Management tells employees they’re no longer allowed to discuss “burnout” in their 1:1s and are then surprised when the employee asks for stress leave: ‘I got 7 weeks off and partial pay, and they had to cover my job’ – FAIL Blog

You won’t find what you aren’t looking for, and when you’re, instead, burying your head in the sand, the issues you’re hiding from will eventually come back to haunt you. Just, instead of something small and manageable, it will be something much more vicious. 

This principle, while incredibly important for our own personal health, applies to business interests, too. And the two go hand in hand when it comes to employee stress and burnout that might come from burning the candle at both ends for too long, or otherwise from understaffing or personal issues. 

In a world where rest is a reward and not a right. We have a tendency to deprive our bodies and our minds of the rest that they rightfully need and deserve, and run ourselves ragged in the name of a promotion that we might never see.

This employee was told to stop discussing burnout in their 1-on-1s and even received a write-up for bringing it up too frequently. Their requests for help were used against them, being cited as reasons for the write-up. 

It’s unwise for employers to react to employees’ cries for help in this way, for one, it opens the employer up to risk of claims of retaliation and unfair dismissal. For another, well, it doesn’t make the burnout, or whatever underlying issue there is, go away, and it will leave it to continue to fester until it becomes an even bigger problem for the organization and business operations.