‘To solve this from the top, we’re going to be waiting for a really long time,' says former CHRO of Walmart and IKEA
Burnout has become an issue experienced across the world and a leading cause of productivity loss.
In fact, this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 12 billion working days are lost to depression and anxiety globally. In Canada and the United States, 50 per cent of workers say they feel a higher amount of stress on a daily basis than the 40 per cent global average, based on Gallup’s 2026 research
Experts speaking to Canadian HR Reporter say it is happening because workplaces are not addressing the root causes of the problem, but rather the symptoms.
What is driving burnout?
For Nabeela Elsayed, former CHRO of Walmart and IKEA based in Toronto, the problem starts with how workplaces think about the solution.
“We should be working on load management and really helping individuals manage their load versus working on the individual having greater resilience, because we’ve done that, been doing that,” she says.
While WHO identified burnout as an occupational phenomenon in its 2019 classification of diseases, Elsayed says the reality is broader — people are experiencing parental burnout, caregiver burnout, and even students who have never entered the workforce are feeling its effects. At the core of it, she says, burnout occurs when a person’s total load exceeds the available resources to carry it.
In the workplace, there is a constant expectation on workers to “increase” their resilience or personal strength as a “solution” to deal with workloads, even though it can seem unsustainable for some, she says.
“Not everybody has the capacity to carry the load."
With the constant change workplaces are experiencing with different disruptions, Elsayed says the conversation around burnout is more important than ever.
“Workplaces are less focused on employee wellbeing, I think, than they’ve ever been. So, again, if we’re waiting for organizations to solve this from the top, we’re going to be waiting for a really long time. Even the good ones are struggling,” she says.
During the pandemic, workplaces seemed to be making progress in prioritizing and recovering wellness culture. “We were making some progress during the pandemic to really prioritize and focus on wellness and recognize — change the culture around wellbeing. And now I think we’ve lost that momentum,” Elsayed says. However, with workplaces shrinking to cope with existential crises of their own, there seems to have been a regression.
The six drivers of burnout
Katharine Coons, national strategic lead, of workplace mental health at the Canadian Mental Health Association, (CMAH), says there are six drivers leading to burnout in workplaces:
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workload management
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control — employees feeling autonomous and involved in their role and decision-making process
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recognition — feeling undervalued and under supported
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lack of community and connection in the workplace
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fairness — feeling treated inequitably
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lack of transparency
“It’s really not an individual issue — it’s a systemic environment issue and workplace kind of structure, less so an employee kind of mental health challenge,” she says.
Treating symptoms, not causes
The problem with how most workplaces responds to burnout is that they only act once the symptoms have already surfaced and as one- time fix, Coons says.
“It’s more than just general stress. It’s kind of chronic workplace stress when it becomes overwhelming for that individual. And that’s when we’re like, ‘Oh, actually, that employee must be burnt out,’"she says.
These fixes does donot look at the long-term necessary and preventative plan. Organizations tend to focus on what they can do for an employee in the moment — without addressing what created the problem in the first place, Coons says.
A Canada Life survey in 2025 found that 39 per cent of Canadians felt burnout a four percent increase from 2024. Thirty-six per cent felt their workplaces offered no real programs to prevent it.
While there might be variations of how burnout symptoms are described, Elsayed points to a peer-reviewed burnout assessment that can help track the 12 stages of burnout.
“It usually starts with someone who’s really eager and committed, and they put in all this energy and eagerness into their job, and then they martyr themselves for their work and they start to sacrifice other parts of their life because of their work,” she says.
Then it moves to lack of sleep, skipping meals, social relations declining, and the onset of different physical and mental health symptoms of anxiety.
“Things that you used to really enjoy, you no longer enjoy. And that starts to get replaced. Joy gets replaced with cynicism,” Elsayed says.
No number of vacations, mental health days, or restorative practices help.
“Normal exertion can be recovered once you’ve done something restorative. You take a good long weekend. You take some holiday. You take care of your sleep debt. And you’re fine. You go back to your normal self,” she says.
“But when you’re experiencing burnout, you can do all those things. And the fogginess persists. The cynicism persists.”
The role of managers
Both experts say part of the systemic change can start with managers.
The manager-employee relationship is where organizations can make the biggest difference — evaluating people’s load, creating psychological safety, and helping teams reprioritize when things become unmanageable, Elsayed says.
Gallup 2024 Global Workforce Report shows that a healthy relationship with a manager can Improve employee engagement and health up to 70 per cent.
Elsayed points out that managers can be trained on how to use assessments to see if employees are experiencing the symptoms of burnout.
“I had a direct report once during the pandemic who said, ‘I’d rather put myself in a self-induced coma than go through another lockdown.’ I took that as a sign that this person is not okay. So we need to pay attention. I said, ‘I think we need to take a break and you need to take some time off and spend some time on your personal health and well-being,’” she explains.
However, managers must lead by example, and that means not saying it but modeling it, Elsayed says.
“You can tell people that their time outside of work is important and protected. But if you don’t protect your own time outside of work, then that’s going to mean more than what you say."
That also plays into creating an organizational culture and environment where employees can come forward with concerns about burnout Elsayed says.
Building long-term solutions
Moving to broader organizational strategy, Coons says the CMHA offers a program called Not Myself Today — workplace mental health training designed for managers to help play a role in creating a long-term roadmap around psychological safety.
The training also includes equipping leaders to recognize symptoms in colleagues, their teams, and within themselves.
“The approach for training is really from the foundation — to make sure we all have that same level of mental health literacy, but also building those skills to have those conversations around mental health, to kind of normalize that conversation, as well as really understanding what creates a psychologically healthy and safe workplace,” she says.
Beyond HR
While HR might play a big role in strategy and executing these programs, executive leaders also need to champion and execute this strategy, says Coo.
“It needs to be built into the system,” she says.
“HR can spearhead that and be the ones actually executing it. But we really need senior leaders to take some accountability and be a part of that process."
