Design Work to Prevent Burnout

A new model for improving work design supports change that increases employee engagement and reduces stress.

- Sharon K. Parker and Caroline Knight

MANAGERS ARE RESPONSIBLE for keeping employee morale and productivity high. Yet when they try to reduce burnout and improve worker well-being, many report not knowing where to start or what to do.

Absent clear solutions, they tend to focus on fixing the person, such as by offering the overworked employee productivity tips and encouragement to assert healthy boundaries, or providing stressed-out workers with training in mindfulness techniques or yoga classes at lunchtime. However, fix-the-worker strategies do little to resolve stress caused by long hours and unreasonable workloads.

The problem is not new but remains urgent and costly. HR leaders are painfully aware that disengagement and burnout are significant threats to productivity and talent retention. In the U.S., 67% of workers report feeling disengaged from their work, and 49% intend to leave their current job.¹ Meanwhile, burnout is rampant. In a 2023 survey of U.S. adults, the American Psychological Association found that younger workers, especially, are at risk: Fifty-eight percent of 18-to-34-year-olds said that their daily level of stress is overwhelming.² Disengaged, stressed-out employees do not perform at their best, and when one of them quits, it costs an estimated 30% to 200% of that employee’s salary to recruit and train their replacement.³

A better approach is to create healthier and more sustainable jobs through good work design. Decades of research show that when jobs include positive characteristics such as autonomy, variety, and social support, employees are more satisfied, motivated, and committed to the organization, and they perform better.⁴ Meanwhile, minimizing work characteristics that harm people, like excessive time pressure, is crucial to preventing burnout.