Sick leave for burnout, and other alarming trends

Employers are being urged to take stronger preventive measures against poor workplace culture and structure as burnout becomes frighteningly rampant.

Workforce culture has seemingly hit a new low, with a growing burnout problem shifting from occasional occurrences to a recognisable phenomenon.

According to new people2people Recruitment research, more than half of Australian workers have taken sick leave for mental exhaustion, more than one-third in the past year alone.

Similarly, 48 per cent of employees see poor workplace culture as the biggest wellbeing risk, followed by unrealistic KPIs at 25 per cent.

Suhini Wijayasinghe, head of HR solutions at people2people, said these findings signal a mainstream workplace issue, whereby employment is creating “constant pressure, unrealistic expectations and little opportunity for recovery”.

This understanding is reinforced by the fact that one in two workers logs in outside of office hours to catch up on work, with a fifth logging on every evening and almost a third purportedly working five to 10 hours of overtime per week.

While the direction of the findings is hardly surprising, Wijayasinghe said the sheer scale is, with the statistics suggesting burnout now appears “less like an isolated health issue and more like a feature of how work is being organised”.

She said: “While the headline figures are confronting, the conditions underneath them have been building for some time.”

The issue is, in part, being fuelled by a perception gap between employees and employers. In people2people’s 2026 Employment and Salary Trends Report, 71 per cent of employees agreed that management support and trust affected retention, while only 35 per cent of employers said the same. Sentiment around team relationships showed a similar gap between employer and employee.

“Employers also often assume that silence means workloads are manageable, long hours demonstrate commitment, or flexible work automatically prevents burnout. In reality, employees may stay quiet because they fear being seen as incapable, and remote work can make excessive hours less visible,” Wijayasinghe said.

At the same time, technology has blurred the boundary between work and personal life, which is, according to Wijayasinghe, “creating an expectation of constant availability” and fuelling a general feeling that the workday never ends.

“People can sustain that pace for short periods, but when it becomes the norm rather than the exception, burnout becomes inevitable,” she said.

Further, Wijayasinghe noted that managers often perceive burnout as an individual resilience issue, rather than a phenomenon reflective of workload and culture. In this way, schemes such as employee assistance programs (EAPs) and recommendations to exercise and practice mindfulness are often deficient when the issues are unrealistic workloads, poor management, or demands for higher productivity or constant availability.

In the same vein, Wijayasinghe explained that the extension or any work-from-home privileges does give employees more time and control over their work day, but again, “working from home will not solve burnout if workloads remain unrealistic or employees are expected to stay constantly available”.

To address these issues, employers are being urged to replace slogans with everyday management decisions that affect employees, such as reviewing overtime, workloads, leave, turnover, and after-hours activity, and then addressing underlying deficiencies.

This may necessitate, Wijayasinghe said, “improving staff, removing low-value tasks, setting available KPIs and clarifying priorities”, adding: “Managers should regularly discuss capacity, ask what needs to be deprioritised and set clear expectations about after-hours contact”.

Wellbeing programs and flexibility can complement good work design, and managers should be trained to recognise burnout, communicate about capacity, and prioritise and deprioritise work.

“Most importantly, act before employees take extended leave or resign. Burnout prevention is most effective when organisations address how work is designed, allocated, and managed,” she said.

“Culture has a bigger impact on wellbeing than many organisations realise.”

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