The Health and Economic Burden of Employee Burnout to U.S. Employers

Introduction: Although an increasing number of headlines have highlighted the problem of employee burnout, an employer may not be aware of how specifically disengagement and burnout may be affecting their employees’ health and their bottom line. Methods: To quantify the burden of disengagement and burnout among different employee types, in 2024, the authors developed a computational model representing different engagement/burnout states they could be in and different stressors within and outside the workplace on the basis of the work-life framework, which impact movement among these states and subsequent productivity losses (i.e., missed workdays and reduced productivity at work) and health effects in each state. Results: Employee disengagement, overextension, ineffectiveness, and burnout over the course of 1 year costs an employer an average of $3,999 (95% range=$3,958–$4,299) for an average U.S. nonmanagerial hourly employee; an average of $4,257 (95% range=$4,215–$4,299) for an average nonmanagerial salaried employee; $10,824 (95% range=$10,700–$10,948) for an average manager; and $20,683 (95% range=$20,451–$20,915) for an average executive. At an average U.S. 1,000-person company (assuming average wages by employee type and an employee distribution of 59.7% nonmanagerial hourly, 28.6% nonmanagerial salaried, 10% managers, and 1.7% executives), employee disengagement/burnout resulted in $5.04 million (95% range=$5.03–$5.05 million) in costs and 801.7 (95% range=801.5–801.9) quality-adjusted life years lost annually. Conclusions: Employee disengagement/burnout can cost employers 0.2–2.9 times the average cost of health insurance and 3.3–17.1 times the cost of training per employee.