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CFOs, how many of you think that if the talent shortage didn’t exist—if you could get enough qualified butts in office chairs, be they in-office/remote/hybrid—your productivity issues would go away?
Obviously you know we’re setting you up, so here’s the bad news: Even at full staffing, productivity might not see a boost, because a lot of people are feeling burned out. Nearly six in 10 employees are burned out, according to an annual survey commissioned by Aflac, and almost 40% are dealing with “high levels of stress,” which jumped five percentage points over last year.
Like a dentist fixing the teeth we grind in our sleep, let’s drill down.
What’s to blame? No surprise here, but work stresses employees out when there’s a lot of it. One in three said the stress came from heavy workloads, and 27% percent blamed long hours.
Whatever’s causing it, there’s more stress to go around this year: Those reporting high levels of it jumped from 33% in 2023 to 38% in this year’s survey. Meanwhile, burnout was the most commonly cited work challenge; 20% said they’re dealing with it right now, outpacing technology challenges (18%), career advancement (17%), feeling undervalued (17%), productivity (16%), and “juggling personal and professional responsibilities” (16%).
Who’s feeling it? While the burnout and stress are broadly felt, some groups reported it more often. Millennials were the burnout champions, with 66% of the 28- to 43-year-old cohort reporting moderate or high levels, while 55% of Gen Xers (in their mid 40s to late 50s) and 39% of baby boomers (aged 60–78) said the same.
Hispanic workers reported particularly high levels of burnout and stress: Those reporting high or very high stress jumped from 37% in Aflac’s 2023 survey to 46% this year. Hispanic respondents were also “nearly twice as likely as non-Hispanics” to report they were feeling very high burnout.
Fallout. With all that stress and burnout swirling around, is anyone surprised that half of workers copped to slacking off? Remote workers were more likely; 58% of respondents admitted they’d done at least one of the “counterproductive behaviors” mentioned: doing the bare minimum, meeting only their basic job requirements, procrastinating, taking outside work, searching and applying for new jobs, and “quiet vacationing”—though 44% of in-office employees and 54% of hybrid employees also said they’d participated in at least one form of (buzzword incoming) quiet quitting.