You may have heard of the “Great Exhaustion” – a new workplace term that embodies a workforce suffering from burnout or emotional exhaustion, which may be attributed to the office vs. remote wars and tensions from rising living costs/inflation.
Janet Candido spoke to Jennifer Keene for CBC’s Cost of Living to discuss why Canadians are feeling more burned out than ever before. Listen HERE.
This article was originally published in CBC - Cost of Living.
For years, Sabrina Royal worked with one of Canada's big banks. She worked her way up from an entry-level job to a management position. But that's when her hours started getting out of hand.
"When it was good, I was working 8 a.m. to about 6:30 p.m.," Royal, 42, told CBC Radio's Cost of Living. "When it was bad, there were times when I was signing off at midnight or later."
On most days, she'd skip breaks and eat lunch at her desk. She felt anxious and tired — but thoughts of work made it hard to sleep. Eventually, it led to a prolonged brain fog and burnout.
"It's like watching myself from afar, not being able to be me," she said. "I know that I can pick up on things faster. I know that I can come up with responses more eloquently, more quickly. But it's such a struggle."
Royal's struggles are not uncommon for working professionals, especially those in her age range. Economists and workplace analysts have coined several terms to explain facets of modern burnout since the COVID-19 pandemic upended the way people lived and worked.
There was the great resignation, when people left their jobs en masse circa 2021. "Quiet quitting" described people refusing to work outside their paid hours amid pressure to work overtime or be constantly on-call.
Now a new term has emerged: The Great Exhaustion, which starts with stress directly related to work and piles on wider anxieties about the state of the world — such as climate change, war, political instability and the rising cost of living.
"The Great Exhaustion is a reflection of this collective experience of being burned out, tired, emotionally fatigued, by work and all things in our world, as well, that go beyond work," said Jennifer Dimoff, an organizational psychologist who teaches at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa.
Even though The Great Exhaustion encompasses more than just work, the numbers about work-life satisfaction can still look grim by themselves.
An online survey of Canadian professionals from staffing agency Robert Half found that 42 per cent of respondents reported feeling burnt out, according to advance polling data shared with Cost of Living. Respondents were asked to rate themselves on a scale of one to 10: a rating of one to three meant not burned out; four to six meant neutral; and seven to 10 meant burnt out.
"We didn't define [burn out]. We just asked, 'Do you feel burnt out?' And they came back and said yes," said Michael French, national director of client solutions at Robert Half.
The survey, to be released in June, polled mostly working professionals in fields like finance, accounting, technology, marketing and human resources, at companies with 20 or more employees in Canada. More than 750 people were surveyed between mid-October and mid-November 2023.
Younger workers were more likely to report burnout, French said. More than 50 per cent of millennial-aged respondents and 51 per cent of Gen Z-aged respondents said they feel burnt out.
People from Gen X and the baby boomer generation generally reported lower levels of burnout — at 32 and 24 per cent, respectively.
A separate survey released in November by ADP Canada found 53 per cent of workers in Canada reported negative feelings about work, and 30 per cent felt tired and overworked. Seven out of ten respondents reported feeling stressed because of inflation and the economy.
"In my vast experience, I have not seen it at this level in the past," said Janet Candido, founder of Candido Consulting Group, based in Toronto.
While these surveys focused on work, Dimoff said burnout is further fuelled by a "perpetual feed of negative information" outside of work, especially social media that can inflame the polarization of political discourse. The ensuing frustrations may not be directly related to workplace burnout, but they contribute to a pervasive cycle of malaise that can seem impossible to escape.
Royal described struggling with similar feelings in her job at the bank.
"I know that I can have a positive impact on the people that I directly interact with, but then there's this sense of, like, what good are the [few] of us against war in the Middle East, or all of Australia [being] on fire, or the oceans on the West Coast being so hot that fish are just rolling over and dying?" she said.
All of this is compounded further by the collective trauma and fatigue of living through the COVID-19 pandemic, whose effects linger on long after the initial lockdown era.
Even though many people are back working in the office, either part-time or full-time, many are still expected to maintain constant communication using virtual tools like Zoom, Slack and other programs whose use exploded during the early lockdown days.
"It's taking away from family time. It's taking away from any kind of social time you have. And there's a certain resentment that builds around that," Candido said.
The federal government's 2024 budget included a pledge to update the Canada Labour Code to give workers in federally regulated sectors a so-called right to disconnect from work outside their working hours.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland noted the proposal was created with Gen Z workers in mind. But as with many proposed laws in the budget, it's unclear when it will be implemented.
Candido says it's up to companies to practise better time management to ensure people have the time to actually do their jobs during the day rather than get buried in emails and meetings, lest their actual tasks end up as homework — and unpaid overtime.
As far as the wider pressures driving the Great Exhaustion, Dimoff says employers aren't necessarily expected to have answers for their workers' anxieties about war in the Middle East, for example. But if they can provide a healthy workplace that has open and honest lines of communication, they can provide a slice of stability.
As for workers themselves, she said limiting your social media usage and knowing how to consume media — including being able to identify and filter through misinformation — is critical to "coping with the things that are uncontrollable," without completely shutting off the valve of news and information.
Royal's stresses working at the bank continued to grow, until they became too much. In 2022, she quit and started working instead at a board game café in Toronto.
She took a major pay cut, but for now she says she feels fulfilled, and part of a "vibrant community" of gamers and hobbyists.
"It's just a delight. My coworkers are fantastic. The regular customers are fantastic," she said. "My heart grows three sizes every day."
The job change hasn't erased every stress in her life. Royal says she's saved money from her job at the bank, but she and her husband have had to be more mindful of their spending with her reduced income. She is currently training in life coaching in hopes of finding additional income sources.
"If I was just able to cover my living expenses, I wouldn't want to change anything about my life right now," she said. "I'm really happy. It's just that it's not enough to survive on in Toronto."
This article was originally published in Benefits Canada – written by Lauren Bailey.
While remote and hybrid working arrangements have revolutionized the modern workplace, they’re also fuelling unrealistic expectations for office communications, leading to what some have coined the ‘Great Exhaustion.’
In the pre-coronavirus pandemic office environment, employees understood that it would take a couple of days for colleagues to respond to an email or phone request, says Janet Candido, founder and principal at Candido Consulting Group, noting employees are now expected to respond to requests right away via email or another chat messaging system and the time spent following up is cutting into their workplace productivity.
“It’s not unusual for [employees] to spend an entire day answering emails or chats, which means they’re often catching up on work at home in the evenings.”
Being inundated with email requests for their time can be overwhelming, frustrating and tiring for employees, she adds. “In many cases, people are working far in excess of what would be considered a normal workday. And it’s not unreasonable to assume that people who are working remotely may be a victim to that even more than [in-office workers]. If they’re spending too much of their day on internal communications, they’re not actually getting their work product done during working hours.”
Indeed, the average employee spends 57 per cent of their time communicating (in meetings, email and chat) and spend the remaining 43 per cent creating (in documents, spreadsheets and presentations), according to a May 2023 survey by Microsoft Corp. It found the heaviest email users (those in the top 25 per cent) spend more than eight hours a week on email and the heaviest meeting users (also the top 25 per cent) spend 7.5 hours a week in meetings.
This exhaustion is also creeping into the office culture, says Candido, noting it’s making employees hesitant to socialize with co-workers or participate in social work events. “They just want to get their work done and go home so the culture becomes much more sterile [lacking] . . . camaraderie.”
But a full return to the office may not be the best solution to this problem, as in-office workers are also experiencing this exhaustion due to long commutes or having to balance caregiving duties with their work hours. While they recognize working in-person is better for collaboration and, in some cases, productivity, she says there’s a real disconnect between what’s better for employees and what’s better for the company and their colleagues.
No matter the preference, people are entrenched in their preferences for working remotely or in-office, which is permeating into other aspects of the workplace, says Candido. “That may be part of where . . . microaggressions [are] coming from, with remote employees feeling [pressure] from leadership who really want them to come into the office.”
She says it’s important that employees — whether working remotely or in-office — have quiet time to focus on their work product. Many employers have addressed this need by blocking off a day or certain hours once per week in their staff calendars for focused work or they’re establishing email etiquette to guide employees on reasonable times and ways to communicate virtually.
Candido doesn’t recommend employers draw a line in the sand and mandate all staff to work in the office five days a week. “Try to do it in a more . . . staggered schedule [and] give people notice, so they can plan around their childcare . . . or elder care. Otherwise, [they’re] all going to come in on those days . . . put [their] head down and not emerge until the end of the day.”
