Worker burnout is probably going costing firms thousands and thousands of {dollars} annually, starting from roughly $4,000 to $21,000 per worker within the U.S., in line with a research revealed within the American Journal of Preventive Medication. Which means a 1,000-employee firm within the U.S. would on common be shedding about $5 million yearly. These estimates are primarily based on a computational simulation mannequin developed by the Public Well being Informatics, Computational, and Operations Analysis (PHICOR) staff primarily based at the CUNY Graduate Faculty of Public Well being and Well being Coverage (CUNY SPH) working with researchers from Baruch School, Johns Hopkins College (JHU), and the College of San Diego (USD) Knauss Faculty of Enterprise.
Our mannequin quantifies how a lot worker burnout is hitting the underside line of firms and organizations. Due to this fact, it may give firms and organizations a greater thought of how focusing extra on worker well-being might assist lower prices and improve income.”
Bruce Y. Lee, CUNY SPH professor, PHICOR and Middle for Superior Expertise and Communication in Well being (CATCH) government director, and senior creator of research
The computational mannequin simulates an worker who strikes by means of totally different phases starting from energetic participation at work to disengagement and burnout over time relying on what stressors the worker encounters. One can specify the place of the worker (e.g., hourly non-manager, salaried non-manager, supervisor, or government) and what state that worker is in initially (e.g., engaged, burned out, depart their job, overextended, disengaged, or ineffective).
As time within the simulation proceeds, the worker has chances of encountering totally different stressors that relate to the office (e.g., workload, group, management, rewards, equity, and worth) and non-workplace (e.g., household, cultural and psychological setting, monetary, and well being).The variety of stressors and the kind of stressors (office, non-workplace) that an worker experiences throughout a two-week interval determines if the worker stays in the identical state or strikes to a unique state. Whereas the worker is in a given state, that worker has sure productiveness ranges and experiences totally different attainable well being results.
The staff then ran the mannequin to estimate the ensuing value to an employer when totally different workers expertise several types of disengagement and burnout at totally different instances. For instance, an hourly non-manager worker going by means of burnout would value an employer on common $3,999 (95% vary: $3,958-$4,299). These prices could be on common $4,257 (95% vary: $4,215-$4,299) for a salaried non-manager, $10,824 (95% vary: $10,700-$10,948) for a supervisor, and $20,683 (95% vary: $20,451-$20,915) for an government. If one had been to imagine {that a} 1000-employee firm has the everyday distribution by worker sort (59.7% non-managerial hourly, 28.6% non-managerial salaried, 10% managers, and 1.7% executives), then the prices of worker disengagement and burnout to the employer would complete $5.04 million (95% vary: $5.03-$5.05 million) yearly. There would even be an related 801.7 (95% vary: 801.5-801.9) quality-adjusted life years misplaced annually.
All of this quantifies the substantial influence that worker disengagement and burnout has on the employer’s backside line. These prices vary from 0.2-2.9 instances the common value of medical health insurance and three.3-17.1 instances the common value of worker coaching to employers. These outcomes additionally give a way of how a lot employers may need to put money into stopping disengagement and burnout. There are a variety of attainable interventions that would cut back the danger of disengagement and burnout from firms providing psychological well being advantages to monetary literacy applications to correctly managing worker workloads. Nonetheless, every of those do require monetary commitments to determine and keep.
Burnout is pervasive and it is costing organizations thousands and thousands annually. Organizational leaders want to think about how their cultures and advantages applications assist the 60% of workers silently fighting burnout.”
Molly Kern, professor on the Zicklin Faculty of Enterprise at Baruch School and co-author of the research
Supply:
Journal reference:
Martinez, M. F., et al. (2025). The Well being and Financial Burden of Worker Burnout to U.S. Employers. American Journal of Preventive Medication. doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2025.01.011.