How to Spot Burnout Early in Your Workforce

In today’s high-demand, always-on work environment, burnout has become a increasing reality for so many.

Whether you know it or not, your employees, most often your top performers, are feeling the crunch and maybe looking for help. As HR professionals face increasing pressure to retain talent, boost productivity, and maintain employee wellbeing in an uncertain economic climate, knowing how to spot burnout early is a critical skill. Left unaddressed, burnout leads to disengagement, turnover, absenteeism, and substantial hidden costs to organizations.

Key Signs of Burnout in Employees

Burnout shows up long before an employee resigns. The challenge is recognizing it in time to act:

  • Emotional exhaustion: Employees appear drained, irritable, or cynical

  • Decline in performance: Once high-performers begin missing deadlines or making uncharacteristic mistakes

  • Withdrawal behaviors: A drop in participation, camera-off behavior in meetings, or avoidance of collaborative tasks

  • Physical symptoms: Headaches, fatigue, or frequent sick days

  • Loss of motivation or engagement: Minimal interest in development, a sense of detachment from purpose

Managers are your first line of defense, often seeing signs HR doesn’t. But they need training to recognize burnout cues early and respond appropriately. Teaching managers to perform regular check-ins, look for subtle behavior shifts, and ask stress-aware questions is foundational.

Why Managers Are On the Front Lines

Managers shape the everyday experience of work. They're uniquely positioned to:

  • Notice performance changes and mood shifts

  • Normalize conversations around stress

  • Connect team members to appropriate resources

  • Create the conditions for psychological safety

Equipping them with burnout awareness training and response tools not only reduces risk—it fosters stronger, more resilient teams.

The Cost Breakdown of Burnout

According to Gallup and the American Psychological Association, burnout contributes to:

  • $300 billion+ annually in lost productivity

  • 2.6x higher turnover risk for burned-out employees

  • 63% increase in sick days per affected employee

In 2025, amid ongoing economic pressures and talent shortages, HR leaders can no longer afford to treat burnout reactively.

Antidotes to Burnout: What Works

unBurnt’s solutions provide organizations with tools to interrupt burnout before it escalates. Based on neuroscience and behavior change science, the unBurnt framework supports:

  • Micro-moment recovery practices for employees to pause, scan for stress triggers, and reset throughout the day

  • Manager training to recognize early burnout and respond with empathy and systems support

  • Creates a psychologically safe space where norms are created for every employee to speak up, share workload concerns and add perspective on their area of expertise

  • Burnout diagnostics and cost-of-burnout insights to help HR quantify risk and act strategically

HR professionals looking to protect people and productivity need new playbooks. Early identification is the first step in building workplaces that are not just high-performing, but human-sustaining.