Burnout and ‘quiet cracking’: Is the model of work broken?

The World Health Organisation recognises burnout as an occupational phenomenon caused by chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. The signs of burnout include exhaustion, detachment, and cynicism toward one’s job, as well as a decline in professional effectiveness.

You’ve probably heard of “quiet quitting” – a trend that surfaced online in 2022. It describes employees who, faced with financial or personal constraints, choose not to leave their jobs and instead disengage, doing only what’s necessary to get by. In other words, they stop going “above and beyond” in their roles.

Different terms, such as “job hugging,” have since emerged to describe the growing impact of burnout on employees, compounded by the increasing pressures of the cost-of-living crisis.

Unsurprisingly, a new and far more subtle trend has emerged. Adam Grant, organisational psychologist and Professor of Management and Psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, recently described it in a post on LinkedIn as “the new term for silently disengaging from a job that slowly breaks your spirit.”

He was talking about “quiet cracking,” a new workplace trend that may be the most troubling yet. Quiet cracking refers to employees who appear engaged on the surface but are quietly nearing their breaking point. Unlike quiet quitting, which reflects disengagement or withdrawal, quiet cracking signals extreme fatigue, poor performance, and lost productivity. Unclear expectations, a lack of recognition, and weak psychological safety all contribute to the “cracking” of the employee, who suffers in silence, fearing they might lose their job if they speak out.

Learn more: Are you experiencing burnout? Here’s what to look out for

“Let’s call it what it is: burnout,” he wrote. “The major causes are the same as they’ve always been – being overworked, undervalued, and disrespected. If leaders want to cure it, they need to make it safe to talk about it.”

Why leaders should care about burnout

Buzzwords aside, attitudes toward work-life balance and employee wellbeing are clearly shifting in the Australian workplace. It doesn’t matter what we call it; the evidence shows that employees are increasingly signalling burnout to their employers. For example, according to an analysis by Safe Work Australia, mental health conditions accounted for 9% of all serious workers’ compensation claims during 2021-22, representing a 36.9% increase since 2017-18. This has very real consequences, not just for the employees but for businesses' bottom lines.

Increased burnout suggests the modern model of work may be reaching its limits. As Gordon Parker AO, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at UNSW Sydney, observes, “Both [burnout and greater awareness of it] are in play. Greater awareness and low stigma will generate more people reporting.”

Personality styles, he says, can also increase the risk, such as dutifulness and perfectionism, which explains why burnout is more prevalent among doctors and lawyers. “Workplace factors include the increased pressure to be always ‘on’ – i.e. people on their phones and emails and working beyond formalised hours,” he says.

According to his research, long-term employee wellbeing depends on “employers and employees putting prophylactic [preventative] strategies in play.” In short, businesses must adopt preventive measures designed to stop burnout before it occurs. For example, Prof. Parker advocates for “reducing informal ‘on’ time” and having “managers provide cogent changes to the workplace to individuals when they commence to develop burnout.”

Why work feels unsustainable for many

Modern work has evolved into a system that continually demands more than people can reasonably give. Ironically, productivity itself, often defined as doing more with less, has become both the goal and the strain.

In Australia, the evidence is stark. “Workers’ compensation cases due to psychological injuries (which encompasses burnout) are the fastest growing category of workers’ compensation in Australia today, according to Safe Work Australia,” explains Sharon Parker, Professor of Organisational Behaviour in the Curtin Faculty of Business and Law, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow, and Director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design. She says these cases are rising fastest in healthcare and social assistance, where the emotional and physical load has intensified.

Learn more: Three ways to help avoid burnout for shift workers

“It’s worth noting that when people have time off because of psychological injury, it’s four times greater than for physical injuries and illnesses. So, this sort of data alerts to the issue and means it must be taken seriously, not just for the health and well-being of Australian workers, but from the perspective of cost and productivity,” Prof. Parker explains.

“From our research and work in companies, one of the main drivers of burnout is excessive job demands,” she continues. “These demands vary according to the job. They can be, for example, long work hours, time pressure, or emotional demands. These sorts of demands become a problem when they overwhelm workers' capacity to cope, such as when they are experienced for prolonged periods or are extremely intense. 

"If we return to the workers’ compensation data, 'job pressure' (another word for job demands) is the most common category of psychological injuries. The second largest is harassment and bullying, so that is another important factor that can increase burnout."

She notes that systemic pressures in some sectors make burnout particularly pervasive. “Other work design factors are also important. For example, workers' burnout is reduced if they experience a supportive work environment and have autonomy to optimally manage the demands they face.”

But she admits that in many sectors, the way work is structured needs to be changed. “If we look at the healthcare and social assistance sector as an example, we are seeing a vast growth in the need for care delivery that has not been matched by the staffing levels or investment in staff,” she says.

“In aged care, for instance, the pressures of compliance, constant sector-wide change in rules and systems, and other forces combine with older people living longer and having more complex care needs to create a perfect storm of job pressure.”

Not surprisingly, time pressure is a significant contributor to burnout. “Workers often do not have sufficient time for core processes like effective handovers, obtaining training, and providing care to clients. In the meantime, front-line managers in these sectors are often overloaded and do not have time to provide the support, mentoring, and system improvement that their workers need,” she says.

What is the difference between burnout and overwhelm?

As Alyson Meister, Dean of Degree Programs and Professor of Leadership and Organisational Behaviour at IMD Business School, explains, “Burnout is the result of unmanaged, chronic stress – yet not all stress is harmful. Our research focuses on overwhelm, a related but distinct affective state that is also increasing.”

Her recent research, co-authored with Nele Dael, Research Fellow at IMD Business School, shows a sharp post-COVID spike in global searches for feeling overwhelmed, signalling widespread depletion. According to Prof. Meister, overwhelm often begins when “people feel they have ‘too many tabs open in their brain,’ unable to prioritise or switch off amid competing demands.” In her study, 60 per cent of participants traced overwhelm directly to the workplace – “driven by role overload, high workload, unrealistic expectations, and constant interruptions.”

“Overwhelm and burnout are closely related but not the same,” she continues. “Burnout is the long-term outcome of chronic, unmanaged stress – a state of enduring exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced efficacy that develops over months or years. Overwhelm, by contrast, is a transient affective state that occurs in the moment when demands suddenly exceed one’s perceived ability to cope. It’s the point where people shift from ‘I’m managing’ to ‘I can’t handle this right now.’”

In the study, overwhelm was marked by exhaustion, mental “freeze,” withdrawal, and self-doubt. “Physiologically, participants described feeling both fatigued and hyper-alert – a state of tension rather than complete depletion,” she says. “While burnout reflects a collapse after prolonged strain, overwhelm captures the acute tipping point that, if repeated, can lead there.”

Prof. Meister warns that organisations should be alert to early warning signs. “These can include withdrawal or social disengagement, decision paralysis, emotional flatness, or contradictory signals of fatigue and restlessness,” she says. “Because overwhelm often hides behind professionalism or silence, leaders need to look beyond workload and pay attention to predictability, clarity, and support. Creating psychological safety for people to say, ‘I’m at my limit’ before they crash is one of the most effective ways to prevent overwhelm from turning into burnout.”

Redesigning work for energy and purpose

If the current work model is flawed, the solution may not necessitate a drastic change, such as a four-day workweek, but it will require genuine structural reform and good work design.

Curtin University’s Prof. Parker offers an evidence-based framework for tackling burnout: the SMART Work Design Model, which involves:

• S – Stimulating: having work that is interesting, meaningful, and varied
• M – Mastery: jobs in which people are clear about their roles and get feedback on how they are doing
• A – Autonomy: having control and influence over work decisions
• R – Relational: having support and a positive team environment
• T – Tolerable: having a reasonable level of work demands (time pressure, emotional demands, organisational change, etc.)

“By designing good work and creating a culture with healthy norms, burnout can be prevented,” she says.

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So, does good work design look like? “One of the most important first steps is to understand if there is a problem and if so, where it lies and what's causing it. This is where surveys and other strategies (observing workers, talking to people about their work) can be very important,” she explains.

“There are plenty of tools available that organisations can use to identify where pockets of potential burnout might be. Tracking aspects such as absenteeism and turnover data can also be informative, as increases in these areas could signal issues with burnout and job stress. It’s important for organisations that want to address burnout to go beyond providing counselling to stressed workers to additionally seek to identify and address the work factors that might be causing burnout. Useful in this case could be our SMART Work Design model – which is an evidence-based model that identifies the key work factors that affect people's stress and well-being at work.”

She adds that effective solutions require co-creation with employees themselves. “Work redesign, job crafting, leadership development, and changing HR policies and practices are all avenues for then addressing any issues raised in a diagnosis phase. One of the most important points of work redesign is to involve the workers who do the work in the redesign process.

“Workers are the experts in their job so they often have the best ideas for how to make it better.”

Prof. Meister agrees that solutions lie within the workplace itself. “I don’t think the model of work is doomed,” she says, “but many aspects of how we currently organise it are increasingly unsustainable. High demands, low autonomy, and constant change create fertile ground for overwhelm, especially when combined with 24/7 connectivity and blurred work–life boundaries.”

Her research found that “in our study, 60% of overwhelm experiences originated in the workplace – driven by demand overload, conflict, and toxic management – and only 40% came from personal life. That tells us the system itself plays a major role.”

Yet Prof. Meister insists the same systems can be redesigned for resilience. “Today’s workplaces also hold the seeds of the solution. Flexible work arrangements, thoughtful job design, well-being initiatives, and health-oriented leadership can all serve as protective factors,” she says. “What’s needed is a shift from seeing overwhelm as an individual failure to recognising it as a systemic signal that the balance between demands and resources is off.”

“It’s all about prevention,” she adds. “Preventing overwhelm requires acting early and across multiple levels of the organisation. At the individual level, employees need time and permission to recover – micro-breaks, movement, and moments of detachment that restore energy and focus. This means normalising rest as part of performance, not its opposite.”

“At the team level, fostering social support and fairness norms is key. Teams that share the load, communicate openly, and look out for each other create a buffer against stress and isolation,” Prof. Meister explains. “At the organisational level, the priority is to create a culture of good health and well-being, built on the recognition that peak performance depends on healthy people. The best work comes from those who are energised, not exhausted.”

She notes that “organisations can reinforce this by embedding well-being into their values, recognising sustainable effort, and ensuring that recovery, psychological safety, and human connection are seen as essential drivers of success.”

Learn more: Four effective and practical ways leaders can truly do more with less

Finally, Prof. Meister points to the operational side: “Organisations can improve how work is designed and managed – using digital or AI-powered tools to anticipate workload peaks, distribute resources more evenly, and ensure recovery time is built into schedules. Predictable work patterns, realistic deadlines, and clear role expectations all reduce the risk of tipping from pressure into overwhelm.”

FAQ: Understanding and addressing burnout at work

What is quiet cracking?
Quiet cracking refers to employees who appear engaged but are silently nearing burnout due to chronic workplace stress.

How is quiet cracking different from quiet quitting?
Quiet quitting involves disengagement, while quiet cracking reflects hidden exhaustion and mental strain under the appearance of performance.

What causes burnout at work?
Key causes include excessive job demands, unclear expectations, lack of recognition, and weak psychological safety.

How can leaders prevent burnout?
By redesigning work using frameworks such as SMART Work Design – ensuring stimulation, mastery, autonomy, relationships, and tolerable demands.

What is the difference between burnout and overwhelm?
Overwhelm is a temporary state when demands exceed capacity; burnout is the chronic result of unmanaged stress over time.

What can organisations do to build resilience?
Adopt preventive strategies such as realistic workloads, open communication, recovery time, and a culture of psychological safety.