We all want our teams to perform at their best. But many teams and individual workers are not achieving the workdays they want.

Several factors can make work less than ideal, including lack of direction, lack of empowerment, long hours, and having too many tasks. These problems compound and lead to burnout.

The prevalence of employee burnout is concerning, as highlighted by a Mental Health America and 

 study in which 76% of respondents acknowledged that workplace stress impacts their mental health and 75% reported experiencing burnout.

The statistics on burnout serve as a crucial warning for all business leaders, regardless of their stance on the issue. Burnout can lead to lost time, declining health, insufficient support, and even 

 for the organization's bottom line. For instance:

 and over twice as likely to hunt for a new job.

 trying to meet unrealistic work targets, making them feel ineffective in their roles.

Workplace stress costs the U.S. economy a whopping 

, leading to the loss of 550 million workdays yearly.

Burnout doesn’t happen overnight—it’s the result of unaddressed issues persisting over time. But if leaders act without understanding the root causes of burnout and implement changes without tailoring solutions to their team's workstyles, they risk exacerbating the situation.

To make improvements, we must first understand what in the workday causes burnout. Then we must establish a shared understanding of the workday and make changes that prevent those unhealthy factors from negatively impacting your team.

While burnout progresses slowly, it does leave signs. Recognizing them at an early stage can prevent things from escalating.

 enables individuals to take proactive steps for prevention. This can empower them to bring the data to their leaders and find a solution before exhaustion and prolonged stress become unmanageable.

For leaders, seeing these signs helps establish support systems within organizations. It enables managers and leaders to be open to making changes to company policies. It also helps foster a work environment that encourages open communication and provides resources to prevent burnout among teams.

Almost 70% of professionals, according to 

, feel that their employers aren't doing enough to prevent or reduce burnout at work. So, working closely with your team to identify work habits and behaviors that lead to burnout can help someone who is suffering make the changes.

But which changes should you make first? And how can you tell if those changes are working?

 is like a health tracker for your workday. We provide data to empower individuals, teams, and leaders so they can take back control of their time and prioritize their well-being.

Book a demo with our team and we will set you up to start understanding your workday.

Produce8 shows individuals and teams how they use their technology and time.

While the tool cannot fix a toxic work culture directly, it does build the space needed to have bigger conversations by identifying work-related factors that commonly lead to burnout.

 (your initial set of measurements that will give you insights into your work habits). Once you have this data, here’s what to look for:

Leading burnout indicator #1: excessive overtime or missed breaks

Workers who experience burnout typically skip breaks or work extra hours. This lack of downtime deprives them of the opportunity to recharge, leading to increased fatigue, reduced productivity, and diminished cognitive function. Over time, the cumulative effects can lead to chronic stress, decreased job satisfaction, and an inability to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

In Produce8, you can easily see your Digital Working Hours, Time In Apps, and Digital Intensity Scores. This data gives you a good idea of how long you spend at your desk working.

When we see that an employee is regularly working long hours in the Timeline, it’s important to provide some support, assist in prioritization, and encourage rest and recovery.

Leading burnout indicator #2: context switching

Constantly shifting focus demands mental effort and increases cognitive load. This in turn leads to reduced efficiency and productivity.

context-switching can lead to mental exhaustion

, heightened stress levels, and a feeling of being overwhelmed, all of which ultimately contribute to burnout.

In the Produce8 Timeline, we see context switching occur in the form of interactions between several different work tools that aren’t connected to the task you want to concentrate on.

For example, we see Rob performing three different tasks with no structure. He’s using Bamboo and LinkedIn for recruiting, Google Docs to work on a blog post, and Teams and Outlook for collaboration.

Leading burnout indicator #3: collaboration overload

Collaboration is indeed essential. But relying too heavily on communication platforms can lead to a constant stream of messages, meetings, and notifications.

According to Zapier, 90% of workers spend up to five hours a day in chat apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

This constant interaction often leads to heightened stress, decreased productivity, and a sense of being constantly on edge in workers. Over time, this overload can lead to burnout as individuals struggle to balance collaborative demands with their need for uninterrupted work and personal space.

In Produce8, you can see how many hours a week you spend using collaboration tools. Time spent using these tools is time and energy not spent on more important tasks. This contributes to stress and increased pressure.

Managing burnout requires dedication. There will be periods when the business and team need an individual to put in extra effort, but it’s important to not overlook the potential harm that overextending would do to their work, health, and 

To ensure your team can better manage the ebb and flow of daily work, empower them with data. Doing so enables them to take control of their day by setting their own goals and having some autonomy over how hard to push themselves.

It all begins with comprehension, followed by fostering an environment that encourages open communication among team members. This approach allows us to tackle issues without assigning blame to individuals, thereby preventing burnout.

Don’t wait until burnout happens. Sign up for Produce8 and start identifying your work habits now.

We all want our teams to perform at their best. But many teams and individual workers are not achieving the workdays they want.

Several factors can make work less than ideal, including lack of direction, lack of empowerment, long hours, and having too many tasks. These problems compound and lead to burnout.

The prevalence of employee burnout is concerning, as highlighted by a Mental Health America and FlexJobs study in which 76% of respondents acknowledged that workplace stress impacts their mental health and 75% reported experiencing burnout.

The statistics on burnout serve as a crucial warning for all business leaders, regardless of their stance on the issue. Burnout can lead to lost time, declining health, insufficient support, and even financial implications for the organization's bottom line. For instance:

Burnt-out workers are 63% more likely to call in sick and over twice as likely to hunt for a new job.

Around 31% of workers feel anxious trying to meet unrealistic work targets, making them feel ineffective in their roles.

Workplace stress costs the U.S. economy a whopping $500 billion, leading to the loss of 550 million workdays yearly.

Burnout doesn’t happen overnight—it’s the result of unaddressed issues persisting over time. But if leaders act without understanding the root causes of burnout and implement changes without tailoring solutions to their team's workstyles, they risk exacerbating the situation.

To make improvements, we must first understand what in the workday causes burnout. Then we must establish a shared understanding of the workday and make changes that prevent those unhealthy factors from negatively impacting your team.

The leading indicators of burnout

While burnout progresses slowly, it does leave signs. Recognizing them at an early stage can prevent things from escalating.

Knowing the leading indicators of burnout enables individuals to take proactive steps for prevention. This can empower them to bring the data to their leaders and find a solution before exhaustion and prolonged stress become unmanageable.

For leaders, seeing these signs helps establish support systems within organizations. It enables managers and leaders to be open to making changes to company policies. It also helps foster a work environment that encourages open communication and provides resources to prevent burnout among teams.

Almost 70% of professionals, according to Deloitte's research, feel that their employers aren't doing enough to prevent or reduce burnout at work. So, working closely with your team to identify work habits and behaviors that lead to burnout can help someone who is suffering make the changes.

But which changes should you make first? And how can you tell if those changes are working?

Produce8 is like a health tracker for your workday. We provide data to empower individuals, teams, and leaders so they can take back control of their time and prioritize their well-being.

Book a demo with our team and we will set you up to start understanding your workday.

How to use Produce8 to identify burnout

Produce8 shows individuals and teams how they use their technology and time.

While the tool cannot fix a toxic work culture directly, it does build the space needed to have bigger conversations by identifying work-related factors that commonly lead to burnout.

To start, get your baseline data (your initial set of measurements that will give you insights into your work habits). Once you have this data, here’s what to look for:

Leading burnout indicator #1: excessive overtime or missed breaks

Workers who experience burnout typically skip breaks or work extra hours. This lack of downtime deprives them of the opportunity to recharge, leading to increased fatigue, reduced productivity, and diminished cognitive function. Over time, the cumulative effects can lead to chronic stress, decreased job satisfaction, and an inability to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

In Produce8, you can easily see your Digital Working Hours, Time In Apps, and Digital Intensity Scores. This data gives you a good idea of how long you spend at your desk working.

When we see that an employee is regularly working long hours in the Timeline, it’s important to provide some support, assist in prioritization, and encourage rest and recovery.

Leading burnout indicator #2: context switching

Constantly shifting focus demands mental effort and increases cognitive load. This in turn leads to reduced efficiency and productivity.

Over time, this continuous context-switching can lead to mental exhaustion, heightened stress levels, and a feeling of being overwhelmed, all of which ultimately contribute to burnout.

In the Produce8 Timeline, we see context switching occur in the form of interactions between several different work tools that aren’t connected to the task you want to concentrate on.

For example, we see Rob performing three different tasks with no structure. He’s using Bamboo and LinkedIn for recruiting, Google Docs to work on a blog post, and Teams and Outlook for collaboration.

Leading burnout indicator #3: collaboration overload

Collaboration is indeed essential. But relying too heavily on communication platforms can lead to a constant stream of messages, meetings, and notifications.

According to Zapier, 90% of workers spend up to five hours a day in chat apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

This constant interaction often leads to heightened stress, decreased productivity, and a sense of being constantly on edge in workers. Over time, this overload can lead to burnout as individuals struggle to balance collaborative demands with their need for uninterrupted work and personal space.

In Produce8, you can see how many hours a week you spend using collaboration tools. Time spent using these tools is time and energy not spent on more important tasks. This contributes to stress and increased pressure.

Next steps: set goals in Produce8

Managing burnout requires dedication. There will be periods when the business and team need an individual to put in extra effort, but it’s important to not overlook the potential harm that overextending would do to their work, health, and the company’s ROI.

To ensure your team can better manage the ebb and flow of daily work, empower them with data. Doing so enables them to take control of their day by setting their own goals and having some autonomy over how hard to push themselves.

It all begins with comprehension, followed by fostering an environment that encourages open communication among team members. This approach allows us to tackle issues without assigning blame to individuals, thereby preventing burnout.

Don’t wait until burnout happens. Sign up for Produce8 and start identifying your work habits now.



Recognize Signs of Burnout at Work

, one-quarter of workers say their mental and physical health has deteriorated over the past year. An additional 40% say they saw no improvement.

Surprisingly, Deloitte’s research indicates a significant gap between employees and their leaders. About 80% of C-suite executives believe their employees' well-being has shown improvement across all surveyed metrics.

Statistics show that a significant portion of employees grapple with various emotional and physical challenges in the workplace. For instance:

On top of that, leaders who understand the difficulties related to employee well-being at work mention that issues like having too much work and not knowing how to help team members with their health and wellness often get in the way of their efforts to support staff.

Why your team needs a digital wellness strategy

 a lot since the ‘80s, and our days are now deeply embedded in digital tools and processes. Teams today must be constantly available on messaging apps, email, and other work tools.

For this reason, nurturing digital wellness goes beyond the mere use of apps. It involves fostering a healthy understanding of workflows and collaboration between leaders, teams, and individuals. It means ensuring a balance between work and personal life, managing screen time, and promoting mental and physical health. To do all that, you need a data-driven digital wellness strategy.

 enables teams to build this awareness, identify solutions, and then measure whether their changes are producing positive results. We do this by understanding how people use their technology and time. It is our goal to help everyone recover 90+ minutes of work a day. Those 90+ minutes can then be used to cultivate a healthier digital experience.

We empower organizations and their people to close the gap between them. In doing so, teams can attack the problems of work and improve digital wellness throughout the workplace.

In this article, we discuss how implementing a digital wellness strategy can benefit your team's wellness, the work they do, and the organization’s bottom line.

The cost of not having a digital wellness strategy

People rest at the core of every business. Human beings like you and me. And when the people are unwell, the business will suffer.

Addressing digital wellness will significantly improve the health of knowledge workers, who spend a considerable amount of time using technology in their work.

Unscheduled absenteeism such as illness, personal problems, or job dissatisfaction 

costs roughly $3,600 each year per hourly worker and 

But just because a worker is present, it doesn’t mean they are effective. When unwell staff show up to work, their performance generally suffers. This is commonly known as presenteeism. The 

$150 billion per year in lost productivity

 — far eclipsing the costs associated with annual absenteeism.

The business suffers both when the employee is absent and when the employee feels compelled, either internally or externally, to work despite their health concerns.

But there’s hope. A team of Harvard researchers discovered that for every dollar invested in wellness programs, 

employers can save $3.27 in medical expenses

 and $2.73 in costs related to absenteeism.

That means an IT service team with 20 employees can recover up to $21,675 per year by addressing mental wellness in the workplace. Use this 

 to find the amount you could be saving in your industry.

Face it: It’s time for leadership to consider what aspects of work are causing mental and physical stress. Your team and your business need you to build a digital wellness strategy. Keep reading and we’ll help you find a solution.

 related to health, their job, and finances. And over 20% spend a minimum of five hours per week during working hours burdened by these stressors.

When the workday is filled with excessive screen time, constant connectivity, and information overload, stress and anxiety are heightened even more. Additionally, overreliance on technology can lead to social isolation and hinder interpersonal relationships.

When a worker’s mind is occupied with stressors, it becomes much harder to be present and work efficiently.

Leaders must not overlook problems, attribute the 

lack of productivity solely to motivation

, or expect their team members to solve issues on their own. Action is necessary at the organizational level. And implementing a digital wellness strategy designed to enhance mental well-being empowers individuals to manage their day effectively and reclaim valuable time.

Here are six ways to improve digital wellness and support mental health:

Recommend workers take breaks away from the screens

 about $216 billion each year due to lost productivity. When we include money spent on treatments, that cost becomes even higher. In the worst situations, people living with chronic pain might lose their jobs or incur such high medical bills that they end up in poverty.

While leaders may feel uncomfortable discussing their employees’ ailments, it’s important to listen and maintain open pathways of communication with team members. By empowering teams and 

, workers can better care for their physical health and work more productively.

The concept of autonomy is simple: on days when pain is bad, hold off on time- and attention-demanding tasks that will require workers to miss breaks or spend prolonged hours in front of screens. When days are better, fit those tasks or work hours in.

Here are five ways to improve digital wellness and support physical health:

To promote healing and improve digital well-being in your organization, experts recommend flexible work, digital detox challenges, and 

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every team, workstyle, and person is different. To make informed changes that aren’t driven by biases and opinions, we must have a collective understanding of the workday.

Sounds like a lot. But don’t worry, we are here to help.

 provides leaders and teams with all the information they need to build a digital wellness plan and then measure whether the changes are having a positive impact. We ensure that your efforts are not wasted. Get the data you need to create space for great work.

According to a 2023 Deloitte report, one-quarter of workers say their mental and physical health has deteriorated over the past year. An additional 40% say they saw no improvement.

Surprisingly, Deloitte’s research indicates a significant gap between employees and their leaders. About 80% of C-suite executives believe their employees' well-being has shown improvement across all surveyed metrics.

Statistics show that a significant portion of employees grapple with various emotional and physical challenges in the workplace. For instance:

52% frequently feel exhausted

49% experience frequent stress

43% feel overwhelmed

34% express feelings of irritability

33% report experiencing loneliness

32% feel depressed

27% occasionally feel angry

On top of that, leaders who understand the difficulties related to employee well-being at work mention that issues like having too much work and not knowing how to help team members with their health and wellness often get in the way of their efforts to support staff.

Why your team needs a digital wellness strategy

Workplace collaboration has changed a lot since the ‘80s, and our days are now deeply embedded in digital tools and processes. Teams today must be constantly available on messaging apps, email, and other work tools.

For this reason, nurturing digital wellness goes beyond the mere use of apps. It involves fostering a healthy understanding of workflows and collaboration between leaders, teams, and individuals. It means ensuring a balance between work and personal life, managing screen time, and promoting mental and physical health. To do all that, you need a data-driven digital wellness strategy.

Produce8 enables teams to build this awareness, identify solutions, and then measure whether their changes are producing positive results. We do this by understanding how people use their technology and time. It is our goal to help everyone recover 90+ minutes of work a day. Those 90+ minutes can then be used to cultivate a healthier digital experience.

We empower organizations and their people to close the gap between them. In doing so, teams can attack the problems of work and improve digital wellness throughout the workplace.

In this article, we discuss how implementing a digital wellness strategy can benefit your team's wellness, the work they do, and the organization’s bottom line.

The cost of not having a digital wellness strategy

People rest at the core of every business. Human beings like you and me. And when the people are unwell, the business will suffer.

Addressing digital wellness will significantly improve the health of knowledge workers, who spend a considerable amount of time using technology in their work.

Unscheduled absenteeism such as illness, personal problems, or job dissatisfaction costs roughly $3,600 each year per hourly worker and $2,660 each year per salaried employee.

But just because a worker is present, it doesn’t mean they are effective. When unwell staff show up to work, their performance generally suffers. This is commonly known as presenteeism. The economic impact of presenteeism on the U.S. economy surpasses $150 billion per year in lost productivity — far eclipsing the costs associated with annual absenteeism.

The business suffers both when the employee is absent and when the employee feels compelled, either internally or externally, to work despite their health concerns.

But there’s hope. A team of Harvard researchers discovered that for every dollar invested in wellness programs, employers can save $3.27 in medical expenses and $2.73 in costs related to absenteeism.

That means an IT service team with 20 employees can recover up to $21,675 per year by addressing mental wellness in the workplace. Use this mental health ROI calculator to find the amount you could be saving in your industry.

Face it: It’s time for leadership to consider what aspects of work are causing mental and physical stress. Your team and your business need you to build a digital wellness strategy. Keep reading and we’ll help you find a solution.

Digital wellness for the mind

70% of workers experience stress related to health, their job, and finances. And over 20% spend a minimum of five hours per week during working hours burdened by these stressors.

When the workday is filled with excessive screen time, constant connectivity, and information overload, stress and anxiety are heightened even more. Additionally, overreliance on technology can lead to social isolation and hinder interpersonal relationships.

When a worker’s mind is occupied with stressors, it becomes much harder to be present and work efficiently.

Leaders must not overlook problems, attribute the lack of productivity solely to motivation, or expect their team members to solve issues on their own. Action is necessary at the organizational level. And implementing a digital wellness strategy designed to enhance mental well-being empowers individuals to manage their day effectively and reclaim valuable time.

Here are six ways to improve digital wellness and support mental health:

Encourage focusing on a single task

Set technology boundaries

Recommend workers take breaks away from the screens

Manage notifications

Advocate for mindful technology usage

Schedule regular in-person interactions

Digital wellness for the body

Chronic pain costs the United States about $216 billion each year due to lost productivity. When we include money spent on treatments, that cost becomes even higher. In the worst situations, people living with chronic pain might lose their jobs or incur such high medical bills that they end up in poverty.

While leaders may feel uncomfortable discussing their employees’ ailments, it’s important to listen and maintain open pathways of communication with team members. By empowering teams and designing their jobs with autonomy, workers can better care for their physical health and work more productively.

The concept of autonomy is simple: on days when pain is bad, hold off on time- and attention-demanding tasks that will require workers to miss breaks or spend prolonged hours in front of screens. When days are better, fit those tasks or work hours in.

Here are five ways to improve digital wellness and support physical health:

Enable async collaboration

Reduce information overload

Limit screen time

Adopt relaxation techniques

Adjust work schedules

Designing a digital wellness strategy

To promote healing and improve digital well-being in your organization, experts recommend flexible work, digital detox challenges, and reducing distractions in the workplace.

But does any of that really work?

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every team, workstyle, and person is different. To make informed changes that aren’t driven by biases and opinions, we must have a collective understanding of the workday.

Sounds like a lot. But don’t worry, we are here to help.

Produce8 provides leaders and teams with all the information they need to build a digital wellness plan and then measure whether the changes are having a positive impact. We ensure that your efforts are not wasted. Get the data you need to create space for great work.

Digital Wellness in the Workplace: What’s the ROI of a Healthy Team?  

This article should not be taken as medical advice. What this article offers is a starting point for a bigger conversation with your team about employee burnout.

Why remote workers are vulnerable to burnout

Burnout is an invisible force—one that many business leaders don’t consider a factor when their plans fall short. Instead, they focus on their employees' work ethic and dedication, or the perceived lack thereof. This disconnect between workers and employers is known as 

, and it can lead to a work culture of mistrust and employee burnout.


The daily grind for distributed employees becomes more isolating and stressful when we consider frustrating work-related factors like unclear communication and time constraints. It’s not surprising that 

 have experienced burnout while working remotely.


Burnout doesn’t announce itself. But there are indicators that leaders can look for to identify employees who are in the throes of burnout.


Not all indicators are predictive, though. There are both lagging and leading indicators.


Consider a car that runs out of fuel on the road. A 

 indicator would be the car stalling on the highway, while a 

 one would be the fuel gauge on your dash flashing “empty.”


Lagging indicators require hindsight, whereas leading indicators require foresight. While employers certainly have opinions about productivity, it’s hard to argue with a clear fact such as looking at workers’ dashboards and seeing their gas tanks running low.


And that is exactly what we need. We must identify the leading indicators of burnout rather than just the lagging indicators.


With that said, here’s how to identify each indicator on a distributed team.


There are often cues leading up to the moment when a worker fails to deliver on time. However, remote workers may not express concern that they’ll miss a deadline until it’s too late. And if there is a lack of organizational trust and transparency, they’ll fear disciplinary actions or worry that their work will be reassigned by an unsympathetic manager. If it takes a missed deadline to identify employee burnout, then it’s too late for both the assignment and the worker.

Burnout is more than feeling tired. Workers may lose their sense of purpose, develop bad habits, and experience mental and physical conditions that can hurt their long-term health. Healing from burnout may require more time than paid sick days allow for. In that case, employees will return to work before they’ve fully recovered, which puts them at risk of burnout again.

 You’re probably familiar with the term “quiet quitting,” where disengaged employees opt out of going above and beyond and instead choose to lower the bar. In doing so, they are regaining some control over their lives. But when your top performers decline responsibilities or deliver work below their usual standards, opportunities to lead, support, and communicate are missed. And it will become much harder to inspire them again down the road.

When the symptoms of burnout go unrecognized for too long and workplace conditions fail to improve, fed-up talent will leave. And when your people exit, there isn’t much you can do to help them—they’ve already saved themselves, and good for them.


Even if your organization identifies lagging symptoms of burnout, it might be too late to take action. That’s why we must keep an eye on leading indicators. Only then can we truly start the conversation and work with our employees to develop a healthier approach to work.


When your team is constantly switching between different apps, tasks, and projects, they’re unlikely to get into a flow of doing their best work. Furthermore, being distracted can lead to increased time pressure and a vicious cycle of burnout.

 may be caused by unclear priorities, which leads to time and energy wasted. So, if a worker is toggling back and forth between different tasks, check in on them.

Your team needs to work together, but how they communicate through Slack, Teams, and Zoom may be increasing their workload. Long meetings and the pressure to quickly respond to messages causes employees to always be on alert, thus making them distracted. Regularly pulling team members away from their work can be a leading cause of burnout.

Perhaps the most common reason for burnout is that workers are putting in longer hours. And perhaps they’re working so hard that they’re compromising other areas of their lives, such as hobbies, friends, family, and health.


Because the office is always available for remote workers, logging in for another hour in the evening or on the weekend is tempting. This can lead to employees both waking up and falling asleep worrying about work.


The old paradigm is that the workers who hustle will get promotions. But those workers are also more likely to get burnt out in the process. If you care about their long-term well-being, you must help them look after their health. Employees are the engine of your organization, and working overtime or missing breaks should not become the norm.


Keeping an eye on leading indicators of burnout is not easy, as they often blend in with the work itself. Additionally, over the course of a busy day, it’s not realistic for leaders to request constant updates without becoming a distraction themselves.

 is a digital work analytics platform that automatically brings activities and tools your team interacts with into a timeline, offering the whole team visibility into their work patterns. Employers can now better identify leading burnout indicators.

Don’t make assumptions. You will only come across as insincere if you tell employees that you have the end-all, be-all answer to their burnout. And you will only create more stress and resentment if you discuss burnout without first establishing trust.


When talking about burnout, be open-minded. More than anything, listen. Hear what your employees are saying about the work. Have a genuine discussion where you ask what they need. You’re not their therapist, so no need to get personal, but there are work-related details you need to know:

Do they want to be acknowledged for the work they’ve done?

Don’t take criticism personally, and reserve judgment. No finger-pointing. After all, you are here to help the worker recalibrate and recover.

Take action to predict and prevent burnout

Conversations about employee burnout might be tough to hear, but there’s more. It’s time to move to the next step. (Yes, there’s a next step.) Don’t just talk the talk—walk the walk. When you tell your employees that you care, but then leadership doesn’t make any changes, the whole exercise will only look like a box checked off for HR.


Preventing burnout will be a work in progress. Always be learning, implementing changes, and measuring impact to establish a healthier and more productive work environment.

Burnout is the result of many hidden factors, meaning there are no quick solutions. You’ll need to adjust the approach depending on the worker, their working conditions, the job itself, and the people they work with.


Involve the workers in the conversation. After all, they’re the ones struggling. You are there to equip them with what they need to succeed, not enforce a new workflow or policy.

Burnout isn’t something you just sleep off. It can take weeks or even months to recover. That’s why this step is so important. Encourage the burnt-out worker to take time and prioritize self-care. The sooner you start this process, the better.


To reduce the risk of a worker falling back into unhealthy work patterns, they must set boundaries. One way to do that is to treat breaks and off time the same way they would treat meetings with important clients. Once time is booked, they respect it. So, treat your team’s self-care with the utmost respect.

Some events trigger stress more than others. For remote workers, this could mean an unscheduled video call, an application not working, or getting a notification from the boss at 4:45 pm. Alone, each of these stressors is a mere annoyance. But when they add up, a worker can become blind to what’s a reasonable request and what isn’t.


You don’t need to solve all the stressors immediately, nor can you. But you can analyze your current workflow. Are there a lot of unscheduled video calls? Are tools unreliable? Do last-minute requests happen often?


There will never be a completely stress-free workplace. But by identifying stressors, you can ensure workers are less overwhelmed.

Burnout can be the result of highly motivated workers taking on too many assignments. When they become overworked, their motivation declines.


For these workers, taking away their work may be perceived as punishment. When you delegate their assignment to others, it may add more stress—and sometimes even more work—because now they need to support other team members to finish the work that they started. When you’re coming in to help, make sure they’re ready to make the handoff. More importantly, make sure you’re actually helping.


Prioritizing doesn’t just mean redistributing the work. It can mean not adding more to the worker’s plate, too. For example, you can cancel their meetings or push a new project to the next quarter so they have some running room. Again, make sure the worker has a say in the matter.

Acknowledging and celebrating accomplishments is a small thing. But small things add up over time and create a positive culture—just as repeated negative interactions lead to burnout.


Frequent positivity leads to improved morale, team confidence, and enthusiasm in the work. Explore ways to give recognition genuinely. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture—in fact, sometimes those can feel forced. A message at the end of a meeting saying “Good job!” may be all your workers need to feel appreciated.

 Keep an eye on what changes. Ensure that old habits and new challenges don’t arise. Every worker, project, and season is unique—but if you look hard enough, you’ll find patterns. By understanding how each person works, how each project reaches completion, and how a successful Q2 looks in comparison to a dismal Q3, you’ll better position yourself to improve team health.

No more guessing. No more assumptions about what your team needs. It’s time to start the conversation and acquire the data that allows you to build a healthier remote team. If the only way you identify employee burnout is via lagging indicators, then you are not well-positioned to prevent it next time. You must be able to identify leading indicators as well.

This article should not be taken as medical advice. What this article offers is a starting point for a bigger conversation with your team about employee burnout.

Why remote workers are vulnerable to burnout

Burnout is an invisible force—one that many business leaders don’t consider a factor when their plans fall short. Instead, they focus on their employees' work ethic and dedication, or the perceived lack thereof. This disconnect between workers and employers is known as productivity paranoia, and it can lead to a work culture of mistrust and employee burnout.


The daily grind for distributed employees becomes more isolating and stressful when we consider frustrating work-related factors like unclear communication and time constraints. It’s not surprising that 69% of employees have experienced burnout while working remotely.


Burnout doesn’t announce itself. But there are indicators that leaders can look for to identify employees who are in the throes of burnout.


Not all indicators are predictive, though. There are both lagging and leading indicators.


Consider a car that runs out of fuel on the road. A lagging indicator would be the car stalling on the highway, while a leading one would be the fuel gauge on your dash flashing “empty.”


Lagging indicators require hindsight, whereas leading indicators require foresight. While employers certainly have opinions about productivity, it’s hard to argue with a clear fact such as looking at workers’ dashboards and seeing their gas tanks running low.


And that is exactly what we need. We must identify the leading indicators of burnout rather than just the lagging indicators.


With that said, here’s how to identify each indicator on a distributed team.


Lagging indicators of burnout

Missed deadlines: There are often cues leading up to the moment when a worker fails to deliver on time. However, remote workers may not express concern that they’ll miss a deadline until it’s too late. And if there is a lack of organizational trust and transparency, they’ll fear disciplinary actions or worry that their work will be reassigned by an unsympathetic manager. If it takes a missed deadline to identify employee burnout, then it’s too late for both the assignment and the worker.


More sick days: Burnout is more than feeling tired. Workers may lose their sense of purpose, develop bad habits, and experience mental and physical conditions that can hurt their long-term health. Healing from burnout may require more time than paid sick days allow for. In that case, employees will return to work before they’ve fully recovered, which puts them at risk of burnout again.


A drop in work quality: You’re probably familiar with the term “quiet quitting,” where disengaged employees opt out of going above and beyond and instead choose to lower the bar. In doing so, they are regaining some control over their lives. But when your top performers decline responsibilities or deliver work below their usual standards, opportunities to lead, support, and communicate are missed. And it will become much harder to inspire them again down the road.


Turnover: When the symptoms of burnout go unrecognized for too long and workplace conditions fail to improve, fed-up talent will leave. And when your people exit, there isn’t much you can do to help them—they’ve already saved themselves, and good for them.


Even if your organization identifies lagging symptoms of burnout, it might be too late to take action. That’s why we must keep an eye on leading indicators. Only then can we truly start the conversation and work with our employees to develop a healthier approach to work.


Leading indicators of burnout

Context switching: When your team is constantly switching between different apps, tasks, and projects, they’re unlikely to get into a flow of doing their best work. Furthermore, being distracted can lead to increased time pressure and a vicious cycle of burnout.


Context switching may be caused by unclear priorities, which leads to time and energy wasted. So, if a worker is toggling back and forth between different tasks, check in on them.


Collaboration overload: Your team needs to work together, but how they communicate through Slack, Teams, and Zoom may be increasing their workload. Long meetings and the pressure to quickly respond to messages causes employees to always be on alert, thus making them distracted. Regularly pulling team members away from their work can be a leading cause of burnout.


Overtime or missed breaks: Perhaps the most common reason for burnout is that workers are putting in longer hours. And perhaps they’re working so hard that they’re compromising other areas of their lives, such as hobbies, friends, family, and health.


Because the office is always available for remote workers, logging in for another hour in the evening or on the weekend is tempting. This can lead to employees both waking up and falling asleep worrying about work.


The old paradigm is that the workers who hustle will get promotions. But those workers are also more likely to get burnt out in the process. If you care about their long-term well-being, you must help them look after their health. Employees are the engine of your organization, and working overtime or missing breaks should not become the norm.


Keeping an eye on leading indicators of burnout is not easy, as they often blend in with the work itself. Additionally, over the course of a busy day, it’s not realistic for leaders to request constant updates without becoming a distraction themselves.


Produce8 is a digital work analytics platform that automatically brings activities and tools your team interacts with into a timeline, offering the whole team visibility into their work patterns. Employers can now better identify leading burnout indicators.

Talking about burnout

Don’t make assumptions. You will only come across as insincere if you tell employees that you have the end-all, be-all answer to their burnout. And you will only create more stress and resentment if you discuss burnout without first establishing trust.


When talking about burnout, be open-minded. More than anything, listen. Hear what your employees are saying about the work. Have a genuine discussion where you ask what they need. You’re not their therapist, so no need to get personal, but there are work-related details you need to know:

Are there too many projects?

Do they want more feedback?

Do they need more resources?

Are their efforts not yielding results?

Do they want to be acknowledged for the work they’ve done?

Don’t take criticism personally, and reserve judgment. No finger-pointing. After all, you are here to help the worker recalibrate and recover.

Take action to predict and prevent burnout

Conversations about employee burnout might be tough to hear, but there’s more. It’s time to move to the next step. (Yes, there’s a next step.) Don’t just talk the talk—walk the walk. When you tell your employees that you care, but then leadership doesn’t make any changes, the whole exercise will only look like a box checked off for HR.


Preventing burnout will be a work in progress. Always be learning, implementing changes, and measuring impact to establish a healthier and more productive work environment.

5 tips to prevent burnout

Burnout is the result of many hidden factors, meaning there are no quick solutions. You’ll need to adjust the approach depending on the worker, their working conditions, the job itself, and the people they work with.


Involve the workers in the conversation. After all, they’re the ones struggling. You are there to equip them with what they need to succeed, not enforce a new workflow or policy.



1. Take time and set boundaries: Burnout isn’t something you just sleep off. It can take weeks or even months to recover. That’s why this step is so important. Encourage the burnt-out worker to take time and prioritize self-care. The sooner you start this process, the better.


To reduce the risk of a worker falling back into unhealthy work patterns, they must set boundaries. One way to do that is to treat breaks and off time the same way they would treat meetings with important clients. Once time is booked, they respect it. So, treat your team’s self-care with the utmost respect.


2. Identify stressors: Some events trigger stress more than others. For remote workers, this could mean an unscheduled video call, an application not working, or getting a notification from the boss at 4:45 pm. Alone, each of these stressors is a mere annoyance. But when they add up, a worker can become blind to what’s a reasonable request and what isn’t.


You don’t need to solve all the stressors immediately, nor can you. But you can analyze your current workflow. Are there a lot of unscheduled video calls? Are tools unreliable? Do last-minute requests happen often?


There will never be a completely stress-free workplace. But by identifying stressors, you can ensure workers are less overwhelmed.


3. Reassess priorities: Burnout can be the result of highly motivated workers taking on too many assignments. When they become overworked, their motivation declines.


For these workers, taking away their work may be perceived as punishment. When you delegate their assignment to others, it may add more stress—and sometimes even more work—because now they need to support other team members to finish the work that they started. When you’re coming in to help, make sure they’re ready to make the handoff. More importantly, make sure you’re actually helping.


Prioritizing doesn’t just mean redistributing the work. It can mean not adding more to the worker’s plate, too. For example, you can cancel their meetings or push a new project to the next quarter so they have some running room. Again, make sure the worker has a say in the matter.


4. Give recognition: Acknowledging and celebrating accomplishments is a small thing. But small things add up over time and create a positive culture—just as repeated negative interactions lead to burnout.


Frequent positivity leads to improved morale, team confidence, and enthusiasm in the work. Explore ways to give recognition genuinely. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture—in fact, sometimes those can feel forced. A message at the end of a meeting saying “Good job!” may be all your workers need to feel appreciated.


5. Identify digital work patterns: Keep an eye on what changes. Ensure that old habits and new challenges don’t arise. Every worker, project, and season is unique—but if you look hard enough, you’ll find patterns. By understanding how each person works, how each project reaches completion, and how a successful Q2 looks in comparison to a dismal Q3, you’ll better position yourself to improve team health.

No more guessing. No more assumptions about what your team needs. It’s time to start the conversation and acquire the data that allows you to build a healthier remote team. If the only way you identify employee burnout is via lagging indicators, then you are not well-positioned to prevent it next time. You must be able to identify leading indicators as well.

Understanding the Leading and Lagging Indicators of Employee Burnout 

Never miss an update from us. Join our community of business leaders and professionals navigating work and life in the digital-first era.

These cookies are essential for the proper functioning of my website. Without these cookies, the website would not work properly.

Necessary cookies

These cookies collect information about how you use the website, which pages you visited and which links you clicked on. All of the data is anonymized and cannot be used to identify you.

Analytics cookies

I use cookies to ensure the basic functionalities of the website and to enhance your online experience. You can choose for each category to opt-in/out.

Cookie usage

Hi, this website uses essential cookies to ensure its proper operation and tracking cookies to understand how you interact with it. The latter will be set only upon approval.

Wellness

Recognize Signs of Burnout at Work

Digital Wellness in the Workplace: What’s the ROI of a Healthy Team?

Understanding the Leading and Lagging Indicators of Employee Burnout

Never miss an update from us. Join our community of business leaders and professionals navigating work and life in the digital-first era.

Solutions

Platform

Pricing

Partners

Resources