About the episode

Burnout has gone from a buzzword to a business risk.

According to the latest Women’s Agenda Ambitions Report, 72% of women say they’ve experienced burnout in the past year. It’s no longer just a personal struggle – it’s a workplace crisis. So what’s driving this rising tide of exhaustion?

Angela Priestley, co-founder of independent news platform Women’s Agenda, shares the findings of their 2025 report, exposing the pressures pushing employees to breaking point and what leaders can do to stop it.

This episode is hosted by Dr Juliet Bourke with insights from Professor Barney Tan. 

You can read the full 2025 Women’s Ambition Report here.

Want to know more? 

For the latest news and research from UNSW Business School and AGSM @ UNSW Business School, subscribe to our industry stories at BusinessThink and follow us on LinkedIn: UNSW Business School and AGSM @ UNSW Business School.

Transcript

Dr Juliet Bourke: According to the Black Dog Institute, mental illness costs Australian businesses an estimated $39 billion a year, and with employee mental health in the spotlight, you're probably hearing a lot about one term in particular.

News Reader: Many people are experiencing a state of chronic fatigue known as burnout.

News Reader: It is a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion following prolonged stress.

News Reader: How do we make employees more productive at work without burning them out?

Dr Juliet Bourke: Stress workloads, even the news cycle, have all been speculated as contributors to this growing experience. Angela Priestley is co-founder of independent news platform, Women's Agenda, and she's seen a rise in women reporting burnout as a major career barrier.

Angela Priestley: Every two years we go to our audience, we survey women, around 1500 women, about their ambitions for the years ahead. And a few years ago, we started putting in this question about burnout, and we found recently in our 2025 report that 72% said that they feel like they have experienced burnout in the past 12 months.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So if such a significant amount of the workforce is feeling this way, what can be done to get our employees and ourselves back to fighting fit?

Dr Juliet Bourke: This is The Business Of a podcast from UNSW Business School. I'm Dr Juliet Burke, an adjunct professor in the School of Management and Governance, Angela. Let's start simple. What is burnout and why are we hearing so much about it right now?

Angela Priestley: I think that burnout is something that many of us are now familiar with. It's coming to our lexicon. It's not a medical term. The World Health Organisation doesn't consider it as such. It talks about it as being an occupational phenomenon. So we obviously all have different measures of what that burnout might feel like for us. So there'll be different opinions in terms of what constitutes burnout. But I think it's important to note that this is something that people seem a lot more familiar with in 2025 as a word to describe something that they're feeling than they were, say, 2019 or 10 years before that, or 10 years prior to that as well.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Yeah, there is an interesting question. There we are seeing, let's just say, increasing rates of burnout, because there's increasing rates of familiarity with that. People can now name it. Do you have a perspective on that?

Angela Priestley: I mean, certainly I think that people can name it now. And I don't think we have to go far to know what that burnout might mean. If we talk about that word, maybe now is the right time to have that word as well. It was 2021 when the word really kind of came to public knowledge. It goes back decades before that. But in 2021 we think about what was going on there, and we think about the great exodus of staff that was occurring, particularly in the US, and that covid, sort of post, not quite post covid, but that really tumultuous time of 2021, and all the competing forces that were going on that saw people just go, I've had it. I can't do this anymore. If we just think about how much the workforce has changed, how much has changed in terms of how much is done at home and dual incomes, and how much it costs on rent, how much people are spending on an average mortgage, and how impossible these things can be on single incomes for households. If we think about things like climate change and technology and social media and now the advent of AI as well, it's well, how can we not be feeling like a little bit overwhelmed? I would think, add in, you know, general news events in there too, and you can see how I think things can be pretty tough, so I agree to an extent that we have a word, but I also think that it's useful that we have that, and maybe that can help workplaces in identifying it more in their employees, and perhaps it can help people in getting through that and living happier and healthier lives.

Dr Juliet Bourke: I'm curious. Of those things that you mentioned, quite a few are sort of external to the workplace. So you think about cost of living as a crisis, and you know, we've got other ones than political instability, wars around the world. Only one of them that you mentioned was relating in part to the workplace, and that was AI. So do you think the majority of drivers for burnout, then, are sitting outside the workplace?

Angela Priestley: When I say some of those drivers of burnout, I might put it in the context of, say, for a carer, say, as a parent, or as some caring for somebody with a disability or ageing parent, or as any of us who have family, whatever family looks like to us, and that can be friends as well. We have responsibilities outside of that that contribute to the mental load, and those responsibilities don't go away just because we've gone to work. That mental load doesn't go away just because we've gone to work. And technology means that those responsibilities are coming at us constantly. We are constantly bombarded with men. Messages and information and concern, and then we might flick on to Instagram and compare ourselves to somebody else and where they're at and how things are going. And then we're also and especially women, the research shows we're still doing the same amounts of unpaid work that we were doing when we weren't in record numbers of workforce participation where we are now, which is a great thing, but not enough has changed to be able to support that.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Like Angela said, technological advancements have impacted our ability to focus both at home and in the workplace. But according to Professor Barney Tan, there are ways businesses can use technology responsibly, both for productivity and good employee mental health.

Professor Barney Tan: Technology has made us more capable, more productive, yes, but also more interruptible. Tools like Slack, Microsoft, teams and zoom, they've also blurred the boundaries between work and rest, and unless we rethink about how we use it, we'll keep paying the price in terms of energy, focus and well being. One of the biggest downsides of tech advancements for work and productivity is the issue of attention fragmentation, a term that academics have used to describe how we're constantly switching between tools, tasks and conversations, so our day may involve, for instance, 30 minutes of email followed by a 15 minute check in, then Slack messages, then jumping into a Google project doc and then back again. So this constant toggling between all these different platforms is mentally exhausting. It actually diminishes our ability to think deeply, to reflect and even to make sound decisions. And then, of course, there's also this notion of digital overload. We have normalised being reachable at all hours, so notifications would follow us into the evening, into the night, and we often feel guilty for unplugging. But the research is clear this kind of hyper connectivity is silently eroding our capacity to focus, to rest and to recover. And the solution isn't as simple as just take a day off. Organisations need to rethink how they use tech to reduce burnout, and the key here is a fundamental mindset shift in how we approach technology. It's not about efficiency at all costs, but rather it's about endurance. We have to design tech practices that protect human capacity over time. And you actually see a lot of tech companies experimenting with their own internal policies as well. So many tech companies have focus days meeting free day that give employees uninterrupted time to do deep work. Some firms have also introduced email curfews or quiet weeks where internal communication slows down to give everyone space to recharge. But very importantly, these boundaries don't emerge on their own. They have to be deliberately designed and installed. So that might mean offline hours, platform-specific quiet periods, or leader role modelling. When managers openly respect boundaries, like not emailing at night, it sets the tone for the rest of the team, and that's cultural change in action. So in the end, tech can absolutely be a force for good, but only if we use it with care, if we are deliberate about when, why and how we connect, we can build work environments that are not only more productive, but also more humane.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So Angela, let's take a look at your Women's Ambition Report. Can you explain what you measure and take me through some of the key findings when it comes to burnout.

Angela Priestley: The research that we've done is part of an Ambition Report that we do. So every two years we go to our audience, we survey women, around 1500 women, about their ambitions for the years ahead. And a few years ago, we started putting this question about burnout. So it started coming up as something that women said they believe would be getting in the way of their ambitions. And so now we actually ask if they believe they may have experienced burnout in the past 12 months. And we found recently in our 2025 report, that 72% said that they feel like they have experienced burnout in the past 12 months. Now this isn't academic research. We're a media publication, so this is polls of women that we do, but it is really interesting, and it is consistent with findings from a similar report and a question that we asked two years ago as well, and I found it is consistent with findings around other research that is done on burnout.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And in your survey, did you identify what the drivers of burnout are in the workplace?

Angela Priestley: We did ask this of this audience. And so obviously this is just one survey, and I'm not saying men don't experience burnout, because I'm sure they absolutely do, and I'm sure some of these findings may or may not be relevant to them, but I'm sure some of them at least, would be so we asked of those that said that they do believe they have experienced burnout. 33% listed a difficult boss. 21% said parenting responsibilities. 25% noted about being paid less. And around one in five put it down to workplace bullying. So if I go back to the difficult boss one, because I think when I look at workplaces, and our experience of work so often amounts to the experience that we have with that immediate manager. And I just think when I look at workplaces, I think that is the first place they can start is to address those cultural issues that are happening at that individual level. Because if it's making people feel burnt out or exhausted or miserable or depressed or something else, if it's making people want to leave, it's costing them huge amounts that they may not ever be able to realise later on. So I think that's the first thing that should be addressed.

Dr Juliet Bourke: We've seen some evidence that the new right to disconnect clause may be having a positive impact on how people work. Do you think there's a connection between these boundaries and improvements in focus, productivity, even burnout rates?

Angela Priestley: Yeah, there has been quite an extensive increase in productivity since those right to disconnect laws have come in. And so we look at that and think, Well, what's going on there? And can it link to burnout? Because if people are suddenly have this option to disconnect, and maybe it goes back to what I was mentioning about the messages coming in and out, and all of a sudden, you don't have to worry about that tranche of it, and you can focus on the rest of it. It seems like there are great benefits in that.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And that legislation, as you know, only applies to workplaces that have more than 15 employees. So the report was also suggesting maybe an expansion would be good for Australia as a whole.

Angela Priestley: Yeah, and I do run a business of less than 15 employees, so ours would come into that. I also note that how difficult that can be, but then at the same time, if you have a business, I mean, the other research that I've seen is also the cost of burnout, and there have been some great figures quantifying that out of the US. So not Australian again, but it's also just from this year that puts it down to costing between four and $17,000 an employee. So if you get to a large corporation, you're getting obviously into huge costs from things like absenteeism, presenteeism, or people who are actually looking for a job while they're at work, these kind of consequences that the researchers are putting under this label of burnout, to see the cost of it. So as a small business, you could look at that and think, Well, how can I ensure that we're Wardy against those costs and ensuring that we are doing the best by our employees, and maybe taking this as seriously as businesses of over 15 do, and even if it's not legislated this right to disconnect that maybe we see it as a good thing to introduce.

Dr Juliet Bourke: I'm wondering if there are any other side effects that you can see of this sort of burnout cluster, or at least an extreme form of stress?

Angela Priestley: Mistakes is another big one, and that does come into the report that I just mentioned, too, also the impact that it has on those colleagues. So those around you who, if you're seeing that somebody's not putting in 100% how that impacts what you'll do, or perhaps that burnout is affecting you as a manager, and all of a sudden you're one of those 33% managers that are affecting the person underneath, who are saying that they feel burnt out because of you. So I think that is another side effect. This is its own kind of pandemic of a sense of how, if people are feeling burnt out here, like that, impact that they'll have in terms of that contagion effect that it will go to other people too, we talk about, and this has been around for years, is the idea of the brilliant jerk. I'm sure you've heard of that term in business, and it comes up in a couple of different large tech us, tech companies, especially where the idea of the brilliant jerk was, where you get this Rainmaker and this person that is just so amazing that, like, we just let their behaviour slip, even though they're just causing all this catastrophic damage along the way, but they're just too brilliant. We cannot function. We cannot grow as a business without them. But then we're forgetting about the toll that they're taking on everybody else.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And I've definitely heard that it increases workplace conflict, because when you're feeling that extreme form of stress, you just don't have the ability to be gentle in your communications to other people, to be thoughtful to you know, take the time to be constructive. You get very task-oriented.  In thinking about our conversation today and talking to other people, what people were feeding back to me, I just want to check in with you, was that the remit that they might have is larger than they previously had. They are worried about externalities, they're worried about the world, they're worried about geopolitics, they're worried about income security. But they also think, Okay, I'm worried about AI. Is it going to take my job? What do I have to do? And there's no time to get on board with training, and then they're worried about turnover, because every time someone turns over, it's potentially more work for them to do. That sounds like a lot for anyone to take on. And I wonder where's the off-ramp for that? That just seems like a cluster that is going to be difficult for anyone to manage. And how do we get out of that cycle?

Angela Priestley: So with burnout, I mean the stress or the pressure that we feel, it's not going to be cured by just taking a day off or even necessarily taking a holiday. And you know, when you look at some of the research or some of the writing that's been done, especially in the medical profession, and especially for junior doctors, and what they experience with those really long hours and the real physical responses that they have, and the fact that even after quitting their roles, in some cases, some of these junior doctors can't work for months or years, it takes them so long to rebuild themselves because they have taken on so much during that period. So it's important to note that it's hard to think that you can just have these things going on and then take a day off, or get a week's annual leave or something, and expect it to be different later on.

Dr Juliet Bourke: That's a really good example, because that really speaks to this sort of systemic nature of some industries are actually built on overworking, yeah, and so burnout is built into the system. And you know, as we've seen with the doctors, there just aren't enough doctors to go around, and so the load on those who are left behind just keeps increasing and increasing.

Angela Priestley: Yeah. I mean, it's incredible when you hear the stories from junior doctors and also, and this happens in other industries as well, where you'll get senior leaders, or perhaps they're called mentors, or whoever they are in those industries who have this idea, well, I got through it, so why can't you? But they are also talking about getting through it in a very different time as well, when perhaps they had a wife at home, or perhaps they had someone managing the domestic load who wasn't working themselves. Or perhaps the hours were different. Perhaps there were more doctors back then. You know, it's not fair to compare what you're experiencing, say as a junior doctor, say 30-40, years ago, to what those junior doctors are experiencing today. And I think that's so interesting in terms of this 2025, conversation as well, because we are talking about it now. I guess that element that care brings in. You know, we can talk about the care professions, and that's significant, and the amount of people who have left, or say that they will be leaving, say early childhood education or nursing, or typically very female dominated care professions, who are not getting paid what they should be getting paid, even with the pay rises that they've been getting. But also talking about that unpaid care that goes on for so many people, maybe on top of their care profession work, but otherwise, on top of their work as well.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And even though you've talked about the caring professions, in some ways, managers can be that caring part of a workforce as well. They're feeling that high sense of the need to care for their staff. So I can imagine that's playing into, you know, what we're seeing around burnout?

Angela Priestley: Yeah. I mean, think about AI, where we talked about earlier, if staff are concerned about AI somewhere along the line, managers or someone needs to support them through that. Support them in terms of what that's going to look like, what their concerns are, what their anxieties might be about, what their jobs will be in the future, or what they can do to really prepare and be a part of that. So you can see how that load comes onto managers as well, to be able to navigate that and ensure that their teams are not only prepared, but also potentially using AI as it should be used now.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Yeah. And that's a lot to put on the manager's shoulders, as you said, or the business owner's shoulders.

Angela Priestley: Yeah and I think that can be such a lonely place to be as a founder or as a business owner, because it's hard to find people who are experiencing that same thing at that same time, and then at the same time, that is part of what you take on. As my husband would say, who recently sold a business and is now employed, he sometimes looks at me and he always talks about the off the shoulders and how much of a difference it made, even though he's working longer hours now, that sense of the relief of not having to think about the next paycheck coming in and how he was going to pay his team members. So there is that added load there.

Dr Juliet Bourke: What signals are you looking for to see if someone is getting close to burnout?

Angela Priestley: One thing that I've seen in teams over the years, and I'll preface this by saying in the work that we do, it can be quite obvious and deadline-driven, so you can see patterns where things may just suddenly change. So it might be if somebody who's always, you know, met deadlines, who's always gotten things on in time, just suddenly things are not happening like they used to, or there might be a few more mistakes occurring. And, you know, occasionally you do see these patterns. And so at that point, if you do see a pattern. It can be a great time to have a really gentle conversation about what's going on, and as I found in previous years and encounters in these sorts of conversations, it could be something to do with work, but it may also be something not to do with work, and maybe something they do or don't want to disclose at that point. But I've certainly had that where it has actually been something completely different outside of work that that person was that that person was going through, and so then it was a matter of trying to support them through it. And then, if it's work, it might be that they're overworked, that they've got too much on their plate, and you hadn't realised that, perhaps that they had been given additional tasks that maybe should have gone to somebody else. Or it could be that they're even just bored and just need some. Just give something to stimulate them, and just something to give them a bit more creativity, or to appeal to their interests or where they want to go next. So there are options there, but I think you need that conversation, that gentle conversation, as a start, to try and figure out what's going on.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Are there things that you can think of at a business level, holistically, so policies that you might have, or frameworks or ways of approaching it, so that everyone is taking care of the organisation?

Angela Priestley: Supporting flexible work, and not just part-time jobs, but actually some kind of flexibility that is more meaningful than being able to pick up your kids once a week from school and then logging on after work. I always hear that it's, you know, we have flexible work, because once a week, I go and pick the kids up from primary school, and I take that hour from three to four, and I take them to gymnastics. And while they're at gymnastics, yeah, I log on and then we have dinner, and then I log on again, you know, people really going overboard to highlight the fact that, although it's flexible, they are still making up the hours. So something a little bit more meaningful than that, and having those leaders who actually do demonstrate that flexibility, and then all the things around leave policies and ensuring that you have a family-friendly culture, I guess. And I say family friendly again, from the perspective of it not just being about kids, but from the perspective that everybody has some kind of family and some kind of responsibility outside of work, and some kind of identity and life outside of work. So thinking about how your policies can support them to be that person and perhaps that caregiver as well, in ways that won't hinder their career, in ways that will give them those opportunities to still ask for things and to not be put in a bucket of the part time family person that they're not put aside, that they're given the same opportunities as everybody else.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Angela, if an organisation gets this right, managers burn out. Well, what are the upsides?

Angela Priestley: The upside is healthier, happier team members and a better team, more productive team. I mean, I don't think there's a better upside than that. So I think that if you've got a happy workforce that wants to be there and that is enjoying the work and is doing a really great job, I mean, there's nothing better than that, so I think there's no limit to those upsides.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Thanks to Angela Priestley for joining us on this episode. If you'd like to read the 2025 Women's Ambition report in full, you'll find a link in our episode notes above. 

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