now just listens.

These are not performance issues. They are wellbeing issues disguised as performance issues. And addressing the performance without addressing the wellbeing beneath it is like adjusting the thermostat without fixing the boiler.

The question every leader needs to sit with is this: do the people I lead feel safe enough to tell me when they are not okay?

If the honest answer is no - that is where the work begins for you as a leader who is responsible for the experiences and outcomes of the team.

The return that makes it undeniable

For every £1 invested in employee mental health and wellbeing support, the return is almost £5. That is not a wellness argument. That is a business argument.

This understanding about the impact of wellness on an organisation's productivity is becoming harder and harder to ignore. As the research grows, the statistics mount and the younger generation entering the workforce makes it clear in their expectations, their choices and their refusal to simply carry on - indicating something has to change.

Burnout is not a badge of honour. It is a cost. To the individual who carries it. To the team that absorbs it. And to the organisation that could have prevented it - but did not yet know how.

The good news is: burnout is preventable and wellness can support the effectiveness of a team. And it does not require a radical overhaul of how your organisation operates. It requires leadership that listens, models and cares - consistently, visibly and from the top.

Be Empowered

www.empower-world.com

If this reflection resonates with you, you may enjoy listening to the full conversation with Nicola Spencer-Perera on the Empower World Coaching and Leadership Podcast with Jeanine Bailey, Co-Founder of Empower World. You can listen to the full episode here:

YouTube: https://go.empower-world.com/YT-Podcast-EP-261

Direct Link: https://go.empower-world.com/Podcast-EP-261

Spotify: https://go.empower-world.com/SP-Podcast-EP-261

iTunes: https://go.empower-world.com/IT-Podcast-EP-261

What is one small thing you could introduce into your team this week that would signal - we take your wellbeing seriously here? We would love to hear in the comments.

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