Recruitment consultants hear a lot of reasons people leave their jobs. Almost nobody says, “I just wasn’t willing to work hard enough.” What we hear is: “I was exhausted,” “nothing made sense,” or “I didn’t feel secure there.”
New research backs this up. The State of Workplace Burnout 2026 report from Infinite Potential, supported by Beyond Blue, found that 36 per cent of workers are experiencing burnout. The rate ranges from 14 per cent among the best-supported employees to 66 per cent among the least supported.
It’s Not the Work. It’s the Friction.
Here’s what surprised us the most. Difficult decisions and complex work showed no significant link to burnout. What did was system friction: broken processes, duplicated work, unclear instructions and unnecessary approvals. These were linked to 74 per cent higher odds of burnout. Seventy-one per cent of respondents said they work around poorly designed systems just to get their job done.
Job insecurity was the other big driver, creating a 45-point burnout gap between the most and least secure workers. Loneliness played a part too, with 48 per cent of respondents feeling lonely at work.
What this Means for Employers
Burnout is a retention and hiring problem. Burnt-out people disengage, underperform and eventually start quietly scrolling job boards. Then you’re paying to find, hire and onboard a replacement who walks into the same broken system.
The good news is that this is fixable. The report suggests:
- Cutting duplicated processes and meeting overload
- Offering real support on workload and staffing, not just superficial perks
- Tracking hours worked beyond schedule
- Treating job security as a genuine psychosocial risk
- Building trust and belonging into how teams work
What this Means for Candidates
When you’re interviewing, ask questions about how work actually gets done. How are decisions made? How many approvals does a simple task need? How does the team handle workload peaks? The answers tell you more about burnout risk than any wellbeing perk on a careers page.
The best employers aren’t the ones asking people to be more resilient – they’re the ones removing what makes work harder than it needs to be.
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