The Burnout Epidemic: Why 8 in 10 Employees Are at Risk

Blake Schofield 0:00
Real leadership, real life, real impact, no more choosing between your career and your life. Here you’ll find honest conversations, science-backed strategies, and inspiring stories to help you thrive at work and truly enjoy your life outside of it. I’m your host, Blake, and I’m honored to help you create more impact with ease.

Blake Schofield 0:37
Here’s a sobering truth: 44% of employees report being more stressed today than five years ago. Think about that. Five years ago, we were at the beginning of the pandemic, quarantined in our homes, not knowing if it was safe to be around other people, uncertain if our jobs, our health, or our families would be okay. And yet, despite all of that, people are more stressed and more anxious today. Add that to the fact that eight out of 10 employees are at risk for burnout in the workplace, and it’s clear we aren’t just facing a workplace challenge.

Blake Schofield 1:09
We’re in the middle of a burnout epidemic, and this isn’t new, but it’s reached a breaking point. I’ve seen signs of this for decades. When I started my career in human resources, it was actually after a shift. My original goal was to become a marriage and family psychologist, but my junior year of college, I realized that path didn’t quite feel right. The advice I was given: go into HR — that’s where people people go. And since I’d known from the time I was about 10 years old that I had a passion for people, for understanding what made someone successful, what created a fulfilling and purposeful life, it felt like the right next step.

Blake Schofield 1:45
My very first job was recruiting and hiring for Zale Corporation’s intern and merchandising development program. That experience was eye-opening. I realized I had this deep desire to know: how do I know if my work is actually working? Are the things I’m doing creating results? At that time, that kind of thinking was unusual. Some people even thought I was crazy for wanting to measure impact and find out old historical data that honestly hadn’t been easily tracked. But my desire for results, for meaning and purpose, pushed me to dig in. I started tying my work directly to organizational outcomes, and the data spoke for itself.

Our intern class had a 50% higher retention than ever before. More of our interns were hired across the company, and we had more diversity across departments. It showed me the power of connecting your work to measurable impact and creating results that matter. I’ll never forget one of the first pieces of feedback I got from that very first boss. It still sticks with me.

Blake Schofield 2:49
She said, “Blake, you are an A player, but not everyone else is.” At the time, I think she was trying to teach me that not everyone has the same motivations. Looking back, what I really saw was the difference in passion, purpose, and energy. Even as a 22-year-old, I noticed something that unsettled me. So many leaders and coworkers weren’t engaged — they were just going through the motions.

And I often wondered: Why do people show up every day to jobs when they aren’t excited, growing, or engaged? Why do so many leaders seem to have checked out? It became an internal quest that I had to understand. Why do people not experience the same level of passion or fulfillment? Why aren’t they showing up as A players? What’s really going on?

And so I thank Amy for the feedback that she gave me as a 22-year-old, because I had a lot to learn about how different people are wired and motivated. I had a lot to learn about how you can help people and create the right culture where people are energized, excited, and growing. And I also had a mission to understand at greater depth why these problems existed. As my own career unfolded, I had the opportunity to learn and understand it for myself.

Blake Schofield 4:06
I hit my first career crisis in my early 20s. I kept asking myself, “Is this really what I’m meant to do for the next 30 years? Is this really as good as it gets?” Something was missing, and I wasn’t alone. So many of my coworkers were asking themselves the same questions, struggling with that sense of misalignment, which is one of the very early signs of burnout.

That led me to make a career shift into merchandising, where I spent the next 16 years building, growing, and turning around eight- and nine-figure businesses. I loved the challenge of taking a business that was underperforming or stagnant, stripping out what was misaligned, really identifying where the gold was, and reconfiguring it so it could shine and honestly dominate the market. And later, I realized that exact same skill set was what I’d carry into coaching.

Blake Schofield 5:00
Helping leaders and teams strip away the misalignments holding them back, uncover their unique fingerprint for success, and thrive in ways they didn’t think were possible. After helping hundreds of leaders, this is what I know to be true: my experience of being a top performer and continuously getting promoted and moving up the ladder, all while suffering from cycles of burnout, lack of fulfillment, and feeling like I had to compromise my life for my career — it wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s actually happening to the majority of us.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. For me, it wasn’t until I hit my third breakdown moment that I decided to leave my corporate career behind and become a business owner. And since 2017, I have devoted hundreds of thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of hours to truly understanding the depth and the breadth of the problem and the solution.

Blake Schofield 5:53
As I sit here today, I can see why we’re in an epidemic. Stress is higher than it’s ever been. People are more anxious now than they were at the beginning of the pandemic. Employee turnover, disengagement, and lack of fulfillment — these aren’t new problems. Burnout isn’t new, but it’s reached epidemic levels because the problem has always been there. We just didn’t understand the depth or how to solve the root problems.

For me, the passion to solve this started honestly long before my own career. As a child, I watched my mom struggle through layoffs, career transitions, and years of searching before she finally found a company and a path where she felt engaged, growing, and fulfilled. That journey showed me how critical it is to do work that you’re really aligned with, and it also showed me how deeply your career impacts your entire life and your family’s life too.

Blake Schofield 6:47
Later, my own cycles of burnout taught me the same lesson. I’d start a new role, excited, energized, and then eventually that unsettled feeling would creep back in. Friends and family would say to me, “You should just be happy, be grateful,” or “Why don’t you get a hobby? Why do you care so much?” And I’d internalize that, thinking something was wrong with me. Maybe I was broken, and just my expectations were too high.

But the truth was, it wasn’t me — and it isn’t you either. It’s the way we’re working and living. Most people believe burnout happens after working too hard for too long, but that’s too simplistic. What most people call burnout is just the tip of the iceberg — the stage building up to the breakdown moment. The real problem is chronic misalignment. It builds slowly, like a backpack, getting heavier and heavier.

Blake Schofield 7:46
At first it’s manageable, but eventually the weight becomes crushing. And the solutions we’re given — take a vacation, go to therapy, meditate, take a walk, create boundaries, switch jobs, download another productivity app. Organizations are doing the same thing — bringing in wellness speakers, meditation apps, educating on navigating uncertainty, or adding in-office perks in the hopes that they can reinvigorate and re-engage their employees.

And while those things can help temporarily, they don’t solve the root cause, which is why the cycle just keeps repeating. Here’s where this gets urgent: this epidemic didn’t just appear in the last five years. The cracks were always there, but the last five years, with macroeconomic shifts, technology changes, and constant disruption, have amplified them.

Blake Schofield 8:42
Burnout is not caused by a period of overwork. It’s a chronic condition caused by leading and living in ways that are misaligned from how we’re wired to thrive. The challenges leaders and employees face today — they aren’t new. They’re amplified when you combine those long-building misalignments with today’s challenges. It’s become an epidemic.

And here’s the shocking part: five years ago, we were at the beginning of a pandemic, quarantined in our homes, not knowing if it was safe to be around other people, uncertain if our jobs, our health, or our families would be okay. And yet, despite all of that, people are more stressed and more anxious today. Add that to the fact that eight out of 10 employees are at risk for burnout in the workplace, and it’s clear we aren’t just facing a workplace challenge. We’re in the middle of a burnout epidemic.

Blake Schofield 9:40
Here’s the hope: epidemics can be solved. It’s my mission to change the way we lead and live so that people understand passion, engagement, fulfillment are possible, but only if we stop leading and living the way that we’ve been taught — that no longer works.

This means getting to the root causes of misalignment, understanding how you’re naturally wired to work, identifying and replacing the belief systems that are standing in the way of creating the type of success in your career and life that you want, and reshaping the environments you operate in.

Blake Schofield 10:06
When leaders align in these areas, the transformation is powerful. Energy comes back, creativity and innovation come back, as does fulfillment. And the best part — change can happen faster than most people realize. It’s amazing how quickly leaders shift when they have access to the right resources and skills.

So here’s my invitation to you.

Blake Schofield 10:43
This isn’t a season. It’s a state of chronic misalignment that’s been building for a long time. And the old way of grinding harder, pushing through, or hoping things will calm down isn’t working. The new way forward is alignment — learning to lead and live differently so you can reignite your energy, your clarity, and your fulfillment.

If you’re ready to take the first step, I’d love to invite you to join my upcoming Burnout to Breakthrough Workshop on October 9. Together, we’ll uncover the misalignments draining your energy and design a simple aligned action plan that you can start using right away.

Because while burnout might be an epidemic, it does not have to define your future. Thanks for joining me and until next time, lead with intention and create your impact with ease.

Blake Schofield 11:39
Most successful people don’t realize they’re in burnout because stress and exhaustion have become so normalized. But burnout is actually a sign of deeper misalignment between how you’re wired to thrive and how you’re actually working and living. Fix the misalignment and everything changes.

Take the free quiz at impactwithease.com/burnout-type to discover your burnout type and get next steps to reclaim your energy, lead with confidence, and create more ease in your life and career. You, you.